<p>Both of our girls are beautiful ballet dancers. They do not have the right body type or feet. I started them early with dance because I believed it was a good EC for them and it’s something which they could do all their lives. Due to hard work and little bit of talent, they could be considered “semi professional” level. But they could never be part of NYC ballet company.</p>
<p>To be a top athlete/dancer/artist, it takes a lot more than nuture, one has to be born with some natural talent.</p>
<p>This is a statement by someone who has no idea what it is like to lack athletic talent. It may even be true, but it is also true that there are more millions of kids who did not receive any positive feedback, and not a single one of them made the choice to continue.</p>
<p>I coached soccer teams of 6-7 year-olds. It was completely clear at that point who was an athlete and who wasn’t. One team included a future member of the US national women’s soccer team and a recruited squash player. There was just an enormous difference in the amount of positive feedback that the kids got, and it wasn’t even due to different treatment from the coaches. It was due to the fact that they were a lot better than the others, and everyone could recognize that.</p>
<p>Maybe the people who did the study never tried to hit a major-league curveball. Remember, baseball is a sport in which even the very best hitters fail to get a hit between 65% and 70% of the time (and a much higher percentage if you calculate on a per-pitch rather than per-at bat rate). And there are innumerable levels at which people prove unable to perform remotely that well, long before one gets to the point of failing in the major leagues. It’s very misleading when people say things like, “oh, Pete Rose succeeded because of hard work, not athletic talent.” As I said before, it takes enormous talent to hit a baseball at an elite level, no matter how much one practices. The world is full of people whose fathers started throwing balls to them to hit when they were two years old, and spent thousands of hours practicing, and ended up washing out before they even got to college.</p>
<p>Me, I got an “F” in gym in second grade because I couldn’t figure out yet how to tie my sneakers. No such thing as velcro in those days!</p>
<p>By the way, I have no problem with athletic recruitment. I don’t think that athletic talent is any less moral than academic talent, and I think it’s possible to value both. But neither is an equal-opportunity kind of thing.</p>
<p>I do believe that people who will never be Division I athletes, or Boston Symphony Orchestra soloists, or MacArthur Fellows can get lots of benefit out of participating in and working hard at sports, music, and academics. But to pretend that anyone can do any of them at a high level with a little elbow grease is insulting and insensitive.</p>
<p>At least on the academic tutoring and SAT prep classes…if one is willing to put in the time and is willing to look long and hard…there’s plenty of effective free or inexpensive options*…assuming a given student needs them. </p>
<p>Moreover, considering the vast majority of the classmates at my NYC specialized high school were lower-middle/working-class and/or first-generation immigrants and yet…so many of them made it into the most elite universities and LACs without requiring academic tutoring, SAT prep classes, paid little/nothing for them, or even took the SATs cold…I’d still argue that focusing on academic success has a much lower barrier of entry for those of lower socio-economic means with a wider variance of academic abilities than targeting an elusive and often illusory Div I athletic scholarship. The latter requires one to have been supported with outlays of equipment, coaching, training camps, and associated travel expenses to the point a given child is at least top 1-5% of athletic ability in a given sport to even have a prayer of being in the running…much less actually selected for recruitment. </p>
<p>*Certainly less expensive than outlays for equipment, traveling expenses, and camps for Football, Lacrosse, Fencing, or other sports if one’s goal is to be a recruited Div I athlete.</p>
<p>DonnaL,
I do not disagree that some people are born with more innate ability than others, I just disagree with the notion that a significant number of (healthy) people are incapable of achieving college-recruitable athletic skills despite 10,000 hours of directed practice.</p>
<p>"The 10,000 hour theory does not state that 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert. It states that in order to be an expert, you need roughly 10,000 hours of practice. Raw talent and ability isn’t enough, you need to put in the hard work as well. But hard work by itself isn’t enough, either. You need some degree of talent as well. </p>
<p>Just because you spend 10,000 hours doing something doesn’t mean you’re going to be an expert when you’re done. You’ll probably be better at it, but … you probably shouldn’t quit your day job." </p>
<p>(online comment written by “Jim H.” in response to a Wall Street Journal article titled “Can the “10,000 Hours” Theory be Tested?” I thought it was a worth quoting here.) </p>
<p>Oh, and the article concluded that the theory could never be tested because to do so would require thousands of volunteers each spend 10,000 hours practicing a randomly assigned skill to see if they indeed become experts afterward. The experiment would be a logistical nightmare.</p>
<p>Ah, I see where you are coming from with your proposition. Sadly, I absolutely do not agree with you here, based upon personal experience with a 7th grade gym teacher who was convinced that if I tried hard enough, I could run the 50 in under 9 seconds (I think that was it but it’s been a looong time). I believed her and worked at it the entire school year; never happened though. Later on in high school, a gym teacher pointed out that while i was tall, I had short legs and a long torso ie, running fast was not something I could expect to be able to do. I was really glad she cleared that up for me .</p>
<p>I do hope this is the end of the OT discussion on athletic scholarships being equal opportunity, though.</p>
<p>I prefer to believe the prevailing theory, especially because it is a positive thing. I think kids will be more successful at everything they try if we believe they can do it.</p>
<p>Joblue,
I’m sorry for your negative experience with running. It is unfortunate that you had a gym teacher who did not know that most males (I assume you are male) get faster as they get older. If you look at high school running results, you will see that the majority of the fastest males are seniors.</p>
<p>All right, I will try to sign off from this topic, because I can sense that there are people who do not want to be convinced. I want to say that I do believe that I could have excelled at a very high level in athletics, art, music, science, math, English, and pretty much anything if I had decided that that was what I wanted to do. Most people could have done the same.</p>
