73 Comments on “The Genius Dip — Why Children Are Losing Their Genius Potential?” - Post your own?

laurel says

Burt:

Hi, enjoyed this evening lis­ten­ing to you.…more and more I find what you say of great inter­est and truth.…..I have writ­ten to you before.…yes.…you are truly giv­ing us a chance to find what we have lost.…Sincerely, Laurel

Jules says

My son is 6 years of age and I am already notic­ing a change in him. Before he was able to walk he was bring­ing me books to read and as soon as I got to the end he was say­ing again, again, like a sponge, soak­ing up all the infor­ma­tion. At pre-school I was told that he had an amaz­ing vocab­u­lary for his age.… now at six he is almost like a dif­fer­ent child. I was already wor­ried about him going to school. I wanted to home-school him but I lis­tened to the very per­sua­sive argu­ments of the head teacher to keep him at school as it was impor­tant for him to socialise. Already he has no inter­est in books, and tells me that he doesn’t like read­ing and he has started to say that he is bored. I never heard him say this before. When he was younger he built a museum in his bed­room with arti­facts from all over the world, and he was inter­ested in Dinosaurs and Ancient Arti­facts, and he was never bored. I think it is a shame, but I already had this worry due to my own expe­ri­ence. I think that I have no where near reached my full poten­tial. I was top of my sec­ondary school but I got to an age where I just wanted to fit in rather than do many inter­est­ing things. It is some­thing that I would like to hear more about and find out what the solu­tions are.

Radford says

Haha ^^ nice, is there a sec­tion to fol­low the RSS feed

Jordan Bergereau says

The brain is not a mus­cle and thus should work effort­lessly, that is, with­out con­scious effort.A sin­gle glance at a long row of num­bers should pro­duce an instan­ta­neous sum.This and much more is how the brain is sup­posed to work.No amount of strain­ing or con­cen­tra­tion will make it work bet­ter, in fact this will inhibit it from it’s effort­less ability.Mental ten­sions are the clos­est answer I have been able to come up with.Perhaps one of the fac­tors is the right brain com­pet­ing with the left brain for dom­i­nance and the sup­pres­sion of the bod­ies nat­ural instinc­tual wisdom.Religion(Christianity)for instance has always preached against the nat­ural man.It serves reli­gious and sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments well to keep peo­ple stupefied.Keep up the good work.Jordan.

DJ says

use the sub­ject “genius tech­niques” if you want to email me. I’m the same dj as right above this post

DJ says

I’m actu­ally a 16 year old who got an email for par­ents that led me to the report. i thank that per­son who sent it to me. i have been lucky enough to sur­vive the genius dip accel­er­a­tion pro­gram called school nearly unscaved. but dur­ing my sopho­more year, i actu­ally lost my sense of direc­tion and am regain­ing it this sum­mer. i have extremely high empa­thy already. my intu­ition is still out­stand­ing. to the point of be known as the local slightly psy­chic kid. i can send peo­ple emo­tions and forms of energy as long as they actu­ally truly open their mind. i can sense what some­one is wear­ing from any­where in the world as well as tell them where they once had an injury, the shape and the size, because when i think of them, i feel the pain. i have pro­jected a visual of myself to Illi­nois from my home in Wis­con­sin.
i will use these tech­niques to fur­ther my abil­i­ties and am glad to share some of my own if any­one likes. my email is dstewar68@gmail.com if any­one wants to con­tact me. if you read these com­ments, Burt, please con­tact me per­son­ally so we can dis­cuss tech­niques and expe­ri­ences. I’d love to know more about you.

P.S. my high school has com­pletely abol­ished the gifted and tal­ented pro­gram that i was in in ele­men­tary school where i was at aver­age 8th grade aca­d­e­mic level.

Arvind says

Dear Burt,
I am really impressed.Many times dring my life time I have felt that I have lots of poten­tials, but some­thing is lack­ing. You have opened the way and I and many oth­ers can help our grand­kids in becom­ing genius which they are.Your help will be the biggest ser­vice to the mankind for yars to come by help­ing many many par­ents and grand­par­ents like me, let this be the social ser­vice to the next generation.

PB says

Many good points. How do you sug­gest we fix our school sys­tem. I sug­gest to ban­ish the union and the tenure sta­tus. This doesn’t moti­vate the teach­ers very well does it?

Brett says

I believe edu­ca­tion is more about uncov­er­ing what is on the inside than feed­ing infor­ma­tion from the out­side. No one ever dis­played great­ness by imi­tat­ing another. We can see what oth­ers have done and gain inspi­ra­tion for our own actions and expres­sions, but if what we are doing is not our own cre­ation it has no life of it’s own, it is merely a copy. We can do things repet­edly as long as we bring a fresh atti­tude and it is still new to us,like a young child that does some­thing over and over with the same exite­ment as the first time. If we just keep doing the same things out of habit or a belief “that we must do this to get that” then we become human­do­ings instead of human­be­ings. It is fine to learn skills and tech­niques as long as we remem­ber these are tools to be used or not used or altered accord­ing to our inspi­ra­tion. The peo­ple who have done big things knew when to break the rules. The really free ones are barely aware of rules. It is only from a lack of trust in our­selves and oth­ers that has us make rules.
For an edu­ca­tion pro­gram to bring out the full poten­tial of the stu­dents, it requires inquiry and encour­age­ment. The inquiry needs to be pure of expected answers. The encour­ag­ment needs to be uncon­di­tional. The instruc­tors need to be unat­tached to spe­cific results from the stu­dents. A course based on curios­ity, cre­ativ­ity and won­der is very pow­er­ful.
Brett

troy says

Hi Burt,
Well that was a very infor­ma­tive report and it will be one that i will be bring­ing to my wifes attention.I have two girls , my step daugh­ter 13 and my daugh­ter 4.The older girl is in high school and those tech­niques that were out­lined will be very impor­tant to her as she is strug­gling with some school work.I‘ll work with my two girls on main­tain­ing and devel­op­ing their nat­ural abil­ity to use intu­itive and cre­ative capabilities.I‘s good to know that i can play a part in their edu­ca­tion other than just pay­ing the bills.You can‘t just leave it up to the edu­cayion sys­tem.
thanks Troy

Gary says

Mr. Gold­man.
I am 67 years old and a life long stu­dent of per­sonal and spir­i­tual growth. I am excited and shocked at the infor­ma­tion in your report. I agree with what you say about our edu­ca­tional sys­tem. For now,at least, I see the par­ents as the source of main­tain­ing genius. In time maybe the school sys­tem.
God Bless.
Gary Elkins

Peta says

Dear Burt

I think that there are a num­ber of fac­tors that con­tribute to this dumb­ing down and genius dip, I’ll share the ones that I have expe­ri­ence with in rela­tion to my own children.

Firstly, we don’t have a tele­vi­sion. Tele­vi­sion is one of the biggest theives of imag­i­na­tion, every­thing is visu­ally pre­sented and the brain and imag­i­na­tion do not have to work at all. It ensures that the chil­dren become pas­sive and always need to be enter­tained because they have lost the ability/imagination to dream up their own games.

Sec­ondly, the kinds of toys that we have nowa­days in the toy shops are crip­pling our children’s imag­i­na­tions. Every­thing is com­pletely explicit and can only fill one func­tion. Take a stick as an exam­ple, a stick may be a gun, a sword, a horse, a rid­ing crop. And every sin­gle one of those requires the imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks. The more generic and nat­ural things we give our chil­dren to play with, the more their imag­i­na­tions are engaged. Instead of nurse’s out­fits and bal­let tutu’s in the dress up box, how about lots of brightly coloured pieces of cloth that they can make into anything.

Elec­tronic toys, com­puter games and the like, like­wise rob their imag­i­na­tion and remove them from their rela­tion­ship with their body. Teach­ing them that easy enter­tain­ment is the norm.

The more we remove our imag­i­na­tion from life, the more we lose con­tact with the knowl­edge that things aren’t always the way they appear or the way we think they are.

How often to do par­ents (some just don’t have the facil­ity to do this) send their chil­dren out­side with an instruc­tion not to come in until sup­per­time? Then the things in the gar­den have to become part of their imag­i­na­tion and join in the game. Rocks are stoves and cup­boards and trees become walls.

I think schools do con­tribute to this, but home envi­ron­ments play a large part too. Par­ents have for­got­ten what empa­thy, imag­i­na­tion and intu­ition are them­selves and they can’t nur­ture and keep alive some­thing that they can’t recog­nise or know about. We are sec­ond gen­er­a­tion dumbed down.

