Genius Child Development: “Raise a Genius!” by László Polgár (Book Summary)

This is a book summary of Raise a Genius! by László Polgár (Free Online).

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Quick Housekeeping:

• All content in “quotation marks” is from the author (otherwise it’s paraphrased).
• All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
• Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

Book Summary Contents:

• About the Book & László Polgár
• Socialization & Society
• Contemporary School & Potential Genius
• 20 Characteristics of Genius Education
• Theses, Principles, Traits, & Values
• Developmental Ages & Daily Life
• Chess & Happiness

Genius Child Development: Raise a Genius! by László Polgár (Book Summary)

About the Book & László Polgár

“I do not present a prescription, merely a point of view. I do not wish to exhort anyone to raise a genius. I wish to demonstrate that it is possible … I can only say that I have created something that up to now no one else has created.”

About the book:

“This book of mine appeared in Hungarian in 1989. In it I described and summarized my psychological and pedagogical experiments regarding my daughters’ and my 15-year educational experience.”

• “I do not give a prescription, only a way of life, and I wish to persuade no one to raise geniuses. I merely wish to show that it is possible to raise geniuses.”
• “I can only pass on my pedagogical system, and guide everyone along the road that I followed, confident that it is possible and worthwhile to raise geniuses, for they can and indeed have become happy people.”
• “The object of a pedagogical experiment can be nothing other than a person, and for their good one not only has the right, but even the duty of performing pedagogical experiments. In fact, all parents, even if not consciously, ‘experiment’ with their children. An intentional, humanistically organized experiment is much more likely to succeed.”
• “The essence of my pedagogical program is that in my opinion, every healthy child can be raised to be an outstanding person, in my words, a genius. When we began this work with my wife, we read through a large collection of books and studies. We examined the childhoods of many eminent people and noticed that all who became geniuses specialized very early in some field, and we could also document that beside them always stood a father or mother, a tutor or trainer, who were ‘obsessed’ – in the good sense of the word. So on the basis of our research we could rightly conclude that geniuses are not born: one has to raise them.”
• “The uniqueness of my experiment lies in that it is – one could say – a family group experiment, made possible by the birth of my three daughters. I have built my pedagogical optimism on this result.”

László Polgár on himself:

“I have a beautiful family, a happy marriage, three beautiful, healthy, happy, intelligent children, and I feel as well that in my work I can enjoy the pleasure of creation, for I have done something that will last. I believe that I am happy.”

• “As concerns my view of life: I have worked 15 hours a day since I was 14. For me, quality is the main thing. I wish to do everything always at the highest level. Mediocrity, the orientation to the middle, I refuse out of principle. I strive for the summit despite obstacles.”
• “(I’m) a person who shapes his environment, his destiny, his society, and himself. If I think through my life in my mind, I can deduce my character, my me-ness, from it. If I consider my personality traits, I can predict my destiny, because they are interrelated. Of course certain ethnic distinctives can be found in me, like over-strenuous working, over-emotionality, yearning for accomplishments, the central role of the family, the desire to develop the capabilities of my daughters, and from time to time possibly also a bit of aggression and noise.”
• “I think of myself as an honest, sincere, plain-spoken person, very sensitive about justice. I have a great love of freedom and thirst for knowledge. I am very happy that to my knowledge I have deceived no one. Regarding my work I have established very high requirements, although I also understand those people who live otherwise. Other people possibly consider me an extremist, but I prefer to call myself an optimistic realist.”
• “I have raised my daughters to be true women. I have not only not hindered their feminization, among other things, but on the contrary: I very much expect that their psychosexual development is also normal and healthy.”
• “I could not live otherwise than what I profess. Striving for harmony between words and actions, needing to put ideas into practice, is an integral part of my moral concept and practice.”

Socialization & Society

“In the end I would like to prove that socialization, development within society, and in that context the genius-izing of a person, depends firstly not on their native biological powers: their way of life is not decided from birth; it must be considered principally as a social product, in practice, a result of nurture. To express it provocatively, I often say, ‘Genius is not born, genius is raised.'”

Socialization:

“A healthy human has such an elastic cerebral system and flexible developmental structure that their efficacy can be developed to a high degree by pedagogical methods. The way is open for pedagogy, since children are developable, and from the viewpoint of the intellect they can be formed in any manner … Mental traits are unambiguously socially determined.”

• “At birth every person is equal. After birth a person takes on so-called ethnic-psychological characteristics, adapting to cultural traditions and educational demands.”
• “Specific capabilities are not people’s endowments from birth, but one must make them manifest through education.”
• “One thing is certain: education also needs much more educated parents. One should devote more time to the children.”
• “Parents and society are responsible for the development of the children’s capabilities. A large number of geniuses are lost because they themselves never learn what they are capable of.”
• “It is indeed decisive what kinds of influences reach a child in their family, what kind of example they see, in which direction they are raised – not only in what subject, but in what world view. I consider it a completely natural matter that parents will hand down their own world view: for indeed they can give nothing else.”

