Writes David Brooks, in "What Happens to Gifted Children" (NYT).
[W]e need to put intelligence in its place. We need to value it and put precocious children in settings where they are nurtured and stretched. But we don’t want to overvalue it.... When you look at who really achieves great things, you notice that most of them were not prodigies. They didn’t wow people at age 18, but over the course of their adulthood they found some deep interest in something, and they achieved mastery. Many of society’s great contributors didn’t have an easily identifiable extraordinary ability; they had the right mixture of slight advantages and character traits that came together in the right way....
This reminded me of something I read a few days ago, this 1968 interview with Bob Dylan's parents. His father said:
He was, I would say, a very loveable, very unusual child. People would go out of their way to talk with him, to ask about him - they just loved him, I think we were the only ones who would not agree that he was going to be a very famous person one day. Everyone said that this boy is going to be a genius, he was going to be this or that. Everyone said that, not just family. Then he would sing Accentuate The Positive like other children would sing Mary Had A Little Lamb, they would say that this boy was brilliant. I didn't pay too much attention to this, because I figured any kid could learn it if he heard it often enough. He learned this from the radio; he was four years old....
His mother said:
He was a gorgeous child who just exuded personality. He had very blond hair. I put ribbons in his hair up to a year old. I used to say to him, ''Bobby, you should have been a girl.” Here is a photograph with oil painting over it. He had gorgeous hair, like a halo. Here's a picture taken on his fourth birthday, everything had to match, all his clothes just had to be just so. He was clean. He didn't get dirty....
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Johnny Mercer wrote that song,and his recording 1945 my favorite.
I didn't realize so many people had done covers of that song. I always thought it was a Bing Crosby song, which is my favorite version.
Expectations, Equity, and Inclusion with achievement (i.e. performance-based diversity). Novel, but practical in a progressively monarchic liberal culture.
Precocious children need to be nurtured because it is the right thing to do. If they end up creating something marvelous for society, good. However, that can't be the motivator. It's easy to overlook the gifted and shrug: They'll be alright. Mostly they will, but what they and we have lost along the way can't be counted.
not celebrated but enjoying himself and paying the bills....
Here Brooks describes himself.
Mozart.
There was a great Herman Hesse story called "Beneath the Wheel" about a kid like this.
The thing about highly intelligent people is that other people have very little that they can offer to bend them to their will, and they are often lonely, as well. Might as well marry a woman who is pretty and kind, because finding an equal is hopeless. They might go for money, but they don't really need money. The best that you can offer them is work that is interesting. This guy made the mistake of thinking that he should become a doctor just because he could do the academic work.
"while intelligence matters, other things also matter a lot"
Duh.
But we also undervalue intelligence in the sense that we tend to ascribe school quality, job performance, income levels and social mobility, health outcomes, etc. etc., to lots of factors without controlling for the obvious one.
Dylan's mom said..
I put ribbons in his hair up to a year old. I used to say to him, ''Bobby, you should have been a girl.”
in today's Brave New World.. She would have:
a) chemically castrated him..
b) filled him full of estrogen..
c) turned his dick into a "vagina", and chopped off his balls..
and
d) wondered WHY she never amounted to ANYTHING
I was steered into the GATE program early in elementary school, and I feel like the program exposed me to subjects and allowed exploration in a way that truly enriched me. I would have been bored in class if not for that and teachers that allowed me to read after finishing class work. Although I don't really ever get bored. I can always daydream!
Anyway, that set up is just to frame this complaint. California stopped the Gifted and Talented Education program a few years ago. And you know why. It was too white. Same reason they got rid of AP courses for high schoolers. This is a crappy time in history to be above average unless you live in a place that allows vouchers or your parents can afford private school. Public education is now designed in a away that discourages curiosity and advanced learning. But the unions still get big bucks and pass them back to democrats who then propose higher spending on schools...
Like Althouse's eccentric example, my own good outcome had a lot to do with the good parenting I was blessed to receive. Lack of same is the reason the GATE program is defunct.
“He wound up as a musician — not celebrated but enjoying himself and paying the bills...."
That seems pretty good to me. Maybe he just used his smarts to do the thing he loves in the easiest simplest way possible. Maybe he was smart enough to know that pursuing superstardom is not what would make him happy.
The kids from the gifted program at school seem to have all turned out fine. None appear to be deranged.
"This guy made the mistake of thinking that he should become a doctor just because he could do the academic work."
This is a mistake a lot of people make. The challenges of pre-Med are immense, and it can be very validating to find that you can do well in that demanding and competitive pursuit. Many of the subjects are also very intellectually fulfilling (I'm not looking at you, Organic Chemistry). But at some point you have to ask where this is all heading. Are you going to spend the rest of your life, sitting in a well-lighted room, listening to strangers talk about their rashes? Or are you going to get up every morning ready to take a stranger's life in your hands, and maybe drop it? Either way, what makes you think you can handle it emotionally?
I switched to Physics. Thank God. I'd have made a terrible doctor.
Rather then "gifted" I would use the term "obviously more intelligent" children.
Their biggest problem in growing up is they're around others their own age- but they're not with their equals. They know they're different then most around them, and everyone else knows they're different.
IQ>125 is 5% of the population. >135 1%, and it drops off rapidly from there. If society really wanted them to contribute- we really could start separating them from the educational mainstream at 1st grade. We bus children all over the place for all kinds of reasons. So starting then, on a county level since most counties have a large enough population to do so, and put all of the >125 group in a school where they have to actually compete with others to look smart. And they're going to have to learn to study to keep up.
