Anonymous wrote:13:39 again. I think any easy analogy to what I'm saying is athletic ability. Everyone can practice hard and get stronger/faster, but not everyone has the innate skill to play professional-level sports. Not every little girl can grow up to be Abby Wambach, and not every little boy can grow up to be Aaron Rodgers, no matter how much practice time they put in. It seems the same logic applies to intellectual fields and to intelligence generally.

I agree 100%.

Another spin on this could be that someone with an innate ability but without the skills of persistence and resilience could very likely be outdone by another person without the same degree of innate ability but with a much higher degree of persistence, resilience, etc. etc. This is real life and it happens all the time. This is one big reason that IQ scores don't correlate closely with achievement later in life in my opinion.

I think this is a real shame. If every child isn't given every opporunity to learn the skills necessary to meet their full potential (curricula as well as organization, persistence, etc) than our school systems have failed. It happens all the time. The gifted kids have a huge amount of potential to make a great difference in society during their lifetimes. Most will not. And that is fine....no one owes anyone anything. But if talents and passions are nurtured than the sky is the limit for these children. It is a tradgedy that society turns our backs on the very children that we will rely on when they are adults to lead and innovate for the greater good. I'm saddened that there is no funding at all for gifted education on the federal level and no funding in most states either. These children are left to manage their differences and do the best they can and after all, they are just children and that can't be asked of any child.

13:39 again. I think any easy analogy to what I'm saying is athletic ability. Everyone can practice hard and get stronger/faster, but not everyone has the innate skill to play professional-level sports. Not every little girl can grow up to be Abby Wambach, and not every little boy can grow up to be Aaron Rodgers, no matter how much practice time they put in. It seems the same logic applies to intellectual fields and to intelligence generally.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oops, I did misread. But it wasn't wrong -- it was "is," LOL! Which I read as "with" Sorry about that!!

LOL! I thought I was losing my mind. I kept reading over and over trying to figure out what I had missed.

Same experience, LOL, and the bolding really threw me because, actually, that's what I was fixated on and probably why I missed the preposition!

Where we may really disagree is whether schooling is geared toward the educational needs of those in the middle. I kinda think it's geared to sort and rank and then to dramatically narrow the competency/curiosity/intellectual ambition of most people. But that's a topic for a different day.

I don't believe we disagree about that at all. While I did say that schooling is geared towards the middle I didn't mean to imply that the curriculums are what they should be. I just think the it's an even bigger problem for those on either end on the curve and if accomodations aren't offered the results can be painful.

I really like the diagram from this blog post. I'm not posting the link because of the topic per se. I just posting because the diagram speaks to what is wrong with education in this country for all kids. It's what education is and what it should be.....

http://themorechild.com/2010/12/08/race-to-nowhere-counterpoint/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what's useful/right about thinking of intelligence as fixed and innate?

How about that it's largely consistent with empirical evidence? We've all met people who are quick learners, highly adept at what they do, and are just generally "smart" and "intelligent." And similarly, we've all met people who are just plain slow. Yes, the smart people can suffer degradation of abilities, and the slow people can make up for lack of innate ability through hard work and practice. But it certainly seems that everyone starts life at some fixed or innate set-point, which can be moderated up or down only incrementally through experience. It's basically the nature-as-modified-by-nurture concept, which seems pretty commonly accepted.

I'm a NP, so maybe I'm rehashing a point you already discussed. If so, forgive me.

My experience is that babies and preschoolers are little learning machines and you watch some get revved up (by their parents or environments) and others get shut down. While I'd like to think that my kid is really special, I noticed that other kids, approached in the way I approach her, were capable of similar responses, insights, etc. That said, I don't interact with a random sample of kids.

At any rate, I see more differentiation in intelligence as kids age, which makes me less inclined to think that intellectual differences are primarily innate. I believed more in IQ when I taught college. Once I started hanging out with preschoolers, I became more of a skeptic!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oops, I did misread. But it wasn't wrong -- it was "is," LOL! Which I read as "with" Sorry about that!!

LOL! I thought I was losing my mind. I kept reading over and over trying to figure out what I had missed.

Same experience, LOL, and the bolding really threw me because, actually, that's what I was fixated on and probably why I missed the preposition!

Where we may really disagree is whether schooling is geared toward the educational needs of those in the middle. I kinda think it's geared to sort and rank and then to dramatically narrow the competency/curiosity/intellectual ambition of most people. But that's a topic for a different day.

Anonymous wrote:So what's useful/right about thinking of intelligence as fixed and innate?

How about that it's largely consistent with empirical evidence? We've all met people who are quick learners, highly adept at what they do, and are just generally "smart" and "intelligent." And similarly, we've all met people who are just plain slow. Yes, the smart people can suffer degradation of abilities, and the slow people can make up for lack of innate ability through hard work and practice. But it certainly seems that everyone starts life at some fixed or innate set-point, which can be moderated up or down only incrementally through experience. It's basically the nature-as-modified-by-nurture concept, which seems pretty commonly accepted.

I'm a NP, so maybe I'm rehashing a point you already discussed. If so, forgive me.

Anonymous wrote:Oops, I did misread. But it wasn't wrong -- it was "is," LOL! Which I read as "with" Sorry about that!!

