Sunday, April 8, 2012
Argument-Failure of prodigies
Lewis Terman, the creator of the IQ test, did a decades-long study of child achievers and prodigies. He tracked 1500 "exceptionally superior" students into adulthood and found that none of them went on to live exceptional lives, while two students that were rejected for the study won the Nobel prize and two were wold class musicians(91). Similar studies were repeated with the same results leading Ellen Winner to conclude that, "Most gifted children, even most child prodigies, do not go on to become adult creators"(92). How is it possible that exceptional students with high IQs were not exceptional in their careers? Explain how the different environments that the students experienced influenced their genes. How does this relate to a fixed versus growth mindset?
Alex Casino (Alexjcasino@gmail.com)
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In Lewis Terman’s study, both males and females were observed. For the females, the majority of them decided to not pursue a career, and decided to be a “homemaker.” While the majority of the men went on to different careers. However, not all of the subjects achieved “extraordinary” careers (http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10192.aspx). Although the test subjects scored high on the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test, that doesn’t necessarily result in exceeding in a career.
ReplyDeleteThe IQ test measures intelligence, but the big question for most people is: What is intelligence (http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia014.htm)? A person may score over 150 on the IQ test and be considered a genius, but does that mean that they are suitable for life? These students may have been exceptionally brilliant when it came to tests like the IQ test, but they may perform differently in everyday life. An Emotional Quotient (EQ) score shows how successful a person will do in life. It goes beyond the ability to take a test, it shows how people are able to relate and interact with others (http://mqjeffrey.hubpages.com/hub/Intelligence-IQ-vs-Emotional-Intelligence-EQ). Although an individual may have a high IQ score, they may lack when it comes to interactions with other people.
Not only does the EQ test play an important role on how the students perform in their careers, but so does the environment. David Shenk explains how Rod Cooper and John Zubek proved how environment can affect an individual’s intelligence. In 1958 the two scientists “devised what they thought was a classic nature/nurture experiment about rat intelligence” (Shenk 27). The scientists had two groups of rats: “Maze-bright” rats and “Maze-dull” rats. These rats were then split into three groups: one group was in an environment that stimulated both their bodies and minds (by colorful walls, exercise, and numerous toys), one group was in an environment that had an average amount to stimuli (a few toys with ordinary walls), and the final group and a lacking environment that had no stimuli (only food and water pans) (Shenk 28).It was expected, based on the idea that genes affect intelligence alone with little influence from the environment, that the “Maze-bright” rats would have much fewer errors than the “Maze-dull” rats. However, after the rats went through the maze it was discovered that both “Maze-dull” and “Maze-bright” rats that were in the highly stimulated environment performed equally well. While both “Maze-dull” and “Maze-bright” rats that were in the lacking environment performed equally poorly. The only difference seen in the rats were the rats in the average environment: both types of rats had roughly the predicted outcome (Shenk 29). This shows that environment has a very large impact on the outcome of intelligence. Although the students may have been in an environment that highly stimulated their test-taking skills along with their “intelligence,” the environment lacked in the necessary stimuli to produce the ability to communicate and relate to others. This is also shown in the GxE model. It shows that genes, proteins, and the environment affect each other (Shenk 31). The environment provides stimuli for certain genes to be activated to code certain proteins. The environment that the students grew up in was to do the best that they could on a test. Their environment stimulated their ability to “be intelligent.” But, the environments were lacking social stimuli, being things like colorful walls like the rats had or interactions with other people through jobs and having to solve problems. These lacking environmental stimuli affected the students’ EQ, and in turn lowered their success in a career.
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Alexis Bauer, abauer9182@gmail.com
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ReplyDeleteThe environment of the students also affected their mindsets as they grew up. There are two mindsets that students have: fixed and growth. The fixed mindset is the idea that “intelligence is static” (http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset-which-one-are-you/). In which, the person “avoids challenges” and “gives up easily” when they are presented with obstacles. While on the other hand, a growth mindset is the idea that “intelligence can be developed” (http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset-which-one-are-you). These people take on challenges and obstacles and see them as an expansion of the mind. The students in the IQ study most likely had fixed mindsets. Although they were “geniuses,” they lacked the ability to see the experiences in their lives as growing opportunities. The fixed mindset may have helped them do well on an intelligence test, however in the later years of their life the fixed mindset could damage their ability to do well. With a growth mindset, the students would have taken in all the learning experiences they were presented with, which in turn could have increased their EQ. However, since the students most likely had fixed mindsets, these growing opportunities were ignored.
Although a student may be brilliant and have a very high IQ, they may not go on to become a Nobel Prize Winner. They may have grown up in an environment that didn’t stimulate their ability to do well in life, rather than just to do well on tests. Or they could have grown up with a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. Either way, Terman’s test showed that more than genes are at work. It proves that the environment a person grows up in can influence their ability to do well in life.
(Alexis Bauer, abauer9182@gmail.com)
Yes, the students with a naturally high capacity for learning likely had fixed mindsets, and that would explain why they did not do as well in life as they did on their Intelligence Quotient tests. But it is critical to remember that those fixed mindsets must have originated from somewhere within their environment, and that origin usually lies in the students’ incompatibility with their educators’ teaching methods.
ReplyDeleteOur current school system limits all of its students, no matter their learning potential, to the amount of challenge and stimulation that the average child needs to succeed. This is insufficient for children with higher learning potentials, who become bored quickly because they already understand most, if not all, of what the teacher is teaching (http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10316.aspx). If they spend their entire childhoods immersed in this static school environment, in which hardly anything is asked of or given to them, they will probably end up with fixed mindsets. Constantly getting good grades on tests they never studied for drills into their heads the idea that they do not need to learn to succeed, and they get used to doing well without doing work. So later in life, when hard work, learning and a growth mindset are required to succeed, these children never had to learn any of those things, so their potentials are left untapped and wasted. Many become chronic underachievers, and that is very sad. The school system needs to be reformatted to promote a growth mindset, or situations like these will continue to occur.
Now, these students also tend to have a lower Emotional Quotient. Emotional Intelligence is a huge factor in success, if not the definining factor. An EQ test may closer predict a person’s later success, but in the end, EQ testing has the same fatal flaw as IQ testing: It does not allow for neuroplasticity. EQ tests measure one’s natural ability to effectively communicate with and pick up social queues from other people, just as IQ tests measure one’s natural ability to solve academic problems presented in a test format, and just like IQ, EQ can be changed (http://www.ihhp.com/what_is_eq.htm).
Take the case of John Elder Robison: he taught himself how to observe his surroundings and act as if he had a high Emotional Quotient, and yet his EQ would originally have tested disproportionally low. Robinson grew up a very smart, socially awkward kid with Asperger syndrome (an autism spectrum disorder identified by social unawareness and difficulty interacting with others), but as he grew older, he used his intellect to “develop coping strategies” for use when interacting with other people, and “achieve a highly successful life” (Be Different, John E. Robinson). Success does not lie in an arbitrary test measurement, whether it be EQ or IQ. The key is to nurture whatever “gifts” you are given, genetic or environmental, and use them to your best advantage.
(Rachael Affenit, rachael.affenit@comcast.net)