|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Geniuses Are Made, Not Born
| Article
# : |
11524 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
3,328 Words |
| Author
: |
Jonathan D. Slevin
The author, a former newspaper reporter and editor, is
director of publishing at the Washington Institute for Values
in Public Policy. |
Do you wish you could have grown up next door to Shakespeare? Or had as grammar school playmates little Lenny da Vinci and young Tom Edison? If talent like that of Johann S. Bach, Socrates, and John Milton were commonplace in your high school, might you not be eager to hear the school orchestra perform, watch the debate team, or read the literary magazine?
What if it we were the case that being the parents of such talented youngsters depended not upon some seemingly intangible and uncontrollable facts of heredity but upon parents' simply knowing how to each their children from birth to the age of six? This could revolutionize the basic components of our society: parents, children, and families.
For thirty years, a sometimes impatient man in Philadelphia has been insisting that such a revolution is under way. Every parent has the possibility of creating - and thus every child the potential of becoming - the genius that exists as a neurological birthright, he maintains.
The proponent of this vision, that there can now emerge what amounts to a new quality of humanity, is Glenn Doman, a specialist on child development and brain function. Smithsonian Magazine describes him as "the reigning prophet of the superbaby movement." Doman says that because you can teach a baby anything that you can present in an honest and factual way, and because facts are the base on which intelligence is built, it is easy to make a baby a genius prior to six years of age. All children should be geniuses, he says, and any literate mother can provide the gift of genius to her child.
Doman has written books (over two million copies have been sold) on the subject of brain function and human intelligence, with such titles as How to Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence, Teach Your Baby Math, What to Do about Your Brain-Injured Child, and his benchmark volume, How to Teach Your Baby to Read.
His studies result from the work of the research team at Philadelphia's Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, which the 67-year-old Doman founded forty years ago. This team of physicians, child developmentalists, educators, reading specialists, psychologists, brain surgeons, and physical therapists has devoted itself to understanding how a child's brain develops.
Their work is based upon an understanding of brain function and neurophysiology. The team initially sought to
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
