David Shenk: Can Persistence Be Taught?

David Shenk: Can Persistence Be Taught?
Commonwealth Club - The Commonwealth Club
With irresistibly persuasive vigor, David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us, debunks the long-standing notion of genetic "giftedness."Forget everything you think you know about genes, talent, and intelligence. In recent years, a mountain of scientific evidence has emerged suggesting a completely new paradigm: not talent scarcity, but latent talent abundance. Integrating cutting-edge research from a wide swath of disciplines—cognitive science, genetics, biology, child development—Shenk and The Genius in All of Us portrays a highly-optimistic new view of human potential. Genes are not a "blueprint" that doom some and bless others. Instead, genes are dynamic actors in a complex developmental process—dynamics that we can influence.