One of the most disappointing aspects of our time is that the explosion of knowledge has not led to the multiplication of geniuses. The population is growing rapidly. Mass education has taken over all countries. The dissemination of knowledge has been made universal by the Internet. The ability to share ideas – regardless of background, gender or skin color – should have exploded the potential number of geniuses. Look at the evolution of knowledge of Pluto. The image put online by NASA in 1994 is just a cluster of gray pixels. A quarter of a century later, we have access to extremely detailed mapping of the dwarf planet. What normally arouse the vocations of budding astronomers.
Admittedly, genius does not obey any definition. It is also often retrospective, contemporaries not always knowing how to measure it. It is the great History that chisels the legend later. Nevertheless, the few quantitative analyzes of literary, musical or scientific geniuses, such as that of Holden Karnofsky, testify to a reduction in the number of great men and women in relation to the population of an age to produce ideas, works or discoveries.
Thinking out of step with your peers
“Everything would have been discovered” is one of the arguments most often put forward to explain the world’s cultural and intellectual depletion. It is certain that many things have already been imagined in each of the specialties, but at the crossroads of two disciplines, marvelous discoveries await. My two most brilliant scientific friends each master two disciplines, one chemistry and biology, the other physics and electronics. This is what makes them think out of step with their peers who only understand one area.
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The other theory often formulated on the subject is that the material life would have definitively prevailed over the intellectual life. Entrepreneurship would have supplanted the sciences and the arts attracting the most creative brains. The hypothesis can be considered, as I have been able to meet entrepreneurs who had the characteristics to be brilliant researchers, artists or intellectuals. But it does not resist the number. Entrepreneurship remains a miniscule opportunity in proportion to each generation. It is unlikely to cause this shift on its own.
All eyes are on the school system. Dozens of studies have attempted to pierce the best educational practices at the scale of a country, but also between several countries. They compared learning methods, recruitment and recognition of teachers, class size, access to IT tools, taking care to neutralize the socio-professional or financial impact of the background.
The observation is implacable: all this does not matter much. Studies show that winning the lottery to attend the supposedly best school in town has no impact on the final academic and professional performance of lucky people in Chicago, New York or China. Children who failed a selection test for an elite school by a few points will have similar results to those who passed it by a few points and gained access to the precious sesame.
The benefits of tutoring
The most interesting thesis on this subject is defended by the neuroscientist Erik Hoel. For him, the mode of production of geniuses is tutoring. Tutoring was the mode of education of the aristocracy for centuries and consisted in exposing young children individually and permanently to an adult tutor, expert in his field, instructing him but also engaging him in intellectual discussions without search for the award of a predetermined exercise. These brilliant minds also served as role models.
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Obviously, this extremely expensive mode of education was reserved for an elite. By industrializing education, we created a system of mass production that improved the situation of the vast majority of people individually, and of the world as a whole, but we would have lost the artisanal process that shaped the most elegant minds. and the sharpest. Bringing tutoring up to date would be attractive, but at what cost…
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