Success

Brink Lindsey of the CATO Institute writes in the March 12 TNR that the key to success is, surprise, hard work and parental involvement. A couple of quotations:

A study led by Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson found that a “common denominator” in their study of top performers in various fields: “practice. Chess grandmasters, concert pianists, and other superstars are distinguished from less-accomplished performers by two main things: starting their chosen fields earlier in life, and logging more hours per day of training over the course of many years.”

Parental interaction with young children is also a significant predictor of academic success. Psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley found that there are “dramatic differences in the intensity and nature of the verbal stimulation the kids were getting: Professional parents directed an average of 487 ‘utterances’ per hour toward their children, as compared to 301 for working-class parents and only 176 for welfare parents. The quality of those utterances was also very different: Among professional parents, the ratio of encouraging to discouraging utterances was six to one; for working-class parents, the ratio slipped to two-to-one; and welfare parents made two discouraging utterances for every encouraging one.”