The average trap: genes — talents – opportunities

Markus Hengstschläger presented his new bestseller in Linz: Don’t fall into the average trap and don’t waste a single talent!

„How can we pre­pare for ques­tions of the future which we do not know? Not by striv­ing for our chil­dren to be aver­age or to attract atten­tion. We need peaks and freaks who take new paths.” With point­ed and provoca­tive state­ments the geneti­cist and best-sell­ing author Markus Hengstschläger fas­ci­nat­ed the audi­ence when pre­sent­ing his new book „The aver­age trap: genes — tal­ents — oppor­tu­ni­ties”. Around 290 peo­ple fol­lowed the invi­ta­tion of ACADEMIA SUPERIOR — Insti­tute for Future Stud­ies at VKB Kun­den­fo­rum in Linz, among them a num­ber of well-known peo­ple from pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, and acad­e­mia. „We can­not afford to waste a sin­gle tal­ent, so our edu­ca­tion sys­tem should focus on the strengths of chil­dren rather than their weak­ness­es. Of course, every child has to have a cer­tain amount of gen­er­al edu­ca­tion but an empha­sis should be put on pro­mot­ing tal­ents rather than find­ing weak­ness­es, as is prac­ticed in our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem at the moment.”

Mag. Michael Strugl, pres­i­dent of ACADEMIA SUPERIOR, shared sim­i­lar ideas in his wel­com­ing address: „The aver­age will not help us to cope with the chal­lenges of an unknown future. We need new ways, which our ACADEMIA SUPERIOR is try­ing to show.” Strugl also men­tioned that a lit­tle bit of ACADEMIA SUPERIOR is woven into this new best­seller: Hengstschläger includ­ed the find­ings from some of the dia­logues he led for ACADEMIA SUPERIOR with promi­nent per­son­al­i­ties such as gen­er­al music direc­tor Franz Welser-Möst, coach Hans Pum, quan­tum physi­cist Anton Zeilinger, and for­mer State Opera direc­tor Ioan Hollender.

„Lan­dord” Dr. Albert Wag­n­er, CEO of VKB, was delight­ed that his insti­tute had been cho­sen for this book pre­sen­ta­tion. As pres­i­dent of the foun­da­tion „tal­ents”, which is ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of tal­ents in Upper Aus­tria, find­ing tal­ents is very impor­tant to him, too.