Yet the fate of its child-geniuses was, well, “simply okay.” Thirty years down the road, the Hunter alums in the study were all doing pretty well, were reasonably well adjusted and happy, and most had good jobs and many had graduate degrees. Hunter College was founded in the 1920s to be a training ground for the country’s future intellectual elite. Gladwell cited a mid-1980s study (Genius Revisited) of adults who had attended New York City’s prestigious Hunter College Elementary School, which only admits children with an IQ of 155 or above. One is simply to track the achievements of precocious kids. There are two ways of answering these questions. “But is that really true? And what is the evidence for it? And what exactly is the meaning and value of mastering a particular skill very early on in your life?” “I think we take it as an article of faith in our society that great ability in any given field is invariably manifested early on, that to be precocious at something is important because it’s a predictor of future success,” Gladwell said. The fall from childhood greatness to a middling state of “simply okay” is, Gladwell suggested, a recurring theme when the cherished notion of precocity is subjected to real scrutiny. Taking it up again in college - with the same dedication as before - he faced a disappointing truth: “I realized I wasn’t one of the best in the country … I was simply okay.” After losing a major race at age 15, then enduring other setbacks and loss of interest, Gladwell said, he gave up running for a few years. But - and this “but” sounded the theme of his talk to the rapt audience filling the Marquis Marriott’s Broadway Ballroom - being a prodigy didn’t forecast future success in running. “I was a running prodigy,” he said bluntly. Precocity was the subject of Gladwell’s “Bring the Family Address” at this year’s APS Convention, and the account of his own early athletic success served as a springboard. He was encouraged to dream of Olympic gold, and indeed was flown to special training camps with the other elite runners of his generation - on the assumption that creating future world-class athletes meant recognizing and nurturing youthful talent. But not the way you imagined.Īs a teenager growing up in rural Ontario, the bestselling author of Blink and The Tipping Point was a champion runner, the number-one Canadian runner of his age. Judging from his boyish appearance and his voracious curiosity, it’s easy to imagine Malcolm Gladwell as some sort of child prodigy.

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