Nature or Nurture...

Hmmm....the age old question, Nature or Nurture? No, I'm not talking about the sexual orientation of a person, but rather, being a genius, is it really nature or is it nurture where the parents can influence this?

I was having a very interesting lunch time conversation the other day with Wendy and Siong Ee (sister) with regards to this particular subject. What I have heard is that most children geniuses display an intense interest in adult subjects, be it mathematics, physics, history etc., at an early age. I then wonder if having a child prodigy is a matter of exposing the child to all things adult? Force the child to bypass anything childish. For example, from an infant, only play big classical pieces to him like Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 2 & 3, Schumann Piano Concerto, all the 9 Beethoven Symphonies, all 9 Dvorak Symphonies, Puccini Operas etc. Nothing like old MacDonald have a farm crap... Or in other cases, expose the child very early on to Classical Chinese history and Classical Chinese texts, Political Science theories, read Scientific American as a bedside story etc...

You get my picture. Will this nurture a genius? Most of the time I see that children were not given an opportunity to explore their scientific/mathematical/historical etc interests because their parents do not expose these things to them at an early enough age.

Maybe I'm on a totally wrong track. Maybe geniuses are nature, hence there is nothing one can do to nurture one. Maybe Mozart was born with a very intense love for music and without that, no amount of exposure to music at whatever age can bring about this genius.

Well, anyone who is reading this, do give me your opinions by dropping a comment below. I am curious to see what you think. Also, if we have any child psychologist reading, I'm really interested in your opinions...