Poor Time Management by Me

I thought we'd have more time this afternoon to do other things, but we didn't. So I want to note here that on Wednesday I need to talk briefly with the teams who are:

(1) doing Drucker Chapts 1 - 3

(2) doing Drucker Chapter 4, and

(3) Interviewing the College CIOs.

I will email the teams before Wednesday, but I want to make sure you are ready, because there will be less time to have these conversations than I originally planned.

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I also didn't have time to follow up on the Ross article in Scientific American. I trust that many of you will become parents during the course of your life, but I hope that doesn't happen for the next few years and that before it does happen you come to realize that the Ross piece is not a template for good parenting.

There are tons of horror stories about the kids of pushy parents going astray emotionally in their teen years. Just about every kid TV star has had significant problems in adolescence (Ron Howard is the exception that proves the rule), because they never had a "normal" life. The woman's tennis star, Jennifer Capriati, is another notable example. You might also consider the case of William Sidis, a genius in the minds of many during the first half of the 2oth century, who had a very tough life and got estranged from his parents because of his father's odd approach to his upbringing. This essay by Abraham Sperling indicates that Sidis did not "burn out" intellectually, though he opted to perform mundane work to make a living and zealously maintained his privacy as an adult.

The lesson is that there can be pitfalls in pushing your genius children too hard and creating a teenage expert in an adult field is bound to have some tough consequences for the kid. On the other hand, for the rest of the population, a gentle nudge in favor of effortful study might be a very good thing.