What do we do with our children’s intu­ition when it comes. Most of the time we don’t even recog­nise it. We dis­miss it with “You know how kids are!”

My old­est daugh­ter was extremely intu­itive and on a num­ber of occa­sions we had to ques­tion how we inter­preted or acted on the infor­ma­tion she had at her dis­posal. She is now 6 and doesn’t so often tell me that her dad is stuck in a traf­fic jam (and he was) or meet him at the door with a “You’ve got lion king dvd’s for me” (which he did) or tell him “Daddy turn here!!” (and she was right).

She does still fol­low her intu­ition and yet just because we grew up in a world where those things were just not pos­si­ble we have shut her down even with the inten­tion to be open and allow her to be.

An alter­na­tive view is that by the age of 4 chil­dren start to lose their con­nec­tion to the spir­i­tual realm just because they are nearly fully incar­nated into their bodies.

I will con­tinue to fol­low your research.

Peta Dukes

craig says

report is apt, the out­based edu­ca­tion sys­tem is speed­ing up the dum­ing up rate of kids world wide, it leaves no room for imag­i­na­tion or proper inter­ac­tion, its focus is on get­ting the chil­dren through the system,allowing the var­i­ous states to pat them­selves on the back with robotic young adults, whom suf­fer from the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion syn­drome, partly due to our day and age we live in and partly due to the very poor edu­ca­tion system.the entire syl­labus needs to over­hauled. OBE to be banned in all countries.rather extend the school years for the pre­vi­ously dis­ad­vanged, and have bet­ter qual­i­fied teach­ers to assist them than dum­ming down the system.

Gerrie says

Burt
It took me 48 years to learn to trust my intu­ition, keep up the good work!
Regards, Gerrie

smruti says

HI Burt! I read your report and you are absolutely right in say­ing that chil­dren do lose their cre­ative intel­li­gence even as they strive to keep ahead in class. I have always felt that some­body should take up this sub­ject and cre­ate a school with a dif­fer­ence which will allow chil­dren to be on their own while nur­tur­ing the genius within them. good work Burt. All the Best!

sunita chandran says

Hi Burt,
I have a child who is left handed and as you have rightly men­tioned she was truly a genius in her child­hood. but now she is 16 and has become highly dis­obe­di­ent and both of us are always on log­ger­heads ‚please help me help her.
dr. sunita

Sinead says

Hello

I am eigh­teen… I am not sure if I am still a child, I’d like to call myself a half child. I am not appar­ent but I’d still like to give my opin­ion. I guess I might be a par­ent if you con­sider a cat a child! Lol.

Any­way what you’re doing is fan­tas­tic! I LOVE it!

I used to be into stuff like this when I was a lit­tle younger my mid-teens and… I always felt a lit­tle strange because other chil­dren weren’t inter­ested in things like this. I feel touched that you want to help peo­ple younger than me or near my age. I just think that peo­ple like you were only reach­ing out to adults and I always felt slightly annoyed. No offense.

I was think­ing of send­ing this report to my Aunt because she takes care of my cousin Han­nah. I want her to delevop intu­a­tion and her to dis­cover her genious as you say!

It would be so awe­some if HAn­nah could revover her genious at the age of three she is! That would have been way younger than me that I was into this stuff! AWESOME!

I love this report because… I think it shows every­one has equal qual­ity for mag­i­fience and I want to show it my par­ents. I want you to make pro­grams for kids so I can some­how help my cousin! She is really dear to me…

I really liked this report, I am from Canada but I think I can relate to it.

WELL DONE!

This seems to have been well-recieved because there are so many com­ments on this page! It’s over­whelm­ing. Maybe friends slightly younger than me will turn into ‘hyp­ies’ lol. Or more seri­ously get into this stuff.

I am so excited! THANK YOU!

I won’t feel so weird for hav­ing know­ing my Dad’s feel­ing. He gets annoyed when I say he’s pi**ed and he’s not. THANK YOU!

You’re awe­some. Are you a monk though? Can monks be mar­ried? I am just wondering.

Maybe your like a monk? Anyway

YOUR AWESOME! Sim­i­lar words to awe­some that would desribe you are inspiring.

Oh I for­got to say some­thing, I inspired by this report because maybe I have the gen­sious to paint beau­ti­ful pic­tures. You seem to think so maybe.

Joanne Larkins says

So John Holt’s Home­school­ing move­ment from the 1970’s is being revived. His books influ­enced me to help my two chil­dren to develop their indi­vid­ual tal­ents. I am proud to say that I read to my chil­dren at night, which I believe to be a fun­da­men­tal and pos­i­tive prac­tice in any child’s edu­ca­tion, as well as sooth­ing, med­i­ta­tive in nature.
I am proud to say that I romped on the floor with my chil­dren, and laughed uproar­ingly, when­ever pos­si­ble.
I watched them, and they showed me the activ­i­ties that most turned them on, which I tried hard to encour­age for them.
It is my hope and prayer that they have selected well, the area for stud­ies for their uni­ver­sity careers, and my even greater desire, that will find the jobs that they love. The money, pres­tige, and hon­ors will fol­low, when they find what they love to do.
Although, my genius was lost, when I bought the home study pro­gram of Jose Silva’s The Silva Ultra­Mind ESP Sys­tem, and then the “Law of Attrac­tion” and the teach­ings of Abra­ham, as chan­neled through Esther Hicks, it is as if the final pieces of my puz­zle (though, I glee­fully was put together, before start­ing 1st grade, at the age of 5, I threw myself up in the air to be scat­tered, know­ing that I would find myself again, even though pieces were hid­den in very dark, dark, dark places for so long)are again assem­bled cor­rectly in fron of me.
I feel freer, in love with myself, and hap­pier than I have been since those days before I began in the school sys­tem.
These days I help my chil­dren to love them­selves, to believe in them­selves, to desire and imag­ine what they want for them­selves, and I encour­age each of their baby steps. They were dam­aged within the school sys­tem, and yet, I see their poten­tial, and do all that I can to love them, and to allow them to develop their geniuses, just as I know, whom they are.
You are absolutely right, that it is the chil­dren, to whom we need to direct our atten­tion.
As a par­ent, it is my respon­si­bil­ity to fol­low the dreams of my chil­dren. If along the way, I cor­rect, tweak, and reignite my own genius, so much the bet­ter, but first and fore­most, and always, I will do all in my power to help my babies, my blood, my future, to become all that they pos­si­bly can be, do and to have (to use words from the teach­ings of Abra­ham).
I am so excited to finally catch the tail, of some­one, like me, so fer­ver­ently seeks a bet­ter planet, by fuel­ing the fires of our chil­dren.
It is with the great­est pride, that I present the world to my chil­dren, and my chil­dren to the world.
Because I see the beauty in this world, I see the col­ors, hear the birds, feel that same excite­ment in a new era, and want to be a part of it.
Thank you for your work, thank you for your ded­i­ca­tion, and thank you for mak­ing this EARTH, a bet­ter place to live.
Sin­cerely,
Joanne Larkins

Nishi says

Thanks for ur insight. We have been using draw­ings and visu­al­iza­tion to help our daugh­ter who has CP to study and it works well. She visu­al­izes her time-tables and sci­ence charts. I do believe that ones time and lots of patience are essen­tial fac­tors when bring­ing up chil­dren. Thank you once again and look­ing for­ward to more on this topic.

Daniel Meidan says

Hello Burt,
I read your report and it took me back to ele­men­try school in Israel.
I had a teached that did not sup­port a stu­dent that did not go in the way he taught. In fact another teacher told me “you are a fail­ure …“
Guss what at the age of 18 I enrolled to a a pro­gram that enabled me to study in the no 1 engi­neer­ing school in Israel.
I never was the first in class and my aver­age was not impres­sive.
At the age of 22 I grad­u­aded and became an egnin­ner again with aver­age grades.

All this made me to use another approach to edu­cate my chil­dren. I taught them to ask ques­tions in the way of solv­ing prob­lems. I made them to think.

In all my stud­ies I did not have any course of think­ing all I had to do is to mem­o­rize infor­ma­tion and fol­low school instruc­tions. I was always in trou­ble since I did not fol­low my teacher’s instruc­tions.
This helped me to come with some inven­tions and grant some US patents.

