All of us want brilliant kids. We all obsess when our kids are two and they're not counting yet. We worry about when they will say their first word. We want to know that we have geniuses for offspring.
But is genius really all it's cracked up to be? I read an interesting article quoting William Katz on Power Line blog recently, which said this:
Now, let me ask you a question: You've all read about the great men and women of history. Do you recall ever reading that a major historical figure was "bright"? Of course not. No one would even think of describing anyone of significance that way. The issue is not whether someone is "bright." The issue is whether that person is competent and wise.
And yet, brightness has become its own virtue. We're impressed by candidates who appear "bright." I think this reflects the fact that this is the age of the college graduate, the age where "brightness," or the suggestion of intellect, is considered a fundamental requirement for even getting up in the morning. In order to be taken seriously, one must show the kind of mental agility popular with college admissions officers.
No one debated whether Lincoln was "bright," or Washington, or Franklin Roosevelt. And yet, in modern times, some pundits anguished over whether Ronald Reagan was "bright enough" to be president. They'd learned nothing from Harry Truman, who'd never graced a college campus.
That is so true! What matters in history is not one's IQ or one's SAT score; it's what one has actually DONE with one's life.
We live in an era which prizes right thoughts over right actions. If people FEEL the right way about an issue, they are praised in public, even if they don't do anything about it. So thinking the government should increase welfare payments, for instance, is considered more generous than actually helping at a soup kitchen, if you happen to also advocate reduced welfare payments.
One's political thoughts tend to be equated with intelligence and worth, rather than what one has done to make the world a better place or to accomplish something. We had the spectacle of Paul McCartney announcing at the White House last week that "at least now we have a President who has actually been in a library, unlike the last eight years". See, Obama is supposed to be "bright", and Bush is supposed to be "stupid". Leave aside the fact that Laura Bush was a librarian and that she made literacy a key part of W's administration.
I don't want to argue politics, and I'm sorry if I've wandered into there, but I do think that we have come to value someone's level of genius far more than we do accomplishment because the intellectual elite tends to praise people's thoughts more than people's actions. If you are for peace, you're praised, whether or not your actions bring you closer to peace. If you oppose poverty, you're praised, whether or not your policies or your actions help to eradicate poverty. It is not what we do; it is the posture we take. Hence, Clinton could be praised for being brilliant (and indeed, I believe his IQ is exceptionally high), even though he made major mistakes in office and had an affair with an intern.
What does this mean for us as parents? Let's stop taking pride in our children's intelligence and instead work towards building character. You can have all the intelligence in the world and use it for the wrong things. Stalin was smart. Hitler was smart. Mao was smart. Who cares? They are condemned to the ash heap of history, and sit condemned with God today.
It is very dangerous to praise innate gifts rather than efforts and achievements. Our gifts are ours by virtue of God's grace. It is what we do with them that determines our worth for the kingdom. If you have a gift and don't use it, you are worse off than one who does not have the gift at all. And many who have changed the world have done so not because they were brilliant, but because they saw injustice and wanted to do something about it.
Be careful how you praise your kids. Be careful how you worry or obsess over your children's school marks, or their timetables at reaching milestones. What counts is whether they have developed a compassionate heart and a willingness to work when it matters. Intelligence cannot be taught (though it can be nurtured). Motivation and compassion can be taught, and that is what we need to be working on.
I do not care how smart your child is, or how smart my children are. What I care about is this: do they have a heart which is turned towards God? And will they listen to God to do what He is calling them to do?
So let's develop leadership skills in our kids. Let's develop compassion, and a work ethic, and a love for God. These things ultimately matter far more than intelligence, and the child who has these things will go far indeed.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Around or about 1665, Sir Isaac Newton, so the story goes, was resting outside under an apple tree, when a big red one landed on his big red noggin. Suddenly the Universal Law of Gravitation occurred to him, and a new scientific field was born. For good measure he also decided to invent modern calculus, something for which many first year university students have yet to forgive him.
I’m glad Newton lived three hundred and fifty years ago and not today, because were he born today, I’m not sure what would have happened to him. There’s some interesting research positing that Newton had a form of autism, or perhaps Asperger’s Syndrome. He was known as being somewhat “odd”, and when he had an idea, he fixated on it until he could figure it out, regardless of what was going on around him (although he did tend to notice falling fruit).
