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[quote=Anonymous]Interesting quote -- thanks for posting it!  (Although, in case you don't know, lots of people think Murray's work on IQ is really racist.)

But I think he sells all kids (and/or good teachers) short in the sense that well-constructed assignments can be challenging but not overwhelming for kids at a variety of different levels.

While ITA that intellectual humility (or maybe what I'd call a form of intellectual honesty -- being very aware of what you don't know) is crucial to the development of wisdom, I don't think that such humility comes from teachers being dissatisfied with a student's best work or from a demanding curriculum or from the experience of feeling incompetent.  I think it comes from grappling with difficult issues and from treating your first "best take" as a launching pad for your next "best take."  Basically, it involves an emphasis on learning and understanding as a continual process rather than as a finished product that meets or doesn't meet some official standard.  And it requires people to be self-critical.  So the attitude isn't "I can't do this" but "I worked hard to get here, but, having gotten here, I now see how I could do so much more/better."

If you don't learn to love the process and only seek the extrinsic reward, you're unlikely to make the most of what your intellect has to offer.  And, to circle back to my first point, lots of kids (regardless of their IQs) could (and should) be taught in ways that encourage them to love the process of learning.  That's not a form of pedagogy that should be reserved for gifted kids.

Murray would call this educational romanticism and maybe if we were at a point where most people were firing on all cylinders, intellectually speaking, he'd be right.  But if we really are using only about 10% of our brainpower it seems like even "average" kids could do what "gifted" kids can do if we taught them in ways that sparked them to use more of the mental capacity available to them.  [/quote]

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