In honor of everyone going back to school this week or next week. Wishing you a successful year!
How did these three become chess Grandmasters as teenagers?
Good genes, obviously. Right?
Apparently not.
The real story is their father László and mother Klara.
In his 20s, László wanted to get married and decided to prepare himself for fatherhood by studying biographies of great intellectuals, from Socrates to Einstein. He concluded that the right approach could produce a genius in any healthy child. "A genius is not born but is educated and trained….When a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius." When he courted Klara, he made the marriage conditional on her full partnership in this experiment.
A summary of their method that produced three geniuses can be read online here. Unfortunately, his book is out of print and unavailable, but there are several spin-offs, such as this, this and this. (Disclaimer, I haven't personally read these.)
But before you go there, try this question at your table: If you knew it to be true that a genius is raised and not born, would that knowledge impact the way you raise your own kids or grandkids?
And what are the implications for Jewish education?
Shabbat Shalom
PS - Shopping on Amazon? Please use https://smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate a % of the sale to the non-profit of your choice (such as Jewish Spiritual Literacy), at no extra cost to you. Why not?
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