So keep what you are doing chil­dren with non-standard approach and those who use their own way. These chil­dren will be tomorrow’s inven­tors cre­ators writ­ers and so on.
If I can con­tribute to your activ­ity please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact me via the above email
Thank you — Daniel Meidan

Shamim says

Thank you Burt, for your report. I only wish I had it when my kids were grow­ing up. I have two, a daugh­ter who is 24, and a son who is 19. They don’t lis­ten to me any­more.…. I have for­warded your absolutely won­der­ful report to my brother who has a eight-year-old daugh­ter. I pray that they will read and make use of your advice, because indeed, I truly believe your advice works, even for adults — why not? Thank you. Am very much look­ing for­ward to your next report. God Bless!

Toni Luoma says

I just wanted to tell me and you that I AM lis­ten­ing and so are my parents.

Rhea Lynn Austin says

Not only have I read your “Genius Report Dip” but also the arti­cle regard­ing the rain­bow chil­dren, but please don’t fot­get the crys­tals. They are the next gen­er­a­tion of doers to save Mother Earth.

Too share a lit­tle of my back­ground would help in assess­ing my intu­ition and feel­ings on our future gen­er­a­tions. I am a retired teacher of childen with learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. I am what they call a late bloomer! I received my degree in 1985 and taught up until 2003. I had a great deal of dif­fi­culty work­ing with the sys­tem called “No child left behind”, espe­cially when it came to chil­dren who for some rea­son who find learn­ing in an envirnoment that is rigid and likens itself to an assem­bly line where each child is rubber-stamped OK to move on whether they can or can­not. When test­ing and group scores become the focal point for fund­ing it is time ou gen­er­a­tion steps in to say we have had enough!

These are indi­vid­ual chil­dren who come to school with unique cir­cum­stance and should be looked at on an indi­vid­ual basis. I think if test­ing needs to have its place then we should be ass­esing areas such is right-brained func­tioned, i.e.creativity, abil­i­ties to solve prob­lems that require new think­ing NOT mem­o­riza­tion, intu­ition, etc. Chil­dren need time to pre­tend and play while they are young…they need music, lan­guages, dance. They need to able to choose the direc­tion to which their soul is lead­ing them. They need tools to assist in an inquir­ing envron­ment which fos­ter indi­vid­u­al­ity with group consciousness.

I have two beau­ti­ful grand chil­dren who are either rain­bow or crys­tal. I have been with my grand­son since before birth. And, what really struck me intu­itively was when I went to see him in utero with an ultra­sound. I know he com­mu­ni­cated with me when he saw me while I was watch­ing him move around. My impres­sion of that day will stay with me for my life because he for one is a mir­a­cle child and his uncanny abilty to com­mu­ni­cate with his mind. By the way, that day he told me he wanted out! This was in Jan­u­ary and I pre­dicted he would be born the 12th of Feb­ru­ary. As the story goes he was born the 11th. My daugh­ter is able to con­nect with him on his level of mind com­mu­ni­ca­tion and knows what he needs with­out him using words…she has been using words to share with him so that he some day will have the facil­i­ties to com­mu­ni­cate orally. He can match things with uncanny demon­stra­tions, he is able to throw and some­times catch a ball, and he can really dance!

I will pro­vide more impres­sions because I have shared your report with my daugh­ter, who by the way had her cre­ativ­ity stripped with all the bor­ing mem­o­riza­tion that was required of her. She graduted magna cum laude and vale­dic­to­rian from high school.

Burt, I am grat­ful to have you as a cor­re­spon­dance and now this oppor­tu­nity to share my beliefs regard­ing edu­ca­tion. You are on the right track, now to inspire the world is our now goal!

Thank you,
Rhea Lynn Austin

alan says

thank you, burt,
for the infor­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion in the genius dip report. i have always seen the amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem as being more about indoc­tri­na­tion than edu­ca­tion; more about cre­at­ing obe­di­ent, dis­en­gaged cat­tle than nur­tur­ing unique­ness and genius. i’m even more con­cerned upon hear­ing from friends with school kids that the local kids today are not allowed to speak to each other dur­ing lunch or on the school bus. can’t imag­ine a pos­i­tive result from that aside from it mak­ing things eas­ier on the peo­ple who herd the cat­tle… thank good­ness there are plenty of tal­ented, com­mit­ted, pas­sion­ate peo­ple work­ing within the flawed sys­tem to make a real dif­fer­ence in kids lives!

i envi­sion a grass-roots move­ment of like-minded enlight­ened con­cerned peo­ple cre­at­ing sup­ple­men­tal learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, such as work­shops, classes, study groups, sum­mer camps, etc. geared for kids (along with the same for not-so-kids – parent/child classes could be cool, too). the three main areas you pointed out in the genius dip report (empa­thy, visu­al­iza­tion and intu­ition) are nat­ural points of focus for skills-building through these non-schools. uni­tar­ian or other churches might be good venues for pro­grams like these, as could com­mu­nity cen­ters. they could be easy enough to present if some guide­books were cre­ated. per­haps a web forum for devel­op­ers and pre­sen­ters of such pro­grams to share their non– or open-copyrighted mate­ri­als, ideas and inspi­ra­tions would incu­bate the cre­ation of shared guide books, classes, work­shops, etc. (maybe cre­ate this forum on the amer­i­can monk site?) i could see a vari­ety of pos­si­bil­i­ties – how about a junior achievement-style pro­gram that starts with beach­head or bor­rowed genius work to deter­mine the prod­uct to be cre­ated? and how about it’s done with sixth graders? “genius mind power sum­mer camp” would be pretty fun, too…

cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments where it’s easy to iden­tify and encour­age genius devel­op­ment in the var­i­ous intel­li­gences would be a good sec­ondary focus, too. sort of a big play­room (for kids of all ages!) where the var­i­ous intel­li­gences are rep­re­sented through a vari­ety of inter­ac­tive displays/elements, with feed­back and direc­tion pro­vided based on what one was drawn to and their expe­ri­ence with that display/element. it would prob­a­bly be easy to involve some area busi­nesses to help cover some of the costs of cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing the space and maybe even cre­at­ing ‘intern­ships’ for help­ing develop kids’ genius tal­ents (seven or eight year-olds learn­ing small engine repair or help­ing design play­grounds – that sort of thing). while i’d love to imag­ine the pub­lic school sys­tems (or head-start pro­grams) doing this sort of thing, it’s prob­a­bly more real­is­tic to look at cre­at­ing it out­side that sys­tem. if the schools even­tu­ally catch on and incor­po­rate it into their cur­ricu­lum, all the better.

thank you again for shar­ing the gift of your spirit! — alan

Dan says

I believe IQ test­ing is not as accu­rate at a very young age as it is later in life and the early scores tend to be slightly inflated. In other words everyone’s IQ score tends to drop with age. This makes sense because as a per­son gains more skills we have more tools to help make an assess­ment.
To place much of this loss on the Amer­i­can school sys­tem is in my esti­ma­tion unfair. My guess is this is a nat­ural phe­nom­ena. Is there any one cul­ture or soci­ety on this planet that has many more adult geniuses than any other? If so, let’s check out its edu­ca­tional sys­tem.
I do agree that cre­ativ­ity, imag­i­na­tion & intu­ition are impor­tant parts of the “edu­cated” mind and should be taught in our schools. And I can think of no bet­ter place to do that than in the Arts. ‘Readin’, writin’ & ‘rith­matic are not the end and the all of knowl­edge.
One other point, not all learn­ing can be tested, nor should it be.

Mahendra says

Respected Sri Bur­ton Gold ji
Just read yr report in a short style explain­ing abt the geniousous of chil­dren & liked it & would be fw to many of my con­tacts also for the pur­pose of yours to spread it to many to bring up this world to a best psos­si­ble level of peace & geniouses,thanks for yr best moti­va­tions & we all pray for yr long lovely healthy life to serve the soci­ety .
Would be wait­ing to hear yr still more CDs etc
Regards thanks bye Mahen­dra Gun­tur India

Maria Kielty says

Hello Burt
I agree entirely with your research. I always knew my old­est son was very bright, but strug­gled to get his pri­mary school to accept that he was not being stretched enough in his early years at pri­mary school. He is still very bright aca­d­e­m­i­cally but I feel his cre­ativ­ity has been cur­tailed. My youngest son on the other hand was birth dam­aged and was not ready aca­d­e­m­i­cally in the same way, how­ever, he was and remains very cre­ative and I believe intel­li­gent, but cre­ativ­ity never was and I believe, is still not treated with the same respect or even expec­ta­tion of acad­e­mia.
I know my old­est will reach his expec­ta­tions aca­d­e­m­i­cally but may not aspire to his cre­ative genius, which I still believe to be explicit and my youngest will floun­der beca­sue soci­ety is not ready to accept his cre­ativ­ity and genious for what it is, musi­cal and artis­tic cre­ativ­ity.
I don’t want to let down either of my boys, but worry con­stantly that I do so.
Maria

JANAK says

respected monk regards, I read your report the genius dip, I salute your VISION, a spir­i­tual man hav­ing love for all, can only think for the gens. to come.
I liked your work & is always in wait­ing to hear your bless­ings for me &whole of the human­ity!
BIG THANKS.

