How to raise a genius

If you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements in the field. To learn how to paint beautifully, visit the National Gallery. If you want to be a great scientist, spend some time in cutting-edge laboratories. If you want to write, read great literature. But this is not what parents usually think about when considering how to educate their children. Most simply outsource the work to existing bureaucracies. Is there, however, something that they could learn from the great figures of the past?

I sampled the biographies of 42 outstanding people: from writers (Woolf, Tolstoy) and mathematicians (Pascal, Turing) to philosophers (Russell, Descartes) and composers (Mozart, Wagner), trying to get a diverse sample. There is, it seems, a pattern in the childhoods of geniuses. Each involved a submersion in serious, intellectual discussion; limited contact with other children; and what’s called ‘cognitive apprenticeships’, the deliberate imparting and testing of knowledge.