Author’s note: This article discusses a past article that I wrote for The Campitor: https://blogs.caryacademy.org/campitor/2020/12/18/why-you-shouldnt-be-jealous-of-child-prodigies/

Over a year ago, I wrote an article for The Campitor titled “Why You Shouldn’t Be Jealous of Child Prodigies” (The Campitor Issue 3: December). In hindsight, as an improved writer, I believe that there are several misinformed views and information in that article that I would like to reflect on in order to clarify my views on the subject. While I still agree with the general sentiment about how we evaluate skill and talent largely on the basis of one’s age without considering other factors, I regard the article as being poorly written and failing to capably discuss a thought-provoking topic.

To start off, I would like to address the second paragraph, which states “Firstly, in most cases, age does not really matter that much…In fact, since it is actually easier to learn something as a child, I find it way more impressive for an adult to become proficiently skilled at a hobby in a short amount of time compared to a child who has spent a majority of their life just practicing” (Wu). While I still agree that children are mentally capable of learning new skills more efficiently than adults- a hypothesis that has been investigated in the scientific world- I disagree with my phrasing in the original article. Instead of presenting the hypothesis of children learning faster than adults, I foolishly turned this topic into a frivolous competition pitting child prodigies against adults. Additionally, concerning the quote “There is essentially no handicap to learn or practice something at a very young age, and yet people often act as though there is,” this notion is one that I now denounce. Evidently, children are still developing cognitive abilities in comparison to adults who have fully developed these abilities and skills. My initial assumption in my original article was that these cognitive abilities were not used for skills such as painting or playing an instrument. However, upon conducting more research, I have found that practices such as visual art and playing musical instruments do indeed heavily utilize cognitive processes, specifically the sensory and motor systems. In this respect, I willingly concede that most of the time, children are inherently at a disadvantage against adults should they be practicing a skill at the same level. Is this true for all skills? I added the phrase most of the time because I feel that there are some exceptions. It is incredibly impressive for a child to be on the same skill level as an adult who is perceived as being proficient at that particular skill, and this fact should not be undermined. This is a critical piece of misinformation in my original article that I would very much like to correct publicly.

My second point in the third paragraph of the original article is also widely inappropriate. Although I definitely still hold the belief that exceptionally gifted and talented children should be given the basic human right to live a normal childhood, my point of “A vast majority of the greatest child prodigies are often exploited by their parents and are unable to live a normal life, heavily impacting their ability to socialize and connect with their peers and the outside world” (Wu) was hastily addended and generally irrelevant to my thesis that was supposed to debate about the intersection between talent and hard work. The social ostracization of child prodigies is a subject that should be discussed separately with more research conducted on that topic alone.

Within the last paragraph of my original article, the main theme that we should be inspired by child prodigies instead of discouraged at their marvelous ability is still a belief that I hold today. However, the added point of “…Child prodigies… I genuinely believe that they are, to an extent, horribly glorified” was misled and additionally not backed up with any supporting evidence. I am also struggling now to figure out what past me was even trying to convey through that phrase; “they are, to an extent, horribly glorified” is rather contradictory between the implicated subtlety in “to an extent” and the exaggerated “horribly”. I have come to the conclusion that this was just poorly written on my part.

I still reckon that the idea of a hypothetical intersection between talent and hard work is intriguing and worth exploring; I for one actually would argue that “talent” does not actually exist and the word is used to undermine the honorable efforts of the skilled, such as child prodigies. Be that as it may, my original article ultimately failed to address the nuance of the topic and may have potentially contained misinformation. In fact, upon rereading the article, I am frankly appalled at my lack of citations aside from image citations in the works cited section of my original article. I believe that it is my personal responsibility as well as my civic duty as a writer to correct this misinformation, clarify my current thoughts, and reflect on my concerns about my original article in retrospect.