As you may have noticed from the website (www.hamiltonlearningfoundation.org), we are committed to understanding and nurturing genius, which we believe is in all who have their five senses intact (and even in some with only three, such as Helen Keller.) In most people, it is simply asleep, like software not yet activated.
What follows is possibly the best thing I have ever read about genius, and it comes from Patricia Polacco, a wonderful illustrator of many very fine children’s books:
“Genius is neither learned nor acquired.
It is knowing without experience.
It is risking without fear of failure.
It is perception without touch.
It is understanding without research.
It is certainty without proof.
It is ability without practice.
It is invention without limitations.
It is imagination without boundaries.
It is creativity without constraints.
It is…extraordinary intelligence!”
For those who agree with you that our educational system needs to be radically re-invented (not just “reformed” or “improved”), does the Hamilton Learning Foundation have any concrete suggestions that one person can actually implement? Our extra-bright, straight-A granddaughter will start her college a year early next fall, and wants to major in political science and education in order to impact what she believes to be the horrible, crippling educational system she and her classmates have experienced. Do you think this double major is a good way to do this? Do you have another suggestion? Thank you. Lee Cowan
She must figure out who she really is and what she passionately loves to do.
And here is a piece of wisdom from Buckminster Fuller:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Best wishes to her!