William
Maxwell
An
American educator specializing in parenting issues.
How to discover the children’s
talents
Dr.
William Maxwell earned his B.S. in education – physical sciences – at Oregon State University, the degrees Ed. M.,
and Ed. D. at Harvard. He also studied in Maryland, California and Oxford
Universities . His research on intelligence had been published in Psychological
reports, Phi Delta Kappan, International Journal on Educational developments,
Educative Leadership, etc. His book, Thinking: Expanding Frontier, is founded
in the recommended list of how-to-think books in Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Maxwell has been the dean of education in four universities, including
South Pacific University, Suva, Fiji etc. Actually he is a professor in New
York University in Tirana and he has undertook in initiative in helping
Albanian children. Follow us in this interview we had.
What was the reason that you decided to come and give your give your experience in Albania. Or was it just a random choice?
-To a certain point, yes, it
was a casual choice, but not entirely casual. Albania is a country which has
not an Olympic medal. I had heard that the idea of an Olympic Academic
Territory would get approved here. That’s why I decided to undertake this
initiative by presenting the idea of establishing a global academy which will
train children from countries that cannot afford a first quality Olympic
school. For example, in USA there is an Olympic school with the scope to train
children for the Olympic Games, but the tuition is $200.000[$] per year per
child. Thus, that’s an enormous expense.
How are you proceeding in realizing this in Albania?
I’m trying to make progress
here in Albania. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism, Youth and Sports supported
us. The National Olympic Committee of Albania supported us too, and now we have
an attorney we are cooperating with and are planning children trainings from
age of 8 to 11, cooperating with their parents or teachers, which can show them
a certain degree of Olympic skills. We’ll begin by the end of August and we
have one of the best American fitness experts who has accepted to come. His
name is Pyka. Mr. Pyka was the Fitness Coach for the New England Patriots
Football Team and a member of the U.S. Olympic Team.
Do you think it will be easy to identify talented children?
One of the psychological obligations
in reagions like Albaina and 98 other countries that have never won an Olympic [medal]
is that people (teachers, educators and parents) must begin to identify their
children special abilities at a very early age
Which do you think is the reason why parents and
teachers begin to identify late these children?
The typical justification in
America is that parents say, “we want our child to be free.” Freedom is a virtue
but to identify other qualities in your child you have to encourage your child.
It is the parents’ duty to identify as early as possible a child’s potential
talent and encourage the child to develop that talent. For example, practicing the piano. One cannot be a great pianist without arduous
practice. The parents are not narrowing
the child’s choices by insisting that he or she practice the piano. The parents are expanding the child’s
choices.
The
Albanian parents are very careful in this issue and it’s evident they support
their children while identifying talents. How may they understand if their
children are talented in a certain direction?
Howard Gardner, one of the worldwide best
psychologists nowadays, highlighted a new phenomenon which is not evidenced
still by many cultures, but I think it will be evidenced in the near future:
There is a question that a child poses in a very early stage: “What are my
talents?”, “How to discover my talents?”. According to Gardner, this question
is emergent and careful parents notice these skills and care that their child
get professional coaching and guidance. Thus, Talent’s identification begins in
around the age of 2. For example, a parent was telling me “every time that my
child plays football, and one of the players is harmed, he runs to help him”.
This means that the child is attracted in giving the first aid and this gives
to the child an orientation to medicine. Other children would construct many
other things, and their parents say – I think that my child will be an engineer
or an architect, or something else.
What
is noticed at the Albanian parents is that they engage their children in many
different courses, but they usually think that engagement in sports would lead
to academic failture. What is your opinion?
We, human beings, are guided
by a single desire, but no one in world has just a single desire nowadays. It’s
very important to keep the balance either in- or outdoors, in school, in the
playground etc. This means, we need to keep the balances. For example, my hobby
for many years had been to observe the everyday life of very intelligent
people, or geniuses. I observed how the everyday life of geniuses is. The
geniuses everyday ife was balanced. It had music at home, it always had games
after the dinner etc. That means that everything in these geniuses’ life was
balanced and in equilibrium. Thus the intelligence found space to get
developed. All kind of intelligences, such as artistic , mathematic, musical
intelligence are all balanced.
Are you implying that it’s
not sufficient to have excellent child in mathematics or in school, but it’s
also needed to encourage them to get involved in following their passions and
sport also?
Sports help us to learn how to work in teams and also how to “read” other human minds. Learning the sports techniques helps us in learning the human relations’ constructing strategies. Thus, you learn while moving. All the skills in a personal relation find place to be developed in harmony with body movements. Thus, if you observe the eyes of your interlocutor and he is looking to the right, you understand that after this he will look to the left. You immediately understand how to read the human mind.
Are you implying that while
engaging in a team relationship, the children may learn more about their life
in a practical way?
One of the points that
Gardner, which I mentioned above, emphasize is that human training in verbal or
mathematic intelligence is as important as training in different sports. We do
a poor job in training children in interpersonal intelligence. Look at the
world today, we are 224 countries. More than half of these countries are led by
incompetent people. We, humans are very poor in interpersonal relationships, or
as Gordner calls it “interpersonal intelligence”. Interpersonal skills are
learned while talking to people as in the case of sports competition
That means, greater adult
awareness is needed to understand the importance of sports in children’s life.
What can we do for this propose?
I think that before making a revolution, many psychologies and educators have to agree that the basic program of education system in the world is very important. For example, in USA, half of the marriages end in divorce. This is a catastrophe not only for the couple but also for the children. Children never psychologically recover after the divorce. But we can prevent this by teaching people how to “read” the minds and characters of potential mates. For example, in USA, 20% of women are abused. In Yugoslavia the percentage is higher, which explains the cultural regress trend. When you ask yourself what is the most important thing in your life, the most probable answer would be, rising your children. Is there any school that helps the children learn how to raise their children? That means a revolution in the educative system is needed.
How to encourage a child to enjoy a game while not necessarily being the best player?
As the quote implies “you cannot put all the eggs in the same basket”. For example, when I play tennis and I don’t care if I lose, because when I’ll play basketball I’ll be the best. Thus, you can defeat me in tennis but I’ll defeat you in basketball. That’s why it’s sufficient to have a certain potential which you have identify and in which to be based to achieve success. This defends us by “the humiliation” that we can taste in case of loosing.
What about the case
when children are very smart in a certain aspect but not in other aspects? How
do they react in this case? For example in case that the trainer differentiate
his students depending on individual skills. Will this influence in the
emotional state of the child?
What commonly happens is that trainers appreciate more the categories A, B and C and less D, E and F. Children evaluated with D, E and F may never find a trainer which will pay attention to them. What I always tell to my students is that as every parent, even I do have my own preferences, but these preferences should never be exposed because this can misbalance the child. Thus, a good trainer should never openly differentiate his students because this can damage the other children. Even in the academy I’m establishing here, we have all kinds of sports and our duty is not to find the children that are good in every kind of sports, because this is impossible, but our duty consists in helping the children to identify in which sport they are more able. The scope is that everyone should feel comfortable in his own talent.
Will it be organized just for Albanian children?
It will be also for children from other countries
In which stage of work are you at the moment?
We are in the planning phase in this period. The reason why we chose Albania is that your country has religious and race tolerance and harmony. This is a positive aspect that makes you suitable to establish here such an initiative to help not only Albanian children but also children from the other 98 nations that have never won an Olympic medal as well.
THE END
Click here to download the Albanian version published on "Psikostil" magazine.