The old idea that child prodigies (神童) “burn themselves” or “overtax their brains” in the early years, therefore, suffer from failure and (at worst) mental illness is just a myth. As a matter of fact, the outstanding thing that happens to bright children is that they are very likely to grow into bright adults. To find this out, 1,500 gifted persons were followed up to their thirty-fifth years with these results: On adult intelligence tests, they scored as high as they did as children. They were, as a group, in good health, physically and mentally. Eighty-four percent of their group were married and seemed content with their life. About 70 percent had graduated from colleges, though only 30 percent had graduated with honors. A few had even flunked out (退学), but nearly half of these had returned to graduate. Of the men, 80 percent were in one of the professions or in business, managerial or semiprofessional jobs. The women who had remained single had offices, business, or professional occupations. The group had published 90 books and 1,500 articles in scientific, scholarly, and literary magazines and had collected more than 100 patents. In a material way they didn’t do badly either. Average income was considerably higher among the gifted people, especially the men, than for the country as a whole, despite their comparative youth when last surveyed. In fact, far from being strange, maladjusted (难以适应) people locked in an ivory tower, most of the gifted were turning their early promises into practical reality. 小题1:The main idea of the passage is __________.
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