AT YOUR LOTUS FEET

JANAKRAJ, INDIA

Petra says

Hi Burt,

Thanks for the report, I find it inter­est­ing and timely. I have a 16 year old daugh­ter and 13 year old son. Both of them are cre­ative and find it hard to be moti­vated in the school.
My son rated very high in visual learn­ing skill, how­ever he has prob­lem with short term mem­ory. Our schools do not allow for indi­vid­ual learn­ing styles and both my kids are frus­trated, espe­cially my son who wants to quit school.

The three tech­niques that are out­lined in the report would most likely work with younger chil­dren. Any idea how to work with two frus­trated teenagers who lost con­fi­dence in their abil­ity to learn would be appre­ci­ated. Hope­fully it is not too late for them.

Thanks again

Good work

Jorge says

Hello Mr. Goldman

I just read your report on the Genius Dip and have to tell you it shouldn’t be Har­vard telling the Amer­i­can Pub­lic what’s hap­pen­ing with our chil­dren. It’s really a shame that it takes writ­ers and Uni­ver­si­ties to awaken peo­ple to the tragedy that this coun­try is becom­ing. I have been employed by one of the largest school dis­tricts in the US for 13 years now and can unequiv­o­cally tell you “teach­ing is not what is tak­ing place” in our school system.

I don’t want to be to harsh as there are teach­ers still left in school dis­tricts across Amer­ica. But these teach­ers are turned out like a bucket of water to a fire. These teach­ers aren’t aloud to teach, the are trained to prep our chil­dren for the F-CAT, C-CAT, ACT, and any other Gov­ern­ment pro­vided man­dated test. This is what our school sys­tem has turned into. It’s all about the score, not only for the child but now also for the schools. If your school is graded an F or C in edu­ca­tional stan­dards, your school is penal­ized and the Gov­ern­ment gives the par­ents Vouch­ers to leave that school to attend a bet­ter school. Reduc­ing the pop­u­la­tion of school, reduces the e-rate fund­ing, makes for greater bur­den on teach­ers for mate­ri­als and tech­nol­ogy and if you reduce tech­nol­ogy and resources in a sys­tem that is already the Brunt Bar­ing Child of every Fed­eral Fund­ing Cut Back pro­gram, you are left with nothing.

This is the true Genius, the fact that par­ents believe that this will take care of it’s self. Par­ent Con­fer­ence Night at schools across Amer­ica are a joke. Why aren’t par­ents given the entire finan­cial report on school bud­gets, with salaries, and all item­ized expenses, allo­ca­tions of fund­ing to spe­cial pro­grams, fund­ing for soft­ware, list­ing of spe­cial­ist degrees, list­ings of mas­ters, PHD and all other degrees of pro­fes­sion­als in schools. This should all be made read­ily avail­able to all par­ents by every dis­trict across Amer­ica. It’s PUBLIC INFORMATION. The Pub­lic School Sys­tem is PAID FOR AND BOUGHT WITH TAX DOLLARS, pub­lic money and we should have a right to see how our many is bee­ing spent.

If this was done, then par­ents would see the real­ity of what the pub­lic school sys­tem is. No, Mr. Gold­man the Genius is not what our chil­dren are or can be or what they will loose with time. The real Genius is how the Gov­ern­ment lawed us all to sleep, with dis­trac­tions, false reports, glo­ri­fied pro­grams (No Child Left Behind) and Gov­ern­men­tal manip­u­la­tion of the books and Fed­eral Fund­ing. Still to this day I can not for the life of me under­stand why edu­ca­tion is the first and worst hit when a finan­cial cri­sis hits this coun­try and par­ents just stand by and do noth­ing. Just yes­ter­day I received a not from my daugh­ters 1st grade teach­ers that they are doing a col­lec­tion drive to col­lect funds for school sup­plies, such as paper, ink, wipes, chalk. All I could think to myself was “how sad” that a pro­fes­sional teacher would have to degrade her­self to the point of beg­ging, while the Gov­ern­ment and the State col­lects Mil­lions of dol­lars from Tax pay­ers. My response was a sim­ple one “I can’t I am also hav­ing finan­cial hard­ship because I too am in the edu­ca­tion field” Maybe we should strike together!

Your report is amaz­ing and should serve as a great tool for par­ents includ­ing myself across Amer­ica. But please under­stand that if more isn’t done and done fast. Par­ents won’t have to worry about the Genius of there child, because the Pub­lic School Sys­tem will no longer be there for there chil­dren. It is being dis­as­sem­bled before our very eyes. Please look fur­ther than just the chil­dren, make a dif­fer­ence for all the Fam­i­lies that will one day loose what lit­tle we have left in a free and good Edu­ca­tional system.

The Genius in our chil­dren will always be there, Pub­lic Schools, that another question.

I hope your daugh­ters are doing well in there per­spec­tive schools.

God Bless you and the work you do.

karmasherab says

Dear Burt Gold­man,
your Genius Dip Report has really done some­thing to my com­pla­cency!
The edu­ca­tion sit­u­a­tion here in Ger­many seems to be even worse than in the USA.
I think we are urgently called upon to do some­thing about this!
With your kind per­mis­sion I would like to trans­late your Report into the Ger­man lan­guage and dis­trib­ute it free to who­ever wants it.
I have been trans­lat­ing tech­ni­cal man­u­als dur­ing my work­ing life and now, being 75+ years old, I feel this is a chal­lenge to keep me on my toes for while longer.
Please let me know, if you agree to this propo­si­tion.
BTW I have sub­scribed to your newslet­ters and online course for some time now and admire the work you are doing!
Try­ing to fol­low in your foot­steps!
OM MANI PADME HUNG!
Karma Sherab Gyatso aka Georg Schmidt

janet says

you are so right, I have had to pull up many teach­ers on what they say to chil­dren, not only teach­ers but par­ents as well how con­stantly tell their chil­dren that they can­not do this or that because thats not the way it is taught, which totally leaves them dis­hearten, and feel­ing use­les , then angry that they no longer which to learn

Ed says

Hi Burt,

Yes , no child left behind is a national trav­esty. There are sta­tis­tics now that say­ing , because they are no longer chal­lenged, because they become bored with the stan­dard cir­ricu­lum, because they are held back, the new drop out from the school sys­tem is the gifted child.

I will take your work a step fur­ther back. The founder of Sony cor­po­ra­tion did a study tak­ing many yrs on the effects of envi­ron­ment on the fetus in the womb.

It was shown that as the fetus devel­oped for instance, that just liv­ing in a vio­lent area of a city ( being exposed to con­ti­nous siren noise, and occa­sional gun­shots, etc) devel­oped a child with ten­den­cies not to trust, to fear,an inner paranoia.

On the other hand fetuses devel­op­ing in a sta­ble envi­ron­ment, being talked to, sang to, read to, by the Mother while in the womb, cre­ated a more respon­sive and open child upon its entry into the world.

Toward the clos­ing yrs of this study women were encour­aged to med­i­tate, lis­ten to sooth­ing music, to speak mul­ti­lin­gually to the child. Any good qual­ity they could expose the fetus to, it was found could be eas­ily emu­lated by the child once it made its entry into the world.

In pre­vi­ous com­ments there have been ref­er­ences to the school sys­tem dumb­ing down edu­ca­tion. There IS an over empha­sis onmath and sci­ence, and in a sup­pressed way that doesn’t not teach one any crit­i­cal think­ing skills, or as you put it devel­op­ing imag­i­na­tion or intu­ition. Lil won­der that a good num­ber of inven­tors and mil­lionares are peo­ple who had low grade aver­ages, but retained or devel­oped the abil­ity to think out­side the box.

I per­son­ally believe video games do noth­ing for chil­dren but keep their minds occu­pyed on unre­al­is­tic sit­u­a­tions and dis­tract them from the poten­tials and beauty that life has to offer.

I read once that if you can keep a per­son focused on where their next meal is com­ing from, there is lil chance they will see past that to the rea­sons why they are in that sit­u­a­tion, or the big­ger picture.

This sit­u­a­tion has been many yrs in the mak­ing, all in slow small steps; each step spaced out too far for any­one to really notice a pro­gres­sion, but it is there.

