the childhood pattern of genius

(The main reason I'm posting this here is to let maman comment on "genius.")

From one of my homeschooling lists:

In 1960, Harold McCurdy directed a study titled "The Childhood Pattern of Genius," commissioned by the Smithsonian Institute.

The study uncovered a three part recipe for developing high achievement in our kids:

1. Much time spent with warm, responsive parents and other adults;
2. Very little time spent with peers; and
3. A great deal of free exploration under parental guidance.

McCurdy concluded, "The mass education of our public school system is, in its way, a vast experiment on reducing all three factors to a minimum; accordingly, it should tend to suppress the occurrence of genius."

So, print this paragraph and put it to memory and you shouldn't have any trouble explaining why you homeschool!

I thought I should look for McCurdy's study before blogging about it, but I can't find it online. I do, however, find many other references to it.

Marvin Minsky, the famous co-founder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab quotes McCurdy in a recent paper:

Harold G. McCurdy: "The present survey of biographical information on a sample of twenty men of genius suggests that the typical development pattern includes these important aspects: (1) a high degree of attention focused upon the child by parents and other adults, expressed in intensive educational measures and usually, abundant love; (2) isolation from other children, especially outside the family; (3) a rich efflorescence of fantasy [i.e. creativity] as a reaction to the preceding conditions."

This is Minsky's footnote:

Harold G. McCurdy, The Childhood Pattern of Genius. Horizon Magazine, May 1960, pp. 32-38. McCurdy concluded that mass education in public schools has "the effect of reducing all three of the above factors to minimum values."