LOL! I thought I was losing my mind. I kept reading over and over trying to figure out what I had missed.

Anonymous wrote:"Wrong" was the word I was focussed on. You finally got to the point of acknowledging that there were alternative ways of looking at intelligence and asked why I thought your way was the wrong way. I gave three reasons why and asked you what you thought was right about your way. No reading comprehension problem here.

I guess I may have the problem then.

There is nothing right/useful about thinking that intelligence is fixed and innate. That is why I said it was wrong.

This is a completely separate issue though than what I've been talking about. That is that IQ tests are the best tools we have at this moment in time to indentify children at risk. Children at risk are those with delays, learning disabilities, giftedness, etc. Children with some type exception to the rule that are far enough from the norm that accomodations are needed to meet their educational needs. Most curriculums are designed to meet the needs of those down the middle. I'm not saying this to infer that children down the middle would not benefit from an enriched experience. I'm simply saying that most curriculums are designed to meet the needs of the children down the middle and not the 2% on either end of the curve.

Oops, I did misread. But it wasn't wrong -- it was "is," LOL! Which I read as "with" Sorry about that!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: What's wrong is thinking of intelligence as a fixed, innate ability, instead of something that develops in a context.

1. It's counterproductive for the people deemed less than highly intelligent to the extent that it is used to argue that they don't need/benefit from enriched educational experiences. (e.g. the "he'll be fine" type commentary seen here).
2. It's counterproductive for the people deemed highly intelligent to the extent that (a) it leads to risk aversion (see Dweck and Bronson) and/or (b) it de-emphasizes the role of/need for effort/persistence/resilience.
3. It's inconsistent with what science, increasingly, seems to be telling us about how the mind develops and how genes work.

So what's useful/right about thinking of intelligence as fixed and innate?

A follow up to my clarification:

1. All children need and benefit from enriched education experiences. I've never said otherwise.
2. I think it's important to identify advanced learners so that they can be sure to learn the value of persistence, effort, and resilience. If they are not identified they may not learn these things in a regular classroom because effort, persistence, and resilience aren't necessary when the curriculum is not challenging. Risk aversion is a really problem for these kids but again, if they are in an appropriate environment and their social and emotional differences are managed appropriately by educators that are knowledgable about this population this problem can be managed.
3. It may be inconsistent but as I said before it is the best tool we have at this time to make intelligent choices about people.

"Wrong" was the word I was focussed on. You finally got to the point of acknowledging that there were alternative ways of looking at intelligence and asked why I thought your way was the wrong way. I gave three reasons why and asked you what you thought was right about your way. No reading comprehension problem here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: What's wrong is thinking of intelligence as a fixed, innate ability, instead of something that develops in a context.

1. It's counterproductive for the people deemed less than highly intelligent to the extent that it is used to argue that they don't need/benefit from enriched educational experiences. (e.g. the "he'll be fine" type commentary seen here).
2. It's counterproductive for the people deemed highly intelligent to the extent that (a) it leads to risk aversion (see Dweck and Bronson) and/or (b) it de-emphasizes the role of/need for effort/persistence/resilience.
3. It's inconsistent with what science, increasingly, seems to be telling us about how the mind develops and how genes work.

So what's useful/right about thinking of intelligence as fixed and innate?

You misread my post. See the bolded word that I think you missed.

Anonymous wrote: What's wrong is thinking of intelligence as a fixed, innate ability, instead of something that develops in a context.

1. It's counterproductive for the people deemed less than highly intelligent to the extent that it is used to argue that they don't need/benefit from enriched educational experiences. (e.g. the "he'll be fine" type commentary seen here).
2. It's counterproductive for the people deemed highly intelligent to the extent that (a) it leads to risk aversion (see Dweck and Bronson) and/or (b) it de-emphasizes the role of/need for effort/persistence/resilience.
3. It's inconsistent with what science, increasingly, seems to be telling us about how the mind develops and how genes work.

So what's useful/right about thinking of intelligence as fixed and innate?

Anonymous wrote:Wow, you really don't get it. We hypothesize the existence of innate/static intellectual ability or capacity that's distributed throughout the population along a bell shaped curve. We then create a test and tweak it until we get it to produce a bell-shaped curve of results when given to a sufficiently large and randomized population. That doesn't validate our initial hypothesis. Arguably, IQ is an artifact of the test rather than something the test measures.

I posted a lot on this yesterday, but don't have much time today. Basically, I agree with this poster.

First the IQ test is a construct with some flaws. There's lots of disagreement about what it should measure - executive function? Processing speed? Or something else. Plus, there's tons of disagreement about what terms like "executive function" even mean, or how it works.

Add to this the fact that we test for executive function, processing speed and working memory in ways that require math/spatial or verbal skills, which favors kids who early on developed a passion for math/verbal things, and therefore put in more hours on them.

Let's try to remain civil shall we?

Anways, I do get it. We will always need some way of making intelligent decisions about people and currently IQ testing is one of the best tools we have to determine innate ability. Other measures have not been proven as effective and are even more prone to problems of fairness and validity.

We're not all the same; we have different skills and abilities. What's wrong is thinking of intelligence as a fixed, innate ability, instead of something that develops in a context.