See also László Polgár and the upbringing of his daughters: > László Polgár (born 11 May 1946) is a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He is

See also László Polgár and the upbringing of his daughters: > László Polgár (born 11 May 1946) is a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He is the father of the famous Polgár sisters: Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit, whom he raised to be chess prodigies, with Judit and Zsuzsa becoming the best and second-best female chess players in the world, respectively. Judit is widely considered to be the greatest female chess player ever as she is the only woman to have been ranked in the top 10 worldwide, while Zsuzsa became the Women's World Chess Champion. > Polgár ... recalled that "when I looked at the life stories of geniuses" during his student years, "I found the same thing...They all started at a very young age and studied intensively."[3] He prepared for fatherhood prior to marriage, reported People Magazine in 1987, by studying the biographies of 400 great intellectuals, from Socrates to Einstein. He concluded that if he took the right approach to child-rearing, he could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius."[4] In 1992, Polgár told the Washington Post: "A genius is not born but is educated and trained… When a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r FWIW, I believe it's very much true: we are born geniuses (if healthy, normal) and converted into the "dangerous intellectuals" we see today through a careful and idiotic process of what-is-called education. To me the weirdest and saddest thing is the way that people will force their own children to endure what they did, just because society says it's the "done thing". People like Maria Montessori are some of the greatest heroes in all history, from this POV. I can barely imagine what it would be like to have a modern educational program that did things like teaching mnemonic techniques to radically improve memory, or hypnotic practice sessions where you can e.g. play imaginary musical instruments for imaginary hours (that take only a few minutes of real time) and improve. I experimented with a lot of this stuff when I was younger, and I can tell you we are barely scratching the surface of human capability.