Breaking News: We are All Talentless Hacks

I've always said that pretty much anyone can succeed at any academic subject. That there aren't "math people" just people who learned how to do math.

As a tutor it was generally assumed this is because that my job. Slather on the cheap comforting platitudes you nerd! :P

It's time for another turnea "I-told-you-so"

Courtesy of the Freakonomics blog: (cool book, read it).

Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

Link

Sweet validation...