By 6th grade (actually before, but that's a good age to do it IMHO) boarding schools for the top 5% of the top 5%. It will actually be pretty obvious who they are, but testing will verify it.
Then every year, or every other year, winnow out the top performers and put them together so they stay with near peers.
The lowest performing of these groups separated out will have the educational equivalent of bachelors degrees by age 18. They'll be ready to fill R&D departments anywhere, or pursue training in highly specialized fields. Investing in their education will benefit everyone, most especially them.
The real question is- what do we do with the 16% of the population with an IQ<85. They're virtually untrainable. Can't be relied upon to learn any task, and most often require constant supervision to accomplish anything. Keeping them with the vast middle of the IQ group ensures educational disruption, Pure utilitarians would say cull them. That provides the greatest good for the greatest number. Most of us would be squeamish about doing so. There's societies real problem.
Most of the truly gifted as defined by IQ get by in life. They're able to figure out how to navigate through life's adventures and sometimes unfairness.
I think those of us in that gifted range are doing a little better then imTay's pessimistic views. Took a while, but I found someone to marry, we have 5 children, and they're all doing better economically then we were at their age. What most parent's want for their children.
What? Me in the gifted range? 750M/760V SAT in 1973, 73/69 GCT/ARI. Make of that what you will. I'll also mention that those self diagnosis tests on the internet for Asperger's Syndrome (now on the spectrum) put me there. I suspect the known correlation between the two - HIGH IQ- on the spectrum is because we don't grow up around others like us.
So he took a med school slot that could have been filled by someone who would have used that opportunity to serve the public and wasted it so he could enjoy himself.
Also interesting that Brooks acknowledges a genetic basis for variations in intelligence and the value of IQ testing.
Similar opinions are often accompanied by supremacist labels.
Thank God that Dylan's mom didn't have access to hormone treatments in 1940s and 50s.
I took the classic IQ test sometime in my youth. I don't remember exactly when or where but I do remember my score: 128. I didn't place much value on it then or now. I believe I am smarter than some, less intelligent than others. I credit a lot of my "intelligence" by virtue of being a "speed reader"; I devoured everything I could. No photographic memory or even close. But I remembered quite a bit of what I read.
It has been said that stupid people do not know that they are stupid. That goes for everyone in the IQ range.
Jordan Peterson speaks about the IQ standards for the Armed Forces in the past and IIRC, 80 and below -- they couldn't really use you. Not certain; it has been a while since I heard that lecture. From Wiki: "In its 2002 ruling on the case Atkins v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court outlawed the execution of intellectually-disabled criminals on the grounds that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the 8th Amendment. The designation of mental retardation (or developmental disability) typically requires a measured IQ below 70 or 75."
So between 70 and 80 on the IQ score is sorta a no-man's land. Wherein lies Rich, Inga, Vicki, and Chuck the Banned One. "Stupid people do not know they are stupid"
I have known various people who are "gifted," particularly in math. There is a problem educating these people, since they can do math well, they are given more math. And more math. College is great when you are 17 or 18. Not so great when you are 12 or 15. Really smart kids often come off a weird. Don't know how to dress; don't know how to socialize. Some of them ended up as second-generation math professors. Others were stuck as really smart people with a BA in math while still a teenager, not knowing what to do with themselves.
I think we waste a lot of great minds turning them into mathematicians and physicists of the most impractical sort.
Seeing a few outrageously overbearing parents of gifted children at the beginning of one's foray into parenting is helpful. Sets up a boundary with a sign.
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”
One is warned not to go there.
"I think we waste a lot of great minds turning them into mathematicians and physicists of the most impractical sort."
I was just watching that Oscar Wilde biopic and I was wondering how the British upper classes turned out such geniuses, so often, and I think it is not because of genetics, though sure it plays a role, but because the way their children were raised allowed them nearly complete freedom, and if a genius happened along, well, he got everything he needed, and the freedom to explore it. If the kid was not a genius, or productive, didn't matter, he could collect art, or harlots, or do whatever, no harm done. Unfortunately, this is probably not a viable plan for the great mass of men living lives of quiet desperation Thoreau talked about.
Did he say,"Wound up?" Wound the fuck up?!?
The Zimmerman's sound like wonderful based parents. Bob was a lucky young man.
This Monica Mancini version is the best I've ever heard. She performs all but one of the voices. Great arrangement!
- Krumhorn
Actually, a lot of the big contributors did have easily-identifiable exceptional abilities when they were children. Not all, and some were considered quirky or difficult. But what on earth does Brooks think he is talking about without putting up some numbers to back it up. Anecdotes out of 300M people of people we now admire but didn't think much of when they were kids? Like you couldn't find at least a few in every town?
I am looking at my HS newspaper from my graduating year at graduating and the top 10 in the class. All made "contributions" that at least someone would think was way above average. Cancer researchers, an inventor, high executives in Fortune 500 companies.
Looking at 8th grade graduation photo, the class officers showed out similarly. A couple of other people in the photo of 50 did exceed them, which is about what you'd expect, isn't it? Brooks would have you think it's all late bloomers. Taint so.
I think we waste a lot of great minds turning them into mathematicians and physicists of the most impractical sort.
You’ve taken me back almost 60 years to my freshman year in college. There was a fellow on my floor of the dorm whose parents insisted that he major in nuclear physics because he was so bright “and bright people should be mathematicians or physicists.” He flunked out, but in the meantime he had put together a rock band and was pulling down over $200 a weekend — pretty good money by mid-1960s standards. Somehow he was allowed back the next year and this time he majored in music theory. He’d have graduated with honors if it wasn’t for his freshman Ds and Fs.
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