Society & social responsibility:

“In my conception, education is good for the individual and desirable and useful for society. A genius is a collective creation who becomes a communal treasure.”

• “A person is not born morally ready, does not bring moral values along from the womb, a maximum capability to become a moral being. But how they become, a loving family member or a hateful one, an altruist or an egoist, a humanist or a fascist – is not genetically fixed, but depends primarily on education and surroundings. As with all abilities, the moral ones can be and must be learned.”
• “Without moral values one lacks a compass for life … One should hand down in childhood fundamental moral values, which are generally human, so one does not need to restrict them, in the traditional sense, to any particular world view or political party.”
• “In my opinion genius is a notion about preserving values. I only consider those who realize socially useful actions to be geniuses … The more educated and the more talented someone is, the greater is their social responsibility.”
• “Raising geniuses is one of the preconditions for social progress, and any society can be guided out of economic difficulty for the most part only by education and instruction.”
• “Naturally, society needs to be guided by geniuses. Geniuses should become accustomed to the idea that they should serve and, if necessary, direct.”

Contemporary School & Potential Genius

“When my wife and I investigated the outcomes and ways of life of extraordinary people, we decided that to fulfil our educational duty we would not choose the traditional form, but we would teach our children privately.”

Contemporary school:

“The fact that I did not send my daughters to school is of course connected to the fact that I hold an unfavorable opinion of it. I criticize contemporary schools because they do not educate for life, they equalize everyone to a very low level, and in addition they do not tolerate the talented and those who diverge from the average.”

• “In contemporary schools students do not understand why they are learning.”
• “Contemporary schools are separate from real life in that they function sort of as laboratories. There is no link with domestic or political or local public life, or the everyday cares of living one’s life on the one hand, and school on the other. My daughters, who have never visited a school, grew up much more in the context of real life. Contemporary schools do not promote a love of learning. They do not inspire to great achievements; they raise neither autonomous people nor communally-oriented ones. Schools do not manifest or develop potential capabilities in people, at least as much as they could.”
• “Contemporary schools are disadvantageous for unusually capable children … They hinder the development of talented children in that school instruction is tedious for them.”
• “It is not easy to make average people inclined to accept geniuses. Even in school talented children are often excluded from their classmates. Teachers do not succeed in making the class like the talented student. Many times even the teacher does not recognize the talent, and even hinders its development.”
• “School groups are also very unstable; peripheral children are susceptible to the influence of mass opinion.”

Potential genius:

“I see a potential genius in each individual born healthy … Every healthy person has the capacity from birth for it, and genius is a normal result of the development of this potential.”

• “Every healthy child is born with enough general endowment that from them can come a high level personality.”
• “Every child born healthy is potentially a genius, and if one pays enough attention, they will in fact become one … whether they become so or not depends on circumstances, on education, and on themself.”
• “I am convinced that if child prodigies do not become ‘adult prodigies,’ conditions were not favorable for healthy and structured work. In good conditions every child prodigy becomes an adult prodigy.”
• “Intellectual capability is in principle educable in any direction; by appropriate methods a genius can be formed in any field.”
• “The journey from potential genius to actual genius is a battle for liberation, a process of freeing the genius. Future society will very likely be composed of evolved, self-realized, free individuals, and genius will be considered a normal, everyday existence, and not as an individual ‘extravagance.'”

20 Characteristics of Genius Education

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Theses, Principles, Traits, & Values

These are the guiding strategies behind genius education.

Theses:

5 theses…

Thesis 1: The role of natural and societal, from birth or acquired, hereditary and ‘educational’ factors. The personality of the person is a complex union of three factors:

• An endowment of nature: Biological endowments from birth. In the first months of life, biological effects dominate.
• An effect of the environment: Things received by acquisition throughout life (the crucial link is the effect of environment, of society; from the viewpoint of the development and freedom of the personality, the deciding link is seen through the passage of time to be one’s existence in a society). For the first ten years, society is undoubtedly increasingly emphasized.
• A creation of the individual: Responses fought out and ‘sweated’ out from oneself. Later, the activity of one’s own personality strengthens.

Thesis 2: The interpretation of existence in a society. In this I call out two aspects:

• The immediate surroundings of a person (family, friends, etc): mediates imitative ‘heredity.’
• Their more distant circumstances: mediates socio-cultural ‘heredity.’ Thus, aside from biological heredity, it is also the effect of the family model and the historical-cultural heredity of the larger society that determines the nature of a person. A member of society shares in human nature. The individual lives out their own development under the effects of societal forces like self-realization. From this it follows that education must consider a child also as a co-author.

