Charlie Rose

ginamarie  12/26/2008 01:30 PM Report

Donsamson,

David C Mcclelland did experiments throwing rings over pegs which doesn´t really translate to the performing arts or elite sports. He observed from a psychological point of view rather than a phenomenological point of view.

In the arts the pegs ´move´ as your throwing: What marks achievement is illusive. Even the best are tormented by the frustration of never achieving perfection in their art and seek solace in the process and the kinaesthetic rewards that it brings.

Talking about business training and self-improvement alongside the performing arts is mixing your apples and oranges.

kneegrowsrus  12/26/2008 01:05 PM Report

Basketball used to be all about height, until they invented the 3-pointer. Affirmative Action is a necessary step, if we are to ever level the playing field in this country.

donsamson  12/23/2008 08:57 PM Report

On the program of 12/19 charlie and guests sounded like you have never heard of the harvard psychologist, david c mcclelland who wrote extensively about the need for achievement and how this motivates people to reach higher goals.

doodahdaze  12/23/2008 10:32 AM Report

Dear Mr. REMant, are you referring to Larry King a.k.a

"Scary Thing"?. If you are, I think your priorities are inconsistent and possibly confused.

ginamarie  12/23/2008 08:31 AM Report

REMant,

I like this idea...

"performance may be improved by some ppl through repetitions (behaviorism), but for others it is a matter of visualization (Gestalt)"

In my experience both repetition and visualisation are important. Do you have any suggestions for further reading?

REMant  12/22/2008 05:24 PM Report

He appears to be speaking exclusively of training. It seems tho that we have developed in this way a large number of ppl with a lot of technique, but with very, very little sense of the design, meaning or purpose that signifies creativity. Fletcher Henderson's and Count Basie's bands, for instance, were often terribly out-of-tune and had bad technique, while Benny Goodman's was just the opposite, but can it be said that Goodman could have been a success without their music? This is not to argue that good jazz is un-practiced, but rather that it is in many cases un-trained.

I should add that Colvin's line gives credence to the current emphasis on pushing children, which has alarmed many psychologists, just as it has several times in our past when this sort of thing developed. This subject has received a good deal of treatment, in particular by Lawrence Stone and Joseph Kett in the 70's. While I don't think there's anything wrong with treating children as adults, as the 18th c by and large did, I do think there's a great deal wrong with packing their days with instruction and most certainly if the intent of it seems to be to teach them how to, as it were, dress themselves for success. The new, and again currently fashionable, child-rearing ideas developed with the development of market society that involved what we now call behavior modification, but were then often conflated with ideas of religous conversion, which up 'til then had been a matter of impressing honesty on young adults. Under the new regime children were to be tied to family and society through the giving and withholding of affection, it being thought that disloyalty and lack of conformity was evidence of precocity or selfishness and sinfulness. It has been hypothesized, however, that such treatment has served to prolong adolescence. Ironically treating a child as an adult was condemned by those, who in the interests of the new society, actually wanted to keep children in a sort of perpetual childhood, as Tocqueville, who foresaw it, termed it. When Dewey came along he was attempting to reverse this course and allow children to be seen as adults again, and was not as permissive as he was interpreted to be, but a counter-revolution had been set afoot by the relativism, scepticism and primitivism of the 20th c. Writing much later, Riesman, et al confused much of this history in setting up their "inner-directed" and "other-directed" categories in The Lonely Crowd. Lasch and Reiff also made something of a hash of it. Tho the 20's marketing literature concerns itself with packaging onself and projecting the "power of positive thinking," it is found generations, indeed, hundreds, if not thousands of years, earlier. The fundamental issues are in Locke, the scholastics, and even the Greeks.

On this subject, too, transfer of training should also not be overlooked. Many Asians and I guess Dominicans, too, develop very good hand-eye coordination as a result of playing various versions of stickball, which transfers to a lot of things in the larger world of sports.

I'd conjecture that with respect to all of this it may turn out that performance may be improved by some ppl through repetitions (behaviorism), but for others it is a matter of visualization (Gestalt). For the latter to do well(good) is merely to see it, and work(s) is(are) not required. Both require experience, but it is treated completely differently. But I'd also say that the source of our lack of creativity, and hence real competitivesness, is to be found more in Colvin's and Gladwell's ideas than in the absence of them, which is what Tocqueville thought, too.

With regard to the layoffs at Rose, Inc I'd like to say that as often as I think Charlie approaches Larry King, this program like many others on PBS is too valuable to be allowed to fail, and I hope that supporters will see it in that light.

doodahdaze  12/22/2008 01:45 PM Report

It seems like this guy is making a half-hearted effort to be original. He doesn't impress me. He didn't when he ran Louis Rukeyser off the set, and he doesn't now and probably never will... He isn't fit enough to clean Mr. Rukeyser's toe nails.

He needs to practice up at being "BELIEVABLE". Assuming we're not born that way.

ginamarie  12/21/2008 04:48 PM Report

Geoff Colvin seems terribly dry on this topic compared to Malcolm Gladwell.

The research is not so unaccessible that I need it reduced.

Malcolm Gladwell on the other hand seems to make the research come to life in ways that I had not already considered.

It is worthwhile considering that perfection of skill is not talent. Skill is anonymous, whereas talent is an exhibition of personal style. I´m loath to get golfy but to continue the example: Nobody swings like Tiger.

Talent is not a particular set of skills arrived at through deliberate practise: It is the ability to perceive physical and emotional nuances and harness them into a coherent whole that is style.

The sensation of the phenomena which is the molding of nuances, is reward enough to encourage deliberate practise. This sensation is the holy grail of talent, at least in the performing arts.

To develop their skills talented children need a supportive environment but talented children in non-supportive environments do find ways to keep practising....and may indeed reach the same level of skill as children who have had every opportunity.

The anecdotes of the respective fathers of Tiger and Mozart are important because both fathers were managers as much as teachers. There may well have been children (even girls!) of the same skill level of a young Tiger or Mozart but lacking the management and structure that opens doors to formal recognition.

Dress code note: Mr Colvin your on shaky ground wearing a tie and claiming that talent is overrated.

Charlie love ya work, you are a true talent.