HOW YOU, TOO, CAN BE A GENIUS
By FARRAH WEINSTEIN
AS you prepare to open those college rejection letters, or worry about having to take summer school classes, fret not - being brilliant is not in the numbers.
A roundup of IQ studies from Cambridge University Press, called the "Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," proves that Thomas Edison was right all along: Genius is 99 percent perspiration.
"There are international chess masters that have below-average IQs," says Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who edited the handbook.
"Basically, there is no indication that people with higher IQ are able to reach the top faster. We are finding people who meet the criteria for being skilled surgeons, chess masters, athletes or magicians. Once you start looking at what makes them successful, IQ doesn't make any difference."
The 918-page book raises the question of whether we should eliminate the idea of determining one's potential through IQ altogether. Instead of accepting a child into an elite school for a number they scored on a test or scouting a CIA recruit because of his IQ score, we might "speak instead of expertise, talent or even greatness," Ericsson says.
Writes British journalist David Dobbs in New Scientist magazine: "Examine closely even the most extreme examples - Mozart, Newton, Einstein, Stravinsky - and you find more hard-won mastery than gift.
"Geniuses are made, not born."... www.nypost.com
