Stop suffocating the genius in your children!
As a teacher, principal, city school superintendent, college and university professor, dean and president, I constantly wondered why we don’t have more Johannes Keplers, Sir Isaac Newtons or Thomas Edisons among us. I purposefully searched for the reasons. But it wasn’t until I reached retirement age that I found out why. And what I discovered was so important, I just knew I couldn’t retire.

For all those years I didn’t know that all normal children, regardless of race, color, creed or national origin, have in them the seeds of brilliance.

Most of us unwittingly or recklessly do everything we can to suffocate genius in our kids by insisting on doing what everybody else is doing with their children: Putting them through the same extrusion process so that they come out about the same-sized and same-flavored sausages as the other youngsters. Does that sound crazy? Listen closely and think again.

The Smithsonian Institution asked Harold McCurdy and his team to study genius through the ages. Their recipe for creating genius in children included: 1) warm, responsive parents and other adults actively involved in the lives of children, 2) virtual isolation from children outside the family, and 3) much freedom to explore their own interests. Given such a formula, we shouldn’t be surprised at the Smithsonian measure of today’s typical schools.

The mass education of our public school system diminishes all three key factors that produce genius in children.

Don't let them out before they're ready!

We put our children out of the home and into institutions as soon as we can. We submit them earlier and earlier to the state as Plato recommended until we have little influence or control. None of this “early institutionalization” is consistent with sound research on child development and learning.

Children are not ready for academic and social pressures of school until close to or into their teens.

What do they get when they go to school? John Goodlad, then graduate dean at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied 1,016 public elementary and secondary schools. He found that the average teacher spends a grand total of seven minutes a day in personal responses to all his or her students.

In addition to that, not all responses were necessarily warm! And few teachers give their students enough time to develop thoughtful answers when they are asked questions. Neither are their questions the kind that stimulate thought. Rather than questions that ask “Why?” and “How?” they are more likely to ask “Who?” “What?” “Where? “When?” and “How much?” Yet these constitute the parent or teacher’s main educational tool and are among the major reasons for high academic success of many homeschools.

Keep them away from other kids!

Isolation from peers may sound extreme. But that changes when you look at the modern social cancer of peer dependency. It is almost certain to bring loss of family values and self-respect when children spend more time with their peers daily than with their parents. Children are negatively socialized. Kids mostly with their parents and constructively occupied with family business or other work and service are positively socialized. They are also more creative and less likely to be mentally or emotionally troubled.

Give them freedom to explore!

When children are allowed to develop naturally, when their interests are targeted and their motivation used as a principal tool in learning, studies come faster, more thoroughly and with less pressure. We have many children who seem hopelessly delayed or retarded. Often they have lost all interest in school. But when approached in their own interests, they respond quickly and often brilliantly. In most cases they are youngsters who have gone to school much too early. Most often they are boys.

Here may be our most pervasive form of child abuse: It is well established that boys lag behind girls in emotional maturity a year or so at the age most children begin school.

One of the most pervasive forms of child abuse is forcing boys to start school at the same age as girls.

A result of not responding appropriately to the emotional immaturity of boys beginning school is the disproportionate number of boys in remedial education – up to 13 boys for every 1 girl. Another pervasive form of abuse is our expecting children to read well by 6 or 7. Many children don’t adapt readily to reading until age 8 or 10. Some bright students don’t catch on until 12 or 14. Yet, late readers often become the best readers of all in both speed and comprehension.

If this is true—and there is not reputable research which denies it— shouldn’t we spend every possible minute with our young? Shouldn’t we respond to them often and warmly, with many more “Atta boys (or girls)” and fewer “No – No’s”? Shouldn’t we give them time to respond when we ask questions? Shouldn’t we deal much more in “whys” and “hows,” teaching them to be thinkers instead of reflectors of others’ thoughts? Shouldn’t we work with them as living examples in hands-on activities in the kitchen, garage and garden?

Shouldn’t we think more carefully of their interests, read to them often from their early years, keep them close to us as long as possible and institutionalized as late as possible? Shouldn’t we teach them how to manage our homes, how to make and sell things, provide services to their homes, and communities, and how to be self-sufficient and responsible like Thomas Edison, a genius who earned while he learned much like the Christ child in Nazareth? Many homeschoolers call this the “Moore Formula,” but it is borrowed from God, and most certain route to genius.

Put your children to work!

Genius requires a balance of work, service and study.

The best possible way to build self-respect in our children is to give them responsibility. When teachers work manually with students, making and selling things and encouraging home industries and otherwise help at home, they build creativity in the most responsible ways. They grant authority as youngsters prove responsible. And teachers, parent and student join in serving their community.

Even Harvard University gives high priority to such students. We should train our teachers in this God-given method, with at least as much daily work as study. Every such program has proven its worth, including the California State Regional Occupation Program (ROP). In this program, high school students divide their days between study and work without pay. ROP has the highest achievement and job record in the state Programs like ROP cost much less and are infinitely more valuable than rivalry sports.