Thankyou for bring this to the forefront.

Marianne de Zwart says

It is hori­fy­ing to real­ize that only 2 % of the chil­dren keep their nat­ural genius while grow­ing older. In Hol­land it is the same. Chil­dren have to learn to do tests. The knowl­edge of the peo­ple in Hol­land is low­er­ing, while first knowl­edge was an export arti­cle so to say. Knowl­edge build by cre­ativ­ity and intu­ition. It makes the dif­fer­ence between heal­ing a patient, man or ani­mal, or to let the crea­ture die by igno­rance because of lack of intu­ition and cre­ativ­ity and imag­i­na­tion and empa­thy. Peo­ple who have lost these pre­cious gifts by nature can­not full­fill their dreams and are more agres­sive, frus­trated and jeal­ous of peo­ple, who still are capa­ble to use these tal­ents. That makes the lives of those gifted peo­ple dif­fi­cult.
One can make the con­clu­sion, that it is impor­tant for whole mankind, that chil­dren stay in touch with their genius. Chil­dren who have an ani­mal at home are lucky, because the ani­mal helps a child to feel empa­thy by tak­ing care of the ani­mal. That is one way to let the child keep his/her genius.
In my live I sup­pressed my intu­ition, because when I expressed it, it was criti­sized. Now I have it back since a few years and it is the best guide I ever had. I don­not have to ask other peo­ple what to do or if it is right what I want to do. Now I do things, fol­low­ing my heart, and I am suprised myself about the out­comes of my doing, while that doing is not always accepted by other peo­ple.
By not lis­ten­ing to that inner voice, my intu­ition, I have had so much trou­ble, very frus­trat­ing.
I like to help to save chil­dren not to loose this excel­lent equip­ment they get by birth.
I am send­ing your arti­cle to friends with chil­dren.
Your arti­cle will be spread all over the world.
You are doing a great job by telling us what you know.
Thanks a lot !!!

Tina Faith says

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve known this for years and have been teach­ing our young how to use their cre­ativ­ity, inspi­ra­tion, intu­ition and per­sonal gifts to empower them­selves. So good to see more of this infor­ma­tion get­ting out to the masses!
Keep the flame burn­ing my friend! Be blessed and be a bless­ing, Tina

Mellie Miller says

Burt:

I have two daugh­ters and 5 grand­sons. Since I am a cre­ative per­son, I tried to instill cre­ativ­ity in my girls while they were young and both of them were put into advanced pro­grams when they went to school. They are both extremely intel­li­gent and intu­itive, though the younger one is a bit more intu­itive than the other.

Both of the girls have had trou­ble with the schools and their boys, how­ever. The two older boys-the old­est of each daughter–are nat­u­rally curi­ous to the extreme and expect answers when they ask ques­tions. AS you can guess, this doesn’t go over too well in today’s edu­ca­tion system.

The younger of these two had a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem try­ing to learn to read. Here in Geor­gia they were doing a method called “sight words” which I under­stand when it comes to sim­ple words like ‘and’ or ‘the’. But when you use it for all words it just doesn’t work.

The way his teacher treated him because of this made him feel stu­pid and he quit try­ing. That sum­mer we tried to work with him, but he just shut us out.

The next scool year he had a teacher who encour­aged him to do his best and when he finally made the break­through there was no stop­ping him. In 2nd grade, he read the entire set of the Harry Pot­ter books.

No the edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Amer­ica is doing our chil­dren no favors, especilly those lit­tle ones with so-called psy­chic abil­i­ties. Their aware­ness is cut off as soon as it becomes appar­ent. I know–I was one of those chil­dren. I learned early that some things were best kept to myself and buried my abil­i­ties for years. Thank­fully my daugh­ter and I know bet­ter than to kill it out in this generation.

Thanks, Burt, for your work and ded­i­ca­tion to our future.

Janice says

Hi Burt,
I’m a for­mer higher ed LD Spe­cial­ist. I stud­ied the Mul­ti­ple Intel­li­gences the­ory as part of my grad­u­ate train­ing and applied it heav­ily when work­ing with stu­dents with var­i­ous prob­lems. Quite frankly, I think your report is right on. In so many cases, these stu­dents had far less dis­abil­ity than the fact that they approached learn­ing dif­fer­ently. I tried to help them develop strate­gies to help them learn the way they best took in infor­ma­tion and many of them excelled once they dis­cov­ered the strat­egy that worked for them. On top of that, I took the research stud­ies about visu­al­iza­tion and taught my stu­dents how to visu­al­ize for greater suc­cess. But what you’re sug­gest­ing takes even what I was doing many steps further.

I just won­der if there isn’t some way to suf­fi­ciently “enlighten” the gov­ern­ment so no fur­ther chil­dren will have to suf­fer through this night­mar­ish school expe­ri­ence? Or if there are ways com­mu­ni­ties could open up oppor­tu­ni­ties for gifted chil­dren to keep them involved with learn­ing? I know exactly what this is like because this very thing hap­pened to my mid­dle nephew. Because chil­dren with LDs needed extra help, pro­grams that could have and should have been avail­able to him due to his “gift­ed­ness” were cut. How can par­ents and com­mu­ni­ties cre­ate more oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of school for these chil­dren so they don’t lose their abil­ity to access their innate genius?

JD

Georgia Daugherty says

Hi Burt,
I agree with you 100% that our chil­dren are being
short changed in our school today. The schools are
juat focus­ing on pass­ing the test and mak­ing top
rat­ings for their schools. Chil­dren are bored with
tak­ing all those tests (work­sheet after work­sheet).
By the time the test comes around they could care
less if they pass or not. There is no cre­ativ­ity
in the schools at the present time. g.a. d.

FAIZ AHMED says

IT IS REALLY A GREAT ARTICLE, NEEDS PAGES TO ANALYSE AND BE PRAISED.
YET, IT IS IMPORTANT TO VISUALIZE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE.
MANY PEOPLE SAW A 6 YEARS OLD CHILD ( FROM IRAN )ON CNN AND MANY OTHER TV CHANELS, WHO REMEMBERS THE HOLY QURAN ( COMPRISING OF 680 PAGES )IN SEQUENCE BY SENTANCES AND BY EACH SINGLE WORD AND BY PERFECT PRONOUNCIATION, BY HEART .… BY BIRTH.……WITHOUT LEARNING FROM ANY TEACHER. IN HIS INTERVIEW,MANY QUESTIONS WERE ASKED AND HE REPLIED CORRECTLY WITHOUT A SINGLE FAILURE. THIS CHILD WAS ALSO HEARD IN PERSON BY THE KING OF SAUDI ARABIA ALONG WITH HIS BROTHERS AND GOVERNERS ( ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE CONFRONTATION AND DIFFERENCES ON RELIGIOUS ISSUES WITH IRANIANS )

THIS IS ONE EXAMPLE OF NATURAL ( SPIRITUAL ) GENIOUS. THERE SHOULD BE MORE IN THE WORLD.

HOWEVER, THE GREAT ACTS OF BLIND CHILDREN/PEOPLE ARE LIVE EXAMPLES OF IMPORTANCE OF VISUALIZATION.

I AM A STUDENT OF SILVA METHODS IN ACCORDANCE WITH LAW OF ATTRACTION. IN BRIEF, I NOT ONLY APPRECIATE YOUR EFFORTS TO ENLIGHTEN THE WORLD WITH THIS REPORT, I DO RECOMMEND AND SOLICITATE THE MARVOLOUS ASPECTS TOWARDS SUCCESS AND GENIOUSNESS.

MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR EFFORTS.

Mary Madeline says

Dear Burt,

What a won­der­ful report! Going to school in Nor­way I was encour­age to use imag­i­na­tion through classes in dif­fer­ent arts (sewing, draw­ing, wood­work, jew­elry mak­ing etc.) and music/dance. I know see how for­tu­nate I was to grow up in such envi­ron­ment. Now I live in the US and have chil­dren off my own and they don’t get the same ben­e­fits I received. So I have had to com­pen­sate the best I can with hav­ing plenty of paint and col­or­ing pen­cils (I am also an artist) and telling sto­ries from my own imag­i­na­tion and let my chil­dren help me tell them. There is also the game I play with them off and on; I hide a toy and they have to guess (use intu­ition) on where it is in the room. (I have them close their eyes, visu­al­ize the room and then sense where it might be).
Thank You ~ look for­ward to read­ing more about this.

