Is Talent
Enough?
Editorial by Elena Rosales
Sycamore Gazette
My Take: Opinions
I had an embarrassing shopping moment today. With $20 in my
pocket, I ran in to pick up a few things. But at the checkout, I found
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company • girl engrossed chessboard ©Lottie Davies/
I owed over $30. A line of impatient shoppers grew behind me. I
had to put back items until I could afford the total. How did I let this
happen? Well, in middle school I decided I was no good at math. I
gave up and used a calculator when I couldn’t avoid math. People
who excelled at it seemed as if they were from another planet. If I had
Digital Vision/Getty Images; extra chess pieces ©djmilic/Adobe Stock
worked harder, could I have avoided this problem?
The answer is yes. But you know what? I could even have matched
the success of those math whizzes, if they stopped working hard.
Research backs this up. When someone considered naturally gifted
in a field is compared with someone of average abilities, the key is
hard work. A talented person who doesn’t practice to maintain and
improve a skill will be surpassed by someone who is just average but
puts time and effort into improving.
So what can we do with this information? Responsible adults have
to ensure that kids don’t fall into the “I’m no good at that so I’m not
going to try” trap. We need to communicate that improvement isn’t
just possible. It’s absolutely expected.
Is Talent Enough? 1
This strategy works. Just ask Sycamore High School’s track coach,
Marcel Phillips. His teams have dominated local and statewide
meets for a decade. It’s not because great runners sprout from
sycamore trees. “We have a couple of kids each year who come
in with great natural ability. But you can’t build a winning team
around one or two standouts,” Coach Phillips says. “Instead, we’ve
built a culture that celebrates improvement. It doesn’t matter where
the starting point was.”
Coach Phillips recalls one superstar sprinter who rebelled against
his system: “He thought he didn’t have to practice because he was so
naturally gifted as a runner. As the season went on, the other runners
on our team worked to improve. And they started to catch up to him.
By the end of high school, that student had quit competing. Why?
It wasn’t easy for him to win anymore.” Athletes who embrace the
SHS system often succeed in academics, arts, and other areas. They
understand that even if you’re not a natural at something, you can
improve your skills through focused hard work.
“Instead, we’ve built a culture that
celebrates improvement. It doesn’t matter
where the starting point was.”
Don’t get me wrong: Talent certainly matters. Tone-deaf music
lovers aren’t likely to work their way into singing careers. But
without putting in hours and hours playing matches and studying
strategies, the middle-school chess master will likewise find herself
merely average by the time she reaches college. In other words,
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
she’ll be no better off than if she had no talent for the game at all.
The true superstars in any field are the talented ones who also put in
substantial time and effort. No amount of work will allow us lesser
beings to catch up to them.
We can’t just applaud the naturals. We must guide both them and
their less innately-talented peers to make specific plans. And we
have to help them put in the time and effort to act on those plans.
The kids of our community deserve no less. Even for those of us who
feel math challenged, the equation is simple.
Is Talent Enough? 2
