Making of a genius

This fascinating article , is about economics and making of a great economist.

Karen Horn, hits the bull's eye on how the seeds of intellectual curiosity is sowed in a kid. It acts a "pre-analytic cognitive act":

"The situation was, however, altogether different for Vernon Smith, whose parents left school at 14. His father provided the work ethic and can-do knowledge, while his mother was active in political and social affairs in the community. Financial problems forced the family to practise self-sufficiency on a farm for a couple of years. The situation of James Buchanan was similar to Smith's. His family lived on a farm throughout his youth. His father had gone through two years of university training ("and played football"). His mother, however, had been a schoolteacher. She was endowed with an exemplary work ethic and a voracious intellectual appetite. Both character traits, as it seems, have left an important and lasting impact on the son.
Even without much schooling, therefore, parents can provide their children with intellectual appetite and a motivation for achievement. Discussions at the dinner table, or other regular family gatherings, are extremely important — and it doesn't matter much how high-powered the arguments are. What is crucial is that the awareness is raised-awareness about the importance of certain topics relating to economics and economic policy, to anything that touches social questions and of course the appetite to learn more about them.
This is an experience that most laureates share. Smith was fascinated to discover at college that the topics that had been debated at the dinner table were actually "things you could study, that it needn't be only a matter of opinion. You could actually base your opinions on analysis, on investigation, on some kind of understanding about how society and how the economy work.
Worldviews also play a role in instigating academic research. As Schumpeter put it, worldviews enter the "pre-analytic cognitive act" or "vision" that "supplies the raw material for the analytic effort". To some extent, a person's worldview is usually shaped at home, in the family, actively and passively, perhaps also during dinner table conversations. This "initial endowment" may however fade away as new influences come in later in life."

This reminds me of Alison Gopnik's new book Philosophical Baby , she writes on the similar lines on what parents can do even at a younger age:

"Babies and young children are designed to explore, and they should be encouraged to do so.

The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork. Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone. (Imagine how much money we can save on “enriching” toys and DVDs!)
But what children observe most closely, explore most obsessively and imagine most vividly are the people around them. There are no perfect toys; there is no magic formula. Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play."

Going back to the original article, the importance of consilience in economics:

"As Friedrich August von Hayek said, An economist who is only an economist is likely to become not only a nuisance but a positive danger.
Economics must also again be understood as an encompassing social science, deeply ploughing the rich common ground with philosophy, sociology, politics and history. The use of formal mathematical methods should certainly be part of this approach — but not their long practised senseless misuse, with many mainstream scholars indulging in an obsession with mathematical virtuosity for its own sake, forgetting to ask the relevant questions. It is only such a cure of technical sobriety and wider perspective that will make economics a truly worthwhile avenue of research again, interesting for the individual scholar and useful for society as a whole." 

I am not an economist, but I am fascinated by the profound impact it has on defining our lives. I have been trying to get atleast a rudimentary understanding of what economics is all about. So far, its been a great awakening and fun but it has left me wondering why economics was never part of kids curriculum in school?