Love,

Rev. Mary Made­line
http://www.toolboxforemotionalmastery.com

John says

This is a very good arti­cle although I am form Ire­land the edu­ca­tion here supresses chil­dren. Over the last year or so every noght before my chil­dren go to bed I sim­ply ask them waht they can by the reply ANYTHING YOU WNAT TO BE there has been an amaz­ing chamge in their attidude. My older child has become very con­fi­dent and this was con­firmed by his tea­chet. It was vey sat­is­fy­ing to hear this . Its amaz­ing how the lit­tle things are so pow­er­ful. Great arti­cle again.

Kind Regards
John

Bill Burden says

Burt,
Your views on improv­ing edu­ca­tion are inter­est­ing. I am very dis­il­lu­sioned with our present school sys­tem and I feel that indi­vid­u­als should wake up and real­ize that they are respon­si­ble for prepar­ing their chil­dren for adult­hood. The gov­ern­ment is inca­pable of doing any­thing other than cre­at­ing a larger more all encom­pass­ing ver­sion of its self. Steer­ing fam­i­lies toward inde­pen­dence
and under­stand­ing is an hon­or­able mis­sion. I wish you well.
Bill Burden

Lise says

Hello Burt,
Thank you so much for the Genious Dip report, very inter­est­ing also for us who live in Europe to observe what they are doing here in schools and nurs­eries. I myself have a 4 year old grandaugh­ter and my daugh­ter and i are very aware of how the nurs­ery where she is at the moment is teach­ing her, Fre­quently my daugh­ter have to ques­tion the man­ner the nurs­ery treats the young ones.its very impor­tant that par­ents them­selves take part in their chil­drens edu­ca­tion and fol­low up. In todays world when mate­r­ial gains is more impor­tant than the well­fare of the future gen­er­a­tion i am glad that there are peo­ple like you and many oth­ers that are send­ing out this “be aware sig­nal”, because the way its going here in Europe and as you say in the US is that we will not have many Geniouses to enjoy. So lets do the best we can, us who are aware. Best wishes to all Lise

Yvonne says

Thank you for shar­ing the knowl­edge. I now can give to my grand­daugh­ter what i did not give to my chil­dren. When you know how to give you can receive. All three of my chil­dren, ages 22, 36, 37 have the abil­ity to use their sixth sense but my grand­daugh­ter is even higher. Her vibe is strong and she can sense even when the phone rings when one of us are call­ing. With the infor­ma­tion you have given I can nur­ture her cor­rectly. Thank you so much!

marylin says

Dear Burt

not only have I read you doc­u­ment and briefly read some of the com­ments i totally agree with all of what you are say­ing. I am a sin­gle mother of two girls and they are at an age where they i feel have lost their genius inside them and just set­tled with the norm which as their mother feel their poten­tial is far more than what they are set­tling for. In our school sys­tem there is alot of money for first nations if they are diag­nosed with some sort of problem(learning dis­ablity) so because the edu­ca­tion sys­tems need money for the schools they intre­grate this money into the school mean while our first nations stu­dents are labelled disabled/problem stu­dents, which i feel from this point on shuts the stu­dents down because some if not all feel they are beyond help and in turn, turn to drugs and alco­hol and in real­ity become prob­lem chil­dren youth and young adults with an addic­tion added to their pro­file and hear we go again exaust­ing the men­tal health dol­lars to fig­ure out how to help them when all they needed was the lessons you talked on Instill empa­thy encour­age visu­al­iza­tion and intu­ition. i love read­ing this and i am a true believer in its never to late. i will talk to my girls on what i read and learned Thank you so much.
when i first started read­ing i had tears in my eye, so some emo­tion came up and was let go because of the healer in me.

Duane says

Greet­ings Burt,
I’m becom­ing a big­ger fan of yours by the day. I have the “Amer­i­can Monk Mind­box” and have found it priceless.

Now you are tack­ling yet another long over­looked prob­lem, at least here in the US (and world­wide from feed­back I’ve been get­ting lately).

Since I was in my 20’s I’ve min­i­mized the value of edu­ca­tion. Don’t mis­un­der­stand — edu­ca­tion is vital. We all need to know the basics of readin’ ritin’ an’ rith­matic. How­ever, in other areas, schools are supres­sive. They teach how to be just like every­one else and tend to drive stu­dents towards “get­ting a job.”

There is no empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­ity, in fact, today’s edu­ca­tion tends toward mak­ing every­one look alike, dress alike, think alike and be alike.

It’s about time some­one made some noise about this. I com­mend you.

Duane

Felicidad C. Felicilda, M.D. says

Dear Burt,
You are right. We are train­ing our chil­dren to mem­o­rize rather than to think. We mea­sure intel­li­gence accord­ing to what the child mem­o­rized rather than on what he/she asks. A child asks a lot of ques­tions. He/she also imag­ines a lot and even dra­ma­tize and make believe what he/she imag­ines. But teach­ers, par­ents some­times will stop the chil­dren from doing this things and will urge them to mem­o­rize. In the end, our chil­dren stops to think. They are only think­ing of the things that are feed to them by the tv, books, mag­a­zines, etc. Cre­ativ­ity and research ori­en­ta­tion are lost.

alec says

Hi Burt
I’m not from AMERICA and from where I’m sit­ting it looks like THEY don’t want an edu­cated race over your side of the water that would be dan­ger­ous hav­ing peo­ple who are able to think for them­selves every­one is taught to think with the left hand side of the brain using the right involves using your feel­ings and this is what they want a soci­ety with no feel­ing towards each other your right we neglect our chil­dren to much and it’s time for a re-think

Katherine says

Hi Burt.… my com­ments will prob­a­bly open up a whole ‘other’ can of worms, but it’s the world as I see it.
I agree that many chil­dren (in the reg­u­lar school sys­tem) today have lit­tle or no imag­i­na­tion or cre­ativ­ity. They play com­puter games non-stop, they only com­mu­ni­cate with text mes­sages — in a lan­guage all their own. Many lack inter­est in the world and act with­out con­science or remorse. Human con­tact and empa­thy is lost. The school sys­tem has let the kids down, but it’s done for a rea­son. We are ALL being ‘herded’ into a way of life where we can be eas­ily manip­u­lated, whether it’s to buy cer­tain prod­ucts, or we’re made to believe some­thing is being done for ‘our own good’. We don’t even real­ize it’s hap­pen­ing. All of us and espe­cially kids, believe (buy into) any­thing on TV, whether it’s on the news or in com­mer­cials and adver­tis­ing. We don’t think for our­selves any­more — just take every­thing at face value. Tak­ing con­trol away from peo­ple — by dumb­ing down — it’s the eas­i­est way to manip­u­late. We are los­ing free­doms, pri­vacy (with chips in every­thing) and our right to choose. And we don’t even ques­tion it! We do NOTHING!! It’s not just the kids — it started with us (the older gen­er­a­tion). It’s a world up side down. But the trav­esty is — we think we can’t do any­thing about it…we believe it’s hopeless.…so it con­tin­ues.
My sis­ter home­schools 3 beau­ti­ful boys. They are the most inter­est­ing, knowl­edge­able (young) humans I know. They are walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dias and seem to be involved and inter­ested in absolutely EVERYTHING!! My only fear is when they have to get uni­ver­sity degrees and will have to go into a school sys­tem they aren’t famil­iar with. What will hap­pen to these beau­ti­ful minds then?!
Thanks Katherine

German says

Dear Burt,

I feel so priv­i­leged and grate­ful in a way to know about the mis­sion you are real­iz­ing to help open the con­sciences of many souls to real­ity all around the planet.

I live in Colom­bia a coun­try where edu­ca­tion is mostly pri­vate and in a way has become just another good busi­ness. I believe some of the fac­tors greatly affect­ing the genius dip in our soci­ety starts by the influ­ence of the media over our chil­dren espe­cially tele­vi­sion that tells them what and how they should act like, what things they should have and wear and what is good and bad. This has led us to an amaz­ing social pres­sure when inter­act­ing to each other at school where judg­ing, crit­i­ciz­ing, and con­di­tion­ing the accep­tance into a group of friends is what con­ver­sa­tions are about. Besides, teach­ers want to be seen as the main author­ity, the ones who know it all; above their knowl­edge capac­ity there is no one else. I see there is too much the­ory and writ­ing what is already writ­ten in the books. Grad­ing is made accord­ing to how accu­rate the answers are about facts, events and dates and hardly ever on pupil’s opin­ions. Assign­ments do not incen­tives inves­ti­ga­tion; it usu­ally becomes a copy-paste from infor­ma­tion found on the inter­net. Prac­tice exer­cises on books are most of the times abstract and do not refer to daily or chal­leng­ing situations.