<p>I think high academic achievers are just as likely to come from an economically advantaged family background as students who are top performing athletes. Look at the public schools where students have high SATs or win top national academic awards (e.g., National Merit, Intel, etc.)–what you’ll find is that the strong academic achievers generally come from upper-middle class suburban schools, private prep schools, or charter or public exam schools like Boston Latin. I think researchers have found that parent income and education level were strong predictors of a student’s SAT scores.</p>
<p>We’ll never agree on this issue, and I suppose our theories can’t be tested. However, those of us with experience in several different sports for both boys and girls, can attest to the fact that quite a few kids who were viewed as the best athletes when they were 10 or 12 years old never amounted to anything in high school. This wasn’t from lack of talent; it was from lack of dedication and persistence. Similarly, there were others who were just average when they were 10 or 12 who went on to become excellent high school athletes because they simply stuck with it and worked hard. </p>
<p>My Div. 1 athlete D, in her first foray into sports, was pretty darn awful. Just stood on the field chatting and picking dandelions. She was also cut from a travel soccer team in middle school. There is nothing obviously athletic in her physique, ie. she doesn’t have the thin, long-legged appearance of others in her sport. People look at me and then at DH, and with a confused expression ask, “So, where did D get her athletic talent from?” A trainer D met at a competition who has worked at the Olympics, saw D’s one leg which was affected by a previous injury and told her it was a miracle she could run at all. Her current college trainer told her that she has some physiological characteristics (weak hip flexors for one) that make her less than ideally suited for the sport. Will she ever be good enough to be an All-American or go pro? Doubt it. But she managed to become good enough to get recruited because she pushed herself at every single practice, did the training she was assigned to do outside of practice, and had the mindset that she wanted to win.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, the same holds true for academics. I have reams of IEP’s indicating my younger D’s disabilities and low IQ. But nevertheless, she’s earning A’s and is in the advanced middle school classes. Her former peers, whose parents believe in the determinism of innate ability, are languishing in special education. My friends, talent is highly overrated. Of course there are people whose disabilities and physical weaknesses simply can’t be compensated for by hard work. It would be insulting to suggest otherwise. But the bar for that is set way lower than what people assume it is. Take it from a mom who had to teach her 10 year old to stop flapping her arms like a bird when she ran.</p>
<p>This response has been sitting on my unrefreshed screen for a while, so please excuse me if the discussion has moved in a different direction. I promise I’ll step down from the soapbox now.</p>
<p>I don’t know about you, but I’d rather develop something I already have an innate talent or aptitude for, than struggle to develop a talent where I’ll never be anything other than average. Which is why I think the suggestion that “we all can become recruit-level athletes” is ridiculous. Well, yeah, I suppose theoretically – at the risk of then not developing other things I already had ability in. What’s the point of that? I guess with sustained drawing lessons I could draw decently – but I’ll never be talented the way that my BIL, a natural gifted artist is. The only reason to persist, then, is individual desire and interest – not to be competitive.</p>
<p>I completely agree, Pizzagirl. By all means, the smartest plan is to work hard to develop that for which you are best suited. Many CCer’s kids have done just that, and with smashing success. But what of the child who hasn’t shown himself to be naturally talented, gifted, or especially interested in anything? Your BIL probably started doodling a lot, or drew some relatively great pictures in elementary school, and his talent was noticed and nurtured, at the very least by himself.</p>
<p>What if the child is average–as most are–or below average, and doesn’t have any particular talent that has revealed itself nor any exceptional qualities that stand out? Then he and his parents must latch onto hard work, which is an equal opportunity resource, and apply it to whatever extra-curricular endeavor seems practical and affordable. Similarly, working hard and sticking with it can take an ordinary or somewhat slow kid pretty far in academic pursuits too.</p>
<p>Lastly, if a student is not intellectually talented, it’s not as though he can simply opt out of school and sleep all day. Despite that, he has to find a way to pass school, and read and do math well enough to pursue a career that doesn’t require a college degree but still requires learning. So he can work hard, or become a drain on his parents or society while whining that he just isn’t that smart or talented.</p>
[quote]
Relax, parents and college applicants. Legacy admissions are about as likely to affect you as that asteroid that missed the Earth last week.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Fewer than 100 of the nation’s 3,500 colleges and universities – less than 3 percent – have so many qualified applicants that they have to choose among them. At this handful of institutions, legacies are only a small fraction of the candidates. Of these few legacies, not all are admitted, and many that are would have been accepted anyway.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>But even this infinitesimal percentage is unfair, critics say; admissions should be based on merit. O.K., define merit: Is it an A in an easy course or a B in a tough course? SAT scores from a great test-taker or a slightly lower score from a brilliant student with test anxiety? A talented bassoonist or an impressive volunteer?</p>
<p>Humans simply cannot be ranked by merit.<a href=“emphasis%20added”>/quote</a></p>
<p>I’m interested in the question of whether a person who is poor is likely to be able to excel in various fields, without a strong support network. I think the fact that there are some extraordinary individuals who do this in just about every field doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a lot easier to be a successful baseball player if you have somebody to drive you to practices, sign you up for summer camps, get you specialized training, get you the best equipment, etc. I think there are a few areas where natural talent shines through at an early age without as much support–perhaps singing ability is one example.</p>
.</p>