Thesis 3: The way to develop creativity. Every healthy person is born with sufficient biological endowments to be able to specialize these general endowments in some concrete form of action:

• As opposed to many other pedagogues and parents, I see the task of education not in exploring or finding in the child ‘innate’ or hidden capabilities. If we assume the existence of a general endowment in each child, I start from this: that we must develop in them some special capability.

Thesis 4: One can and must consciously organize the development of geniuses, and it is not sufficient to leave them to chance:

• Self-evidently, education in itself is not all-powerful, for it depends also on concrete social conditions. But the fact that its effect is enormous empirically proves my results. Pedagogical effects stand under the influence of the social environment: and such is the social need, the demand, that creates the general practice of education.

Thesis 5: Pedagogical humanism, according to which the essence of the formation of personality is the striving for as perfect self-realization and as complete happiness as possible:

• Every person should strive to attain the greatest result attainable by them, and realize oneself – this can bring about one’s own happiness and also that of others. The pedagogue’s task is also to aim for – as it is possible – not the average, but the peak. Considering outstanding achievements positively, one should fix human happiness as the ultimate goal for oneself. Therefore it is possible and necessary to raise geniuses, because, among other things, this guarantees the most certain road to happiness.

Principles:

Among my pedagogical principles some that occupy an important place are: awakening and holding the interest of the child, requiring accomplishments from the child, trust in them, and praise and admiration for their accomplishments.

1. Be an example: live such that others follow you!
2. Learn and work hard, be demanding on yourself and others!
3. Be willing to love, give and receive love!
4. Live with yourself and others in peace, live a healthy and moderate life!
5. Strive for happiness and endeavor to make other people happy!
6. Have humanistic ideas and fight against prejudice!
7. Preserve peace and tranquility in the family, raise your children as perfectly as possible!
8. Be honest, respect your and others’ freedom!
9. Trust the development of people, nurture small and large communities!
10. And finally, the wild card, that is, everything that you think moral and current, but which is not in the other nine points.

Traits:

Among the goals of education I and my wife consider of first importance the formation of the following traits:

• Belief, courage, strength, persistence, enthusiasm, the objective evaluation of persons and objects, standing up to failure and also the temptations of success, insistent striving for goals, patience, inventiveness, tolerance of criticism even if false, being able to let go of stresses, enduring conflicts (a higher level of tolerance for frustration), discipline, planning, the need for challenging work, establishing realistic goals, conscious management of rest, freedom from conventions, searching for new paths, keeping oneself in an appropriate state of humor (good humor, calm and aggressive at the same time).

Values:

In addition we also aim for these kinds of values, world views and moral standards:

• The love of siblings, parents and teachers, respect for elders and the aged, realistic evaluation of peers and adults, and that children not prefer the pleasure of physical life, the symbols of the social status of creative work, etc.

Developmental Ages & Daily Life

“Successful education is not possible without a great deal of work. Education only bears fruit after 10-20 years. But if we begin it only ten years from now, we will have results after only 20-30 years.”

Developmental ages & stages:

“The most difficult problems in education would be for the most part solved, if one could begin instruction soon enough … If we want to satisfy the demands of the future, we must begin with children at the earliest possible age.”

• Preschool (Ages 3-6): Early childhood, the period between 3 and 6 years (the preschool years) occupies a central place—more important and principally much more in need of utilization than thought of in the current specialist literature. Early childhood is entirely not early from the viewpoint of learning, even as it concerns specialization. Firstly, foreign languages. This does not hinder the child in the development of thinking; it does not spoil the parental language; on the contrary, it even enriches the personality. In multilingual regions, children of very young ages can already speak multiple languages with full fluency and without mixing them.
• Ages 3-4: Parents should choose a specific field at their discretion. It is only important that by the age of 3-4 some physical or mental field should be chosen, and the child can set out on their voyage.
• Ages 4-5: By my didactic principle, one should begin instruction, which is in my concept nothing other than a serious game, at the age of 4-5 (a disadvantageous environment causes in the first 4-5 years more damage than later impoverished development during the next 10-12 years).
• Ages 5-6: I sent my daughters to a Russian-language kindergarten, and at the age of 5 all of them fluently spoke Russian as well as Hungarian. At the age of 5-6, if the activity is sufficiently interesting, success can also function as a strong incentive. Stimulation, encouragement, and instilling passion and trust are very important. The ability to learn by play decreases after 6 years of age, when assimilation of information becomes more difficult mental work.
• Age 10: In practice an intensive collaborative contact between the child and an adult must be formed, in which the child does not feel ‘subordinate.’ Think how advantageous it would be if the child already understands at the age of 10 that they know a great deal, that they are a person of the same value as an adult, and that in their life there is at least one field they master as well or better than adults.

