Childhood Education of Extraordinary People

LOL newsletter membership 34

Welcome to the 34th issue of the membership newsletter. You can also join the membership plan to receive weekly long-form articles. Recent content includes:

How to Cheer Yourself Up When You Feel Stuck

How Good is "Good Enough"?

Toxic Positivity

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As I grow older, I'm frequently consulted by friends who have become parents about their children's education. This is a significant and broad topic that can't be adequately addressed in a few sentences. However, smaller behavioral issues are easier to discuss.

While there are many techniques for teaching children, one thing is certain: educating children is a tiring and complex process, and how you educate your child depends on how you view them.

When parents consider how to educate their children, a common approach is to observe what other parents are doing. If other parents send their children to learn chess and see rapid development in logical thinking, we might do the same, preferably at the same chess school.

Let's conduct a thought experiment: If my child were a genius, how should I tailor their education to help them become self-actualized and contribute to the world? Many friends say, "I just want my child to grow up healthy and happy; we don't aspire to raise a genius."

This is, of course, a realistic and healthy goal. But for parents who are anxious about child-rearing, considering this question might help them break free from some of their preconceptions and view child education in a new light.

So, how did historically extraordinary figures learn during their childhood? What did their parents do right?

We can look at examples from writers (Woolf, Tolstoy), mathematicians (von Neumann, Pascal, Turing), philosophers (Russell, Descartes), and musicians (Mozart, Bach).