What to do about, in my hum­ble opin­ion, could be to give music, writ­ing, paint­ing and exer­cis­ing the impor­tance these dis­ci­plines deserve and never grad­ing them.
Under­stand that all the exact sci­ences come from the appre­ci­a­tion of mother nature where every­thing is per­fect and there is no good nor bad and our mis­sion is to work together with the cre­ation of God and not against it or even worst manip­u­lat­ing it.

Thank you so much for your report. I am sure it will be a use­ful tool for many of us.
With lots of appre­ci­a­tion for you and your work,
German

Shirley says

I fully agree with you Burt our schools need to encour­age our chil­dren, their imag­i­na­tion and their intuition.I have one ques­tion what about chil­dren that have been dianosed with fetal aco­hol syn­drome where the cog­ni­tive part of their brain is sup­pose to be effected or com­pletely miss­ing? Is it still pos­si­ble to teach these chil­dren the same teqiniqes.I would love to hear your take on this question.Thank you Shirley.

Avik says

Hi,
The report on the Genius dip has brought into the lime­light what I’ve expe­ri­enced through my life. Right now, at the age of 21, I can clearly relate to the dip that comes about. At a young age, I remem­ber the frame of mind where noth­ing was impos­si­ble. That state of mind was one open and eager. But as time passes and one becomes older, the fac­tors of life affect one so much, that one strays and for­gets the ini­tial capac­ity of the mind. As a child, I could effort­lessly show my tal­ents in a wide cir­cle of fields, but as I grew up, that enthu­si­asm and energy has been slowly fad­ing away. It is ripe time that some­thing is done.
Hail­ing from India, I’ve read about the old cus­toms of Guru-Shishya(Teacher-disciple) rela­tion­ship and the teach­ing cus­toms of old where every stu­dent would be looked after in all aspects and helped to grow com­pletely.
But in the 21st cen­tury, the processes and cus­toms vary, and this is caus­ing a lot of harm to a lot of chil­dren.
I’m look­ing for­ward to your reports and solu­tions.
I believe that if some­thing can be done at the root lev­els, it’ll change the world for the better.

Nadia Marmach says

What a co-incidence!
I have just com­pleted out­lin­ing a book on the edu­ca­tion of chil­dren, explain­ing and using imag­i­na­tion. The web page is under con­struc­tion and I am in the edit­ing phase(s) of the book.
Now if you are on Burt Goldman’s site, you will under­stand my influ­ences as a grad­u­ate of The Silva Method, Advanced Silva, and more, plus The Gold­man Method and Amer­i­can Monk.
We toiled for over 20years, suc­cess­fully, to keep the cre­ativ­ity in our 5 chil­dren (and many oth­ers along the way), in spite of the edu­ca­tion sys­tem here in Aus­tralia. In 2007 I began to teach other par­ents how to teach their chil­dren to read. I was stopped in my tracks when I dis­cov­ered that by age 5,these chil­dren lacked active imag­i­na­tions and yet were pre­pared to pas­sively absorb dri­vel from TV and film. (not all films of course). When it came to Using their own minds it was ‘hard work’, to be avoided at all cost. The belief sys­tems they had cre­ated to sup­port their actions was the only cre­ative part of the exer­cise.
I know why I feel so pas­sion­ate about this, because I am the prod­uct of just such a cre­ative sti­fling edu­ca­tion.
Thanks for the impe­tus to com­plete and mar­ket the work.
Nadia

Linda says

Great read­ing, I very much believe that chil­dren are led away from their nat­ural abil­i­ties just by liv­ing in todays societies.

Jenny says

Hi, I won­der that no-one men­tions Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf schools which are a world wide phe­nom­ena. They teach chil­dren from pre-school to uni­vesity. Use of imag­i­na­tion and the class teacher’s intu­ition as the main stays of what is the chil­dren need each day. Obvi­ously they fol­low a cur­ricu­lum but every­thing starts from art and music. It is the most cre­ative edu­ca­tion sys­tem in the world today.
The chil­dren who are edu­cated in this sys­tem end up as sta­ble, cre­ative, intel­li­gent and inno­v­a­tive, car­ing human beings with an accept­able that there is more to life than what sci­ence can prove.
I would rec­om­mend that any­one with kinder age chil­dren if all you can afford is one year of a Steiner edu­ca­tion give them the kinder year. It is ALL imag­i­na­tive play.
Par­ents get so hung up on not giv­ing their chil­dren the lat­est toy, DVD, etc that they miss the whole point of child­hood which is to use imag­i­na­tion and not act out stuff they have seen on tv or at the movies.
Dear Burt please explore this avenue of edu­ca­tion. Plus watch Sir Ken Robin­son of TED.com on the edu­ca­tion today.
Thanks
Jenny

Paul says

Burt,
Thank you so much for this amaz­ingly truth­ful and pro­found report. I have long known that edu­ca­tion teach­ing was wrong my own edu­ca­tion saw my hav­ing to con­form to many many changes in how maths was applied yet I fun­da­men­taly knew the four main prin­ci­pals required to gain the answer.
I am adult indigo and it really is true that the child of today are teach­ing us so much. If only we nuture the value of that.
I am 54 years old and spend a lot of time com­mu­ni­cat­ing with chil­dren via the inter­net encour­ag­ing them to stay as close to their nat­ural inti­tu­tive selves and to apply a empathic focus.
I never ever under­stood the value in what I was doing until read­ing your report.
I would be ever so much hap­pier to learn that the new pres­i­dent of your coun­try would value edu­ca­tion and remove these false imprints and destruc­tive laws.
Yet I fear that gov­er­ments are cor­rupt and focus majorly on rob­bing the cit­i­zens of the coun­try.
As the say­ing goes power cor­rupts ulti­mate power cor­rupts ultim­itly.
Bless you for your timely report..
Paul

Godfrey Nash says

Dear Monk,Thanks for your info and your kind­ness, I also feel that the spi­der is a genius ‚no man tells him or her how to build a web. We must tell the child that he or she is a co/creator of his or she world.Man likes to control,after leav­ing the womb he is still afeared,we must step out of the blame game and learn to love everthing.Blessings Godfrey.

Otni says

Hello Burt-the report is very inter­est­ing,
the “1–2-3 combo” is some­thing i agree with 100%- do you(or any­one else) have any ideas how to actu­ally do it?
one more thing-by say­ing that “Less than half of Amer­i­can
teenagers know that the Civil
War took place between 1850
and 1900″ aren’t you falling to the same trap of mem­o­riz­ing dry facts?
thank you for shar­ing the impor­tant insights.

Fabrice Tchatchueng says

I’m able to express myself in english,but let me do it in french first:“j’ai été vrai­ment très ravi de lire ces quelques pages sur the genius dip, et tout tes travaux me font plaisir Burt. Je suis enseignant de Tai Chi au Camer­oun, et la visu­al­i­sa­tion est vrai­ment fon­da­men­tale pour l’épamouissement de l’esprit de l’Homme et donc pour le devel­oppe­ment de son genie!” Ok: “I’ve been very pleased to read the genius dip and all your work avail­able to me, I’m very fascinated!(Espacially the young boy with glasses and e=mc2 behind, great laugh and joy …) As a Tai chi teacher, here in Cameroon, I feel it per­fectely right that visu­al­i­sa­tion is the pri­mor­dial key and other things can and most be add, but visu­al­iza­tion first!Thank you for all what you do, Keep going on, we will all help you on the way!
tfabricet@yahoo.fr

Yrjo says

Hi Burt,
Really great report. I think chil­dren should be more in nature. It would help their visu­al­iza­tion. We prac­tise intu­ition at home by let­ting my daugh­ter to guess what names I write. Clas­si­cal music adds also cre­ativ­ity, I have read. Keep on doing good work.

Joy says

(Burt, use spell-check, will you?!)
(Audrey, the report is in PDF for­mat. Look at the upper left area (not of the whole win­dow, just the report itself). You will see a lit­tle blue square that says ‘save a copy’ next to it. Click on the square and it will save a copy of the report to your ‘my doc­u­ments’ or wher­ever you want. If you have a printer, click on the next lit­tle pic­ture of a printer and it will print the report. No need to cut and paste. Most PDF doc­u­ments will not let you alter them at all so you have to save it if you want a copy.)