The world has always been full of odd people, but until relatively recently others may have talked about them and wondered about them, but in general they still found a place for them. In fact, most of Silicon Valley in the 1970s was populated by males with Asperger’s who loved thinking about computers. The Syndrome may have hindered their ability to get a date to the prom, but it didn’t stop their creativity.
Today we are so quick to label children that we may make people think they are less capable than they actually are. Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome can certainly cause immense difficulties for families, but let’s not forget that many with these conditions have been highly successful—when we just thought of them as odd, rather than as somehow “affected”. By labelling children early, do we cause them to feel that they will never succeed, never fit in, always be looked down upon?
Yet labelling those along the autism spectrum is not nearly as damaging, I don’t think, as labelling those along the anger spectrum, or the narcissism spectrum, or the just plain jerk spectrum. The DSM, which lists all mental disorders, is now being revised after sixteen years, and it’s widely assumed that it will include even more disorders than it currently does. Some of the current ones are already pretty strange. There’s oppositional defiant disorder, which is defined as someone who often loses his or her temper, often annoys people deliberately, and is often touchy. Resemble anyone in your family? Then there’s narcissistic personality disorder, which is someone who is boastful, pretentious, and needs admiration. Physicians are always being given new spectrum disorders to look for, though most doctors know exactly what violent kids with anger problems and a propensity to reach down girls’ pants have wrong with them: idiot parent disorder. That one, unfortunately, isn’t in the book.
At one point we would have called these children—and their parents--some unprintable word, and ostracized them. And the ostracism is rather effective, because it conveys to people that they’re doing something society finds unacceptable. Today, we say instead that “you’re suffering from a disorder”. You’re no longer to blame; you simply have a condition that you need to learn to deal with. Character has been taken out of the equation.
The world would function much better if we made more room for those who are a little odd. But it would also function better if we made less room for those who are mean, arrogant, and anti-social. We shouldn’t ostracize those who have different personalities, but ostracizing those with flawed morals is a mighty fine idea. Thinking up new calculus ideas: good. Terrorizing others: bad. Why is that so hard to understand?
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up to receive it FREE in your inbox every week!
Every Friday my column appears in several newspapers. Here's this week's, inspired by a New Year's post I wrote a while back.
In my New Year’s column, I painted a picture of how common sense has been sacrificed over the last five decades. Boy, did many readers take me to task for being so negative! I didn’t realize how bad things were then. And today life really is a lot better. Their kids are doing great!
And I’m glad for them. Mine are, too! But that’s one of the problems with anecdotal evidence: remember when Nixon’s 1972 presidential win confounded New York journalists, because no one they knew voted for him? They had a closed system of acquaintances, and so they thought the world was other than it was. Similarly, our own little circle may be thriving, but that doesn’t mean that all families are. The rates of family breakdown and delinquency today over fifty years ago shows a definite trend, and it isn’t pretty.
Nevertheless, the readers had a point. Their kids are doing well, and just because our culture may be going off the rails is no reason that our own kin have to follow. On an individual basis, we can challenge the norms and beat the odds. We all know that; that’s why we have so many New Year’s resolutions, even if they do have about as good a chance as being honoured as Dion did at becoming Prime Minister.
Yet have you ever noticed that most of our resolutions concern weight? We’re going to exercise. We’re not going to sneak the kids’ chocolate. We’re going to diet, at least for the next few days before our resolve passes.
Being healthy is certainly an admirable goal, but I’m curious as to why we focus so much on food. Other variables influence our health, too. For men, especially, being married is a health boon. It’s the equivalent to never having smoked. And common law relationships don’t have the same health bonus. Divorce, on the other hand, is a health killer. So if we’re really interested in health, maybe we should focus on our relationships, too!
The same is true for our children. We want them to succeed and do well in life, but we tend to focus on academics, as if that’s all that counts. But if we want to raise kids who will be independent, motivated, and responsible, good marks are no guarantee of anything! We all know brilliant young men with no drive who waste their lives on video games. Intelligence is not nearly the determinant for future success as work ethic and morals are.
