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The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has an interesting article on the secret to raising smart kids that says that more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings. In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. One theory of what separates the two general classes of learners, helpless versus mastery-oriented, is that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different "theories" of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount. Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. Mastery-oriented children think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating offering opportunities to learn."
so duz this meen i cin git more smartz or will i allays be like dis ? i don unnerstand.
Consistently telling a kid that (s)he is stupid will cause the kid to believe he is stupid. Wow! such insight!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Interestingly TFA allows me to blame part of my high school gradual failure on my parents... but since I'm in college anyway, I guess not.
The early intake of PCB's seems to have made me [NO CARRIER]
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
People are different. film at 11.
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
Keep young children in the walled garden, those that survive and escape can be schooled those that don't are no longer a drain on my resources.
This is also an implicit critique for those in certain fields of biology, who, unwilling to question their genetic reductionistic assumptions, continuously attempt to explain everything about humanity in terms of genetics or selection pressure, as though their particular field exists within an epistemological vacuum.
Okay let's see...I typed badly spelled sentences on a typwriter when i was 2 3/4 years old, potty trained myself, learned to talk and walk earlier than most kids, and grew up to be really smart. I'm gonna have to vote for "have genes that make you smart" as the answer to raising smart kids. Oh and eating fish lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Smart parents that take the time to educate their kids as well as spending time with them.
example? sure. My daughter can code html very well. I sat down for a few months and showed her how to get going and now she sells myspace templates for $15.00 each to kids at school. She also understands how a car works because I made her come out and help when I was working on the car or my project hotrod. Explaining things to her and answering all her questions. She also can use a GPS (real one not these fluffy naigation toys) as we are always geocacheing every sunday. One year we went geocacheing without a GPS, only topo maps and a compass. she loved the "low tech" approach. She is one of these Abercrombie wearing socks and flipflops in the winter stylish cheerleader types. yet she get's her hands dirty, can change a distributor as good as any certified mechanic and knows when to set aside prissy for fun and work.
She can do things that 99% of her friends can't. she has a higher automotive education than most girls, etc...
THAT is the solution. School will not teach your kids, you have to. Sadly most parents today do not want to bother with teaching their kids.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But you can over encourage your children and get them to not apply themselves. I've seen it happen...
If you allow your awareness to lapse and fade, you will become a victim of your own overconfidence. - the book of five rings
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Small mammals are scurrying for cover,
All the birds have taken wing.
The hordes of self-proclaimed geniuses who wander the halls of Slashdot approach.
Sure, having innate gifts helps, but it doesn't do any good if you don't show up and get things done. That's why doing homework is part of my kids' nightly routine. It's also why being borderline obsessive/compulsive tends to get you ahead academically and in many work environments. Of course, it means tearing my kids away from their current project for dinner time is occasionally an epic battle. I tell my son that our ability to intensely focus on things is our family's superpower, and should be used for good and not evil.
The other thing I've seen research on is that praising kids in general ways such as "you're smart" isn't very helpful. Being specific with your praise, such as "you've got a good memory and learn spelling words well" is more effectively motivating.
It could be scuba diving, or building a house, making cookies, or solving fractal matthematics, but the answer was always "I've never tried it."
The danger is not that your children will fail, and have permanently damaged egos-- the danger is that your child will never experience failure, and thus learn the important skill of picking up the pieces and moving on. Parents naturally want to save their children from the suffering that comes from defeat (e.g., the track race on field day, the art competition, spelling bee, science fair, etc.), but this is an important experience, and one that they will eventually have, regardless of how much parents shelter them. I would much rather have my child feel crushed because he lost the Boy Scout knot-tying competition than have his first failure be at that new job out of college. The young adult who knows ego management will be in a much better position to dust himself off and carry on than the college grad who takes failure as a sign of permanent inability.
Last night's On Point featured Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who funded Netscape, Google, AOL, and so on, and he said something that struck me-- he said that he has failed often, but that his successes outnumber his failures. He also said that his firm has a reputation of betting on the entrepeneur who has failed once before. The entrepeneur who fails, learns from it, and tries again is the kind of guy he wants to invest in.
Mod