Now to the report…I know exactly what you are talk­ing about and I am not at all sur­prised that any­one research­ing like Har­vard did found the results they did. I felt it myself when I was in school, a frus­tra­tion with being forced to think and do things in a cer­tain and restrict­ing way. I felt it again when my kids were in school. I could not afford a pri­vate school for them where they might have had more free­dom to learn, but I did what I could at home encour­ag­ing imag­i­na­tive play and going with their ‘gut feel­ings’. One rule we had was that they could not spend all their time play­ing video games. They had to spend time out­side, with no toys, invent­ing games and get­ting fresh air. I taught them all the games I knew for out­doors and set them free to invent their own. I can say that all four of my kids, who are grown now, three with fam­i­lies of their own, are intu­itive and also cre­ative thinkers, so I was able to do that much for them. I would LOVE to see our edu­ca­tional sys­tem over­hauled and revamped. It needs it badly. Right now I am visu­al­iz­ing that the next Pres­i­dent will repeal ‘No Child Left Behind’ imme­di­ately and get a small com­mit­tee of lib­eral edu­ca­tors to come up with some­thing bet­ter.
Peo­ple won­der why our coun­try is show­ing signs of going down­hill. How about today’s young adults? They can’t spell, they don’t know gram­mar or man­ners, they talk in inter­net ‘code’, they can’t add with­out a machine, they know no his­tory or geog­ra­phy (another thing I had to teach my kids myself) and col­leges are adding basic courses in read­ing, math and writ­ing so that the kids can deal with the courses! It does not make sense to dumb down to the kid’s level. They should be get­ting to col­lege already pre­pared to deal with it. I won­der how full the phi­los­o­phy courses are? Or the lit­er­a­ture or art classes? And now we have ‘col­leges’ that are really voca­tional schools. Not that voca­tional pur­suits are any less in sig­nif­i­cance, we also need chefs and med­ical and legal assis­tants and so on. Peo­ple should have the choice to do what they like, with­out any stig­mas attached. We all need all lev­els of employ­ment and plenty of peo­ple are work­ing jobs that don’t pay that well because they CHOSE to. It’s what they have a gift for and enjoy and that’s more impor­tant than the money. We all need a cer­tain level of sub­sis­tence and after that it’s just excess. (Maybe you can tell I’m Native Amer­i­can, with philoso­phies like that!) I do always try to think ahead to the 7th gen­er­a­tion before I do some­thing and I do walk in the other’s moc­casins in order to gain empa­thy and under­stand­ing. I wish I could spread those ideas around the world, it would be bet­ter off.
Any­way, I agree with you, we must DO some­thing and that some­thing should prob­a­bly be bad­ger­ing Con­gress to right the wrong until they do it. They’re there because we put them there and they are sup­posed to be rep­re­sent­ing us, not push­ing their own ideas and play­ing polit­i­cal games. Peo­ple need to speak up. Maybe the answer is to use the inter­net to spread the word and a peti­tion. Then get the news to fol­low it for pub­lic­ity. It could cre­ate a ground swell that can­not be ignored. It’s been used before and worked for other things.
I’m in! Call on me if you need me.

Mira says

Hi Burt,

The report is a reveala­tion to me. I agree partly with the report, how­ever besides edu­ca­tion sys­tem, Cable TV & Inter­net is one more impor­tant rea­son for the Genius Dip.
The kids just want to watch cable TV & Use inter­net more & more in order to stay con­nected with peers. How­ever they have no inten­tion of stay­ing con­nected with the life energy. For stay­ing con­nected they have to med­i­tate & visu­alise which needs time.
Thanks for the Report.

Dr. Eve says

Thanks for shar­ing a great arti­cle!
I love your work!

Dr. Eve***

Nancy Wallace says

I think your insight on this topic is right on. I have an orga­ni­za­tion (501c non-profit) Child’s Mir­a­cle Mind and another leg of it will be The School of Now, which is a whole dif­fer­ent way of teach­ing. I would like you to be on one, if not both of my inter-net radio shows. If you go to my web-site http://www.nancyspsychicresources.com you will be able to get all the info you need, plus you can lis­ten to some of my inter­views. I am so very glad that you are not affraid to talk about our gov­ern­ment and our school sys­tems, which I believe both need to be re-done. Take care and keep up the good work. I thank you. Nancy

tehila says

I would like to express my grat­i­tude to god for peo­ple like you I am impressed by your drive and effort to share thank you
about the genius dip
I absolutely agree a few years a go my very gifted spir­i­tual teacher told me that there is a way to stim­u­late baby intel­li­gence I on got the inter­net and found gen­tel­revoulu­tion .com and got the books listed
how to teach your baby how to read.
I have two daugh­ters and I per­son­ally don’t have the abil­ity to com­pare them to chil­dren how ever peo­ple who do tell me how smart they are for there age
I always said never under­es­ti­mate baby’s intelligence

may good give you health, strenght and prosperity

tehila

Audrey says

I think this report is impor­tant and i’d like to for­ward it to my cousin who is a school teacher who is look­ing for ways to chal­lenge kids to recon­nect with their nat­ural, god given abil­i­ties. Par­tic­u­larly the last cou­ple of pages. the report was extremely cum­ber­some for me, as it moved sooo slowly and i couldn’t get it to let me cut and paste those pages. any way those pages could be emailed to me? thank you so much

Patricia says

Hi I agree with your report. I used to work with kids
who joined my after-school art program/summer art camp. Nowa­days it seems that schools “dumb down” to pass every­one thru the sys­tem On the flip sid are these crazy par­ents, my Music Teacher friend calls them “Heli­copter” par­ents because they are so in your face about their genius kids…and very severe about learn­ing: lan­guages, art, music, dance…the kids are so struc­tured they dont know how to just ‘play”. I had to teach kids in my pro­gram how to just look at things and imag­ine them as some­thing. ie: a stick could become a snake or a croc­o­dile. The kids knew noth­ing of street games, like we played grow­ing up. So while the schools are offer­ing just struc­ture and cookie cut­ter edu­ca­tion, the par­ents really go the other way and indeed they see their kids as genius-but only in the way the par­ent him or her­self would define it. OK I think I gave more than enough of my thoughts on this. I do believe in Indigo. I have 3 kids myself, all geniuses of course, but the mid­dle one is that sen­si­tive one…and I believe the chil­dren are evolv­ing. The brain is evolv­ing because our world is evolv­ing. Again, I have shared my piece; and it is only opin­ion and noth­ing more than an opin­ion. I have gone thru your pro­gram as I have made many poor choices based on beliefs about myself that now at 50 I strive so hard to cor­rect. We just have to acknowl­edge our own genius; and try to share with each other. Thank you for this and your “Gold­man Method” I highly rec­om­mend it; and I use the New Moon medi­a­tion among oth­ers and my life is slowly mak­ing sense. So I would be happy to know you are doing some­thing for kids. Bless you, Burt. Sin­cerely, Patricia

Luís says

Some­one once said: “give me the son of a pas­tor and I will make him a doc­tor”.
Before Birth our cells con­tain the full poten­tial, our cells depend­ing on the phys­i­cal space that they are thus become in brain tis­sue, mus­cle, bone, etc.…
After the birth we are also a bit like: depend­ing on the envi­ron­ment around us also be taught to use our brain poten­tial of cer­tain way and so keep (although it can be mod­i­fied more or less eas­ily).
What we have read about it recall the great impor­tance of praise in edu­ca­tion: it is a recog­ni­tion of the utmost importance.

Jila says

Dear Burt,

I extremely agree with you and I know you can develop your­self in any age of your life. Just you have to believe on yourself.

Linus Rylander | Lemonarian Life says

Hey Burt, very enlight­en­ing report. As I’m only four­teen so far, this was a real wake up and as I’ve already been on this path (i.e. study­ing LoA, man­i­fest­ing, etc) since age 9 I will do my best to pre­serve what­ever capa­bil­i­ties I have.

I’ll make sure to blog about this tomor­row, to “awaken” a few more souls.

Thanks man,
//Linus

Ariel says

I really believe thet chil­dren needs atten­tion to encour­age them to dream. Gone are the days when par­ents will read fairy tales before their chil­dren sleeps because of their busy sched­ules. It is time for par­ents to train and have more time for their chil­dren. With mind con­trol the best of these chil­dren will come out and cre­ative cit­i­zens of the country.

Nancy says

Hi Burt.….….I love your work, and would like to sign-up for your courses, I have a lim­ited income at the moment and was won­der­ing if you would con­sider a pay­ment plan a lit­tle more afford­able than the one you have now?
Always bless­ings!
Nancy

cat says

thankyou for post­ing the video from the TED con­fer­ence; it con­firmed what I have sensed for such a long time; I am a lan­guage teacher in pri­mary school and expe­ri­ence first hand the impor­tance of the prin­ci­pals you have out­lined in your report..

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