From an Indian equivalent of Aesop’s fables to the holy scriptures of Zoroastrianism to an early Chinese encyclopedia to Sappho’s poems.
Tag: 01.18
A History Of Our Fascination With Prodigies
Ours is an era, a popular parenting adviser has written, when Lake-Wobegon-style insistence on above-average children is “yesterday’s news,” overtaken by an anxious credo that “given half a chance, all of our children would be extraordinary.” Yet versions of today’s uneasy preoccupation with off-the-charts early achievement actually go back further than we think.