Book Review: Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin Bloom
Bloom studied the training backgrounds of 120 world-class talented individuals across 6 talent domains: piano, sculpting, swimming, tennis, math, & neurology, and what he discovered was that talent development occurs through a similar general process, no matter what talent domain. In other words, there is a "formula" for developing talent -- though executing it is a lot harder than simply understanding it.
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I read a book this year that is, so far, the most interesting book I’ve read in my entire life.
And the icing on the cake is that it’s freely available online.
What’s the book?
Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin Bloom
That’s right, the same guy known for Bloom’s two-sigma problem, Bloom’s taxonomy, mastery learning, etc.
This guy is one of the most, if not THE most, influential scientist in the history of education.
And weirdly, despite so many people knowing about the two-sigma problem, Bloom’s taxonomy, etc. …
relatively few people know about Developing Talent in Young People!
For crying out loud, this was his final masterpiece!
Imagine if, when Michael Jordan came out of retirement to win more championships and break more records, the world didn’t notice and just continued talking about his pre-retirement achievements.
Well, that’s basically what happened with Benjamin Bloom.
Minus the retirement. Bloom didn’t retire before releasing this masterpiece, which just makes it even more disappointing that it didn’t become as widely known as it should have.
Anyway, enough backstory – what’s the book about?
Let me tell you.
From the title, you already know that it’s about talent development.
Now, talent development might sound like a nebulous thing. But this book makes it more concrete.
Everyone seems to have their own opinion about how talented people become talented and what roles working hard, working smart, and getting lucky play in that process.
But Bloom, being a scientist, didn’t want to settle for subjective opinions. He wanted to formulate conclusions based on real data.
So, Bloom studied the training backgrounds of 120 world-class talented individuals across 6 talent domains: piano, sculpting, swimming, tennis, math, & neurology.
And what he discovered was that talent development occurs through a similar general process, no matter what talent domain.
In other words, loosely speaking, there is a “formula” for developing talent – though executing it is a lot harder than simply understanding it.
What’s great about this book is the level of detail presented.
This is not one of those corny pamphlets where someone tells you about their “3 keys to success” framework and all the information is obvious and too abstracted to be useful.
Each chapter covers a different talent domain and goes into extreme depth making heavy use of direct quotes from interviews with the world-class individuals and their parents.
Instead of handing you some kind of abstract framework and expecting you to accept it at face value, the book walks you through the process of starting with first principles – detailed interviews and backstories – and zooming out to identify general trends.
You go from micro-structure to macro-structure.
The big conclusion is that talent development occurs through a similar general process no matter what talent domain:
- first fun & exciting playtime,
- then intense & strenuous skill development, and
- finally developing one's individual style while pushing the boundaries of the field.
It’s an older book so you can get a used copy really cheap, and it’s also freely available online here.
And if you’re curious to learn more about Bloom’s 3 stages of talent development before committing to the book, I’ll summarize them below:
- Stage I: The Early Years. Fun and exciting playtime. Students are just starting to develop awareness and interest in the talent domain. The teacher provides copious positive feedback and approval and encourages students to explore whatever aspects of the talent domain they find most exciting. Students are rewarded for effort rather than for achievement and criticism is rare.
- Stage II: The Middle Years. Intense and strenuous skill development. Students are fully committed to increasing their performance. The teacher becomes or is replaced by a coach, who focuses on training exercises where the sole purpose is to improve performance. These exercises are demanding, and the coach provides constructive criticism to help the student perform the exercises properly. Positive feedback is provided in response to achievement; effort is assumed.
- Stage III: The Later Years. Developing one’s individual style while pushing the boundaries of the field. Students are proficient in all the foundational skills in the talent domain. They are so committed that they center their entire lives around the talent domain, no matter the sacrifice, and typically work with a world-class expert in the talent domain. The expert helps the student identify and lean into their individual strengths so that they can excel beyond perceived human capabilities.
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