Adam Gopnik

Quotes

• We know we’ve come to a crossroads when German childhood is being held up as an idealized model for Americans.
• [M]ath prodigies are set somewhat apart from the more general-capacity prodigies, being seemingly possessed of a weird bit of wiring more than an over-all enhanced capacity for learning to do things.
• There appear to be as many learning styles among prodigies as there are prodigies to express them.
• We wince at the brutality of parents who ship their young kids around to perform for adults at the expense of their childhood — but, then, that was Mozart’s childhood, and though by the end Mozart may have wished for less attention as a kid performer and more as a grownup composer, he never for a moment wished not to be Mozart.
• We understand instinctively that being a prodigy wasn’t [Wayne Gretzky’s] platform for a lifetime’s achievement; it marked the possibility of a highly specific, highly term-limited kind of performance.
  • Adam Gopnik (January 29, 2018). How to Raise a Prodigy. The New Yorker. Retrieved January 27, 2018.