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| 'Prince' Rogers Nelson (1958 - 2016) |
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) |
Polymath (is) a person whose expertise spans a significant number of various subject areas. “Renaissance Man” was first recorded in written English in the early 20th century. It is now used to refer to great thinkers living before, during, or after the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man; a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination." (Excerpt from https://en.Wikipedia.org/Polymath)
Polyglot (is) a person who speaks several languages
fluently.
Autodidact (is) a self-taught
person.
***
I am the best teacher I know.
I can say this without false pride, ‘humble bragging’, or misplaced
humility.
I have taught many subjects successfully, usually to what must be the
best student I know.
You also are probably the best teacher you know, for all the same
reasons.
The bold statements made above are true about most people, given a simple
condition: That pupil and student must be the same person, you (or in my case, me.)
We are the best at teaching ourselves because we know our own strengths
and weaknesses, we know what we ‘know’, and what we do not know, and we
understand what we do not understand. That makes each of us suitably qualified
to teach ourselves almost anything we care to learn, almost.
If you or anyone you know has a hobby or a pastime, one on which a much
time has been invested, it is probable that that person taught that hobby to himself or herself, and enjoyed the
teaching and the learning process immensely, thus significantly adding to their
level of expertise and facility.
Now, I can also state that I am an equally good teacher with others,
again, the best that I know. I say this, too, without too much bragging, humble
or not, because I know it to be true, and those who I have taught also know it.
However, I cannot say it for you, because
only you (or your students) would know whether you are a good teacher of others.
Many are not, especially among
those with high IQs.
In fact, though knowledge is the acknowledged ‘coin of the realm’ for
sentient species the world over (and at present, we are the only ones we know that all into that category), we are generally and as a group not very efficient
at passing on that knowledge to one another. It happens eventually, but not
very efficiently, and certainly not without some pain and frustration felt by
both the teacher and the (hapless?) student.
There are several possible reasons human beings are generally (but not
always) not very efficient as teachers. Some of those reasons are impatience,
ego, temper, temperament, lack of empathy, lack of sympathy, and most importantly, little or no understanding of the
learning process, often a symptom of the highly intelligent, since high IQ
individuals who may not be aware of how they acquired the very knowledge they
are attempting to pass on in the first place.
Because of these and other roadblocks, many people fare better with
themselves as both teacher and student, even exceptionally bright-to-brilliant
ones.
Most people tend to do well when they teach themselves.
Above average people do even better, with an exponentially greater degree
of success.
The most prolific among that select number do not stop at teaching himself
or herself merely one subject. Their thirst for new skills and new knowledge is
not limited to one field of endeavor, so they often gain an equal or greater
expertise in many others, some interrelated, and some among several widely differing
disciplines.
The greatest minds known to human history, the very greatest geniuses our species has yet produced, have, without
equivocation, all been largely if not completely self-taught.
The ‘why’ of this fact is obvious: Genius cannot be externally absorbed,
taught or obtained from an outside source. Genius beyond intellect is only accomplished by an almost arcane, deeply
personal internal process, one that
begins and ends with both student and pupil self-contained in one entity. It
has never been accomplished any other way.
To be sure, ‘external’ teachers such as music instructors may start the
process; they may guide the first tentative, early steps on the road to the
acquisition of skill and knowledge, but the final level of achievement beyond the ordinary, where most pupils plateau,
peak, or drop away, can only be achieved alone.
This journey, for some, is, by necessity, a long and lonely one, for
others, it can be accomplished as quickly, painlessly, and as naturally as
intuition. However, the end of the journey is always the same for those few who
can achieve such heights. For a small subset of that august group, being fluently across many languages adds
another dimension to both the intellectual achievement, and the level of cultural
variety in their experience.
The final product is often a lifetime of brilliant intellectual,
artistic, and scientific revelation, not only for the individual, but also for all
humanity, however long it takes the rest of the world to recognize that genius.
The most profoundly developed minds of the species are self-taught (autodidact) in several disciplines and
fields (polymath). The names of some
of these individuals, Such as Da Vinci and Tesla, are well known. Others are
not, either because their work has been largely forgotten outside of their fields
of endeavor, or because of the highly specialized nature of those fields.
