Talent Discovered and Narcissism Celebrated

What is talent? It is a perfectly good English word. Certainly ordinary folks have beliefs about talent. Maybe Stephen Stich and his followers at the Experimental School would tell me I'd better do some research before proceeding further. But, unlike them, I am an independent philosopher and do not have access to the sorts of resources they enjoy.

However, I will mention an article published a few years ago in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. "Innate Talents Reality of Myth?" http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.howe.html . If my memory serves me well, the authors said that musicians judged to be talented by the ordinary public had one thing in common: many years of training begun early in life.

As a bright I like that explanation. Talent is not magic or divinely inspired. It comes from training. As a socialist I draw a further lesson: The untalented are those whose parents did not have the resources to pay for early lessons. (As memories of the recent past become more and more blurred by capitalist triumphalism, it is worth pointing out that artists currently active in post-socialist countries received their training in state schools which were free.)

The Pretty Good International School's "Talent Show" was advertised as a chance for students to show their "hidden talents". It was said to be "by students for students".... presumably an educated allusion to government by and for the people.

Talent Contests are an institution of mass or pop culture. By importing this genre into the educational space, the institution of school validates pop culture, and endorses the status quo. I imagine that there is also the thought that one thereby makes school "cool" or even fun.

With an eye on the critique of Schooling in Capitalist America, (Chapter Five here: http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/education/bg/bg-ch-5.html. one can't but say that the "fun" is all phony. A certain pecking order is being reproduced within the framework of the school, and the inevitability and justness of capitalist distribution of social goods is thereby affirmed. Or, as Adorno might say, the school is endorsing the values of the culture industry.

The actual "show" itself manifested a curious dichotomy. On the one hand there were students who had diligently acquired certain skills: playing the piano, violin, or dance in the classical European style. None of that happens without years of study. On the other, there were those students who just walked onto the stage and began lip-synching. Intermediate between them were groups of performers who had given some thought to creating something funny or amusing, but who had not obviously spent years painstakingly acquiring skills.

Iris Murdoch says that most art is a sort of ego consolation. She calls it false art. True art demands that the artist develop all of the virtues...In our little talent show, there were both sorts of art.

I am not sure, however, whether the judges collectively possessed the intellectual and moral resources to make the distinction between the true and false. When prizes were awarded, one judge was heard to say something like, "well, since this group was obviously a crowd pleaser"..it must get an award. If my memory serves me well, none of the participants who had actually studied classical Western forms were given the nod. On the other hand, one wonders whether there was not an impulse to reward at least one Korean participant, merely because it was important to demonstrate lack of bias....The Korean who was awarded, however, was not one of those who had studied music, but was merely a lip-syncher.

All in all, it was thoroughly degrading and depressing experience. So much of the assiduous study of Western art derives from a parental desire to increase one's relative social standing. And why not? Above all, why not want more respect? But isn't art more than that?

The event proved to be a celebration of privileged youth, a celebration of their status. My American colleagues migh respond that they are just ordinary Americans...Indeed, ordinary Americans who consume more than a litle of the world's resources...

We could sum up the celebration: let us all pat ourselves on the back for being who we are: children who parents have achieved a certain level of material comfort. And if we can have talent (or entertain the audience) with absolutely no exertion, so much the better.

Am I unfair to those honest parents who have worked so hard to help their children get ahead?
Perhaps, but their good intentions are only partially informed. And, that's the problem. If a parent recognizes that his or her child needs to be taught by someone, needs skills which the parent lacks, there's a certain wisdom in that. But intellectual and creative development will never occur without various forms of criticism. Praise alone will not correct faulty technique. If we celebrate by proclaiming ourselves to be bright and talented and good and wise, we shall soon become stupid and dull consumers, ripe for manipulation.

The circle is a vicious one. Teachers cannot impart to their pupils virtues which they themselves lack. In the end, we have a bundle of confused motives and partial understanding which can only produce more of the same in the student.