I think many parents, though, just assume that their children will turn out okay. They give them the best toys, an easy life, and help them to succeed in school, assuming that this will steer their children into becoming good citizens. But without a real moral foundation, there’s no guarantee that this will happen.
Our culture is spreading a message which is the exact antithesis of real success in life. It says that appearance matters more than ethics; that sex is the way to popularity; that money can buy happiness (and so can electronic gadgets); and that the best thing in life is to have fun, not to be productive. The only way for our children to combat these attitudes is for us to take an active role in their lives and show them the benefits of acting responsibly.
Our New Year’s Resolutions for our children, then, should primarily focus on character. If you raise a child with good morals, the rest will follow. If you raise a self-centred, irresponsible but intelligent child, they’re unlikely to go far. So this year, can you teach them to do chores, so that they learn basic life skills and learn to think of others before they make a mess? Can you refuse to allow your children to call each other names, to gossip about others, or to degrade anyone else? Can you stop watching movies or TV shows that promote the wrong message?
Our society has many dark corners, making it easy to believe that life is inevitably moving in the wrong direction. But we can beat the odds if we start focusing on what really matters. This year, prioritize your relationships. Prioritize character, both in yourself and in your kids. And maybe we can finally build a culture where goodness and kindness are truly valued.
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up here to receive it FREE in your inbox each week!
I didn't like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I guess because it was my favorite movie as a child it just couldn't live up to the hype. I loved the little girl who played Lucy, though. She was exactly how I pictured her.
Caspian, though, is better than the book. I agree with Frederica Matthewes-Green on this one: The movie trumps the book.
Here's her take:
Every once in awhile, a movie improves on the book on which it is based. In my bold opinion, Prince Caspian, the second Disney film drawn from C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, is such a movie. Criticism of C. S. Lewis is rightly taboo, but facts are facts: Prince Caspian, the book, is a dud.
It was the second to be written in the series, and it’s rushed and thin. You’ll remember from the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that the four Pevensie siblings find their way into the land of Narnia through a mysterious wardrobe. In Prince Caspian they are called back to Narnia again, where they must help young Prince Caspian claim his rightful throne. Unfortunately, they land nowhere near Caspian, so most of the book is occupied with the Pevensies’ struggle to cross mountains and rivers to get to him. (The action also pauses for four chapters so that a dwarf can fill us in on Prince Caspian’s life so far.) When they finally meet Caspian there is a brief battle and a happy ending, and before you know it you’re running into the opening pages of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (a much better book).
Purists may not like it, because they did add some things. Peter and Caspian have a rivalry going on that isn't in the book, but it works in the movie. And to be honest, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't have been a rivalry.
You start to understand, from what happens in the movie, why Susan went off the rails later in life, too.
And the scene with the White Witch is appropriate and ties up some loose ends.
So I liked it. A lot of action, good morals, and great characters.
Rebecca, my 13-year-old, was disappointed that they didn't depict the walk Lucy took with Aslan. That was the most spiritual part of the book and they left it out. They did put in tidbits in other places, though, so I suppose that is sort of redeeming.
All in all, at least a 4 1/2 stars.
Interestingly, I've read some reviews that hated it. They were disgusted that the point of the movie was honor, valor, or participating in something bigger than yourself. And at one point, a commenter said that "the hero had to learn to be humble before he could succeed." And he said that as if it were a bad thing.
The movie does seem anachronistic in today's world. It's not every man for himself. It's not success at all costs. It's not back-stabbing. It's acting nobly and honorably, and that is a rare thing indeed.
I wish we could go back to those days where self-sacrifice in a good cause was more the norm, rather than just looking out for oneself. C.S. Lewis always leaves me feeling peaceful, and I did after seeing that movie because of the uplifting theme. If some people don't like it, I think that reflects more on them than it does on the movie.
As for what age to see it, that's difficult to say. I think 8 and up would have no problem. Battle scenes abound, but no blood. So it's not gory. Below 8 you'd have to use your judgment. But this is a keeper.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5e61651f-6ca6-4482-9351-613229838aa7)
Stumble It!
