The Cult of the Head Start

Have you felt the pressure? 

Pick the sport or instrument your child is going to play and start them as early as possible. Pick the right preschool. Help them learn their letters as soon as you can.

There is no time to waste.

If I stop and think about it, I hear this messaging every day. When my oldest child turned 3, people started frequently asking which extracurricular she would be starting. Dance? Soccer? An instrument? One acquaintance told me that if my children didn’t choose early they wouldn’t qualify for travel sports teams so “better start soon!” Close friends who are educators in both public and private schools have shared that the standards for kindergarten students have increased dramatically and they can easily spot the children who did not attend preschool or early childhood education programs. There are more and more early admission programs for college and career training programs.

Pick early. Choose now.

In the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein calls this the “Cult of the Head Start”, or the pervasive cultural idea that by starting early, performing hours of deliberate practice, and providing your children with the exactly right cocktail of resources, your child can become the prodigy of whatever area or career you’ve steeped them in. But despite this philosophy’s current appeal, Epstein encourages a different approach that supports broad experiences and broad thinking instead of zealous commitment to singular mindset or specific job path.

Summary of Range

Epstein challenges the conventional wisdom of early specialization that our culture is obsessed with and champions the power of generalization. He highlights the successes of real people with intellectual and professional “range” (aka generalists) by using a diverse mix of stories, research studies, and compelling anecdotes. Epstein comprehensively provides a convincing case for the power of diverse experiences to develop the type of future thinkers and innovators our modern world will need. 

 3 Highlights from Range

  1. Early hyperspecialization is not applicable to every job and learning environment.
    • Epstein describes several specific savants in their fields (chess, tennis, golf, musicians, etc.) and how early specialization led to their success in their narrow area of expertise. Success with early specialization is associated with job areas that are very specific in nature–they always follow the same set of rules and never change. Does that sound like most jobs to you? “The world is not golf and most of it isn’t even tennis…most of the world is ‘martian tennis.’ You can see the players on the courts with the balls and rackets, but nobody has shared the rules. It is up to you to derive them, and they are subject to change without notice.”
    • Epstein describes a key downside to early specialization: cognitive entrenchment. Cognitive entrenchment occurs when over specialization is applied and individuals become so rigid in their thinking and narrow in their application of knowledge that they are unable to perceive alternative perspectives or create new solutions.
    • Esptein argues that no savant has ever been the type of creator to “change their field.” They may master the given parameters of their niche, but that doesn’t guarantee they can apply the skills they have learned anywhere else.
  2. The opposite of narrow specialization is “our ability to integrate broadly”
    • Epstein interviews researchers who have studied both cognitive entrenchment and also successful, innovative experts. He reports that the most successful experts have broad interests in the wider world and their breadth leads to insights that cannot be attributed to their specific job training alone.
    • Cognitive flexibility is the mental agility to switch between different concepts or perspectives. In Range, it’s often presented as the opposite of cognitive entrenchment. People with high cognitive flexibility are adaptable, open to new ideas, and able to think creatively across various domains. They aren’t confined to a single way of thinking but can easily shift gears to find solutions to problems. This ability is crucial in a world that’s constantly changing and evolving.
  3. Knowledge transfer should be integral to modern education systems. Unfortunately, it’s not. 
    • Epstein describes multiple research studies investigating the outcomes of higher education at top American universities. The researchers found no relationship between GPA and critical thinking performance. Essentially, great grades in college education do not ensure that you can apply fundamental logic across subjects or analytically evaluate data in another field.
    • “…college departments rush to develop students in a narrow specialty area, while failing to sharpen the tools of thinking that can serve them in every area.”
    • Epstein isn’t arguing that higher education isn’t valuable–he is conveying that the needs of modern students have changed and advocating for a shift in the educational approach.

Why should parents read Range?

The goal of Thriving Little Thinkers is to share low cost and high impact activities to help children learn how to think. We want to connect parents with the resources they need to have an impact on their child’s intellectual life (even at an early age). The book Range highlights a need to focus on curiosity and adaptability in young minds; crucial components to raising innovative thinkers who can solve complex problems. 

A few high impact takeaways you could apply today:

  • Give your kids sampling periods. A sampling period isn’t incidental–it’s integral. Let them try multiple sports and then pick for themselves which they enjoy the most. Let them try different instruments, clubs, teams…give them a feast and let them choose. Then, if they want specialty training, great! But let them pursue it alongside other interests and experiences.
  • Let your kids experience frustration and even barriers to their goals. It may lead to pivoting, and pivoting out of necessity causes eruptions of creativity.
  • Remember that specialization has its place, but it doesn’t provide the perfect preparation cocktail for raising thriving thinkers. “Pretending the world is like golf or chess is comforting” and can give us parents a sense of control…but it isn’t reality. Remember, our complex world requires habits of minds and ways of thinking, not singular preparation in one sport or instrument. Your child may win 20 soccer trophies or attain paid violin performances by age 12, but what will they do with that skill? Is it their only tool to take into adult life or is it part of a large, broad toolkit to draw from?

Specialization isn’t all bad–it just isn’t the whole picture either. Particularly for young children, it shouldn’t be the end-all be-all education approach.

Notable Quotes

“The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”

“The more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before–which is the essence of creativity.”

“Knowledge increasingly needs not merely to be durable, but also flexible–both sticky and capable of broad application.” 

“…there is often no entrenched interest fighting on the side of range, or of knowledge that must be slowly acquired. All forces align to incentivize a head start and early, narrow specialization, even if that is a poor long-term strategy.”

“Knowledge with enduring utility must be very flexibly, composed of mental schemes that can be matched to new problems.”

“…successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it.”

Further Reading Recommendations:

If you enjoy Range, you may also like:

October 3, 2024
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