Typical daily schedule:

“It is not by chance that every prominent chess player also practices some physical sport as a supplementary activity. My daughters play table tennis or swim 1.5 to 3 hours a day.”

• 4 hours of specialist study: Starting from age 4-5 they played chess 5-6 hours a day.
• 1 hour of a foreign language: Esperanto in the first year, English in the second, and another chosen at will in the third. At the stage of beginning, that is, intensive language instruction, it is necessary to increase the study hours to 3 – in place of the specialist study – for 3 months. In summer, study trips to other countries.
• 1 hour of general study: Native language, natural science and social studies.
• 1 hour of computing
• 1 hour of moral, psychological, and pedagogical studies: Humor lessons as well, with 20 minutes every hour for joke telling.
• 1 hour of gymnastics: Freely chosen, which can be accomplished individually outside school. The division of study hours can of course be treated elastically.

Chess & Happiness

We can describe happiness with the following formula: happiness = work + love + freedom + luck.

· Under profession: work, accomplishments, creativity.

· Under love: feelings given to others and reciprocated.

· Under freedom: the potential and capability of a person to become an independent, autonomous, and creative individual.

· Under luck: the union of random external (recognition, peace, family environment, etc.) and internal (health, strength, physiological endowments, spiritual and material goods, etc.) factors.

Sport & Chess:

“When we began the practical foundation of our genius-educating theory, at first we planned to experiment with mathematics, chess and foreign languages. Influenced by several factors, we decided in the end in favor of chess … In the end, we decided that chess in itself is a complex, very valuable, and beautiful activity: a game, a science, an art, a sport, and a psychology simultaneously.”

• “Sport is one of the best educational methods that parents have, because they hardly have to make an effort; in almost every child there is a desire to move, to actively compete. At the same time the practice of sports makes one used to observing certain rules, and contributes to right conduct, a regulated way of life, and discipline. Plus it is very useful if the members of the family play sports together, if they do anything together. If the family plays sports, they pass more time together, and this is incomparably beneficial.”
• “Chess develops characteristics like those of athletes: willpower, competitiveness, the drive to win, a strong physical state, a competitive routine, etc.”
• “Psychologically founded competition can seriously help in the development of personality traits: it forms the will and emotions, increases persistence, self-discipline, competitiveness, etc.”
• “By means of chess I also want to form the personalities of my daughters. I always say to them that it is more important that they are people – virtuous, honest people. From this it follows that my daughters always play fairly.”
• “Chess is also useful because it satisfies some societal need of the person; it is a spiritual entertainment, a sport, a game, an art. Chess satisfies these needs – with scientific demands.”

Happiness:

“The first and essential condition for becoming happy is for one to want happiness. Many people want to make their children happy, want to see them thus, but they do not do enough, or even very little. They let themselves be guided by accidents of education. I, on the contrary, have the principle that one should approach and perform education very intentionally for happiness.”

• “Happiness is a complex phenomenon (a process and a state), which also contains components of genius. It consists of several elements: enjoyment of work, honesty, health, wisdom, material conditions, cheerfulness, love, optimism, courage, tranquility, lack of worry, fulfilment of duties, the satisfaction of spiritual and material needs, a sense of joy, satisfaction, perspective, a correct view of life, a full experience of love, rest after work done well, creativity, success, establishing goals, high-level needs, and I could continue for a long time…”
• “The future of our children is on my heart, and my chief aspiration is to make them happy. But is not enough to merely desire the happiness of our children; we must create and develop in them the capability to be happy. Many ways lead to happiness, although not all with the same certainty, but among them the most certain and guaranteed is – in my opinion – that of genius education.”
• “Genius education – according to my definition – aims for the development of personality, happy people, and the development of socially and morally progressive individuals. Therefore I say: genius education, education for happiness, and humanism are unified things; one does not develop one without the others.”
• “The all-encompassing goal is undoubtedly happiness, and in relation to this genius education can be considered a method, but also it is about a dialectical process: in real life one grows through the other, that is, they prepare and strengthen each other reciprocally. Achievements lead to feelings of happiness, and happiness gives new motivational strength for higher achievements. Thus the method is formed from the goal and the goal from the method.”
• “Which one considers the greatest result depends on the viewpoint. I would choose the happiness of our family. ‘Harmony and love reigning’ in our home, although important, is not the only factor in our happiness. I can declare one thing with definite certainty: without a good family background and loving family relationships my daughters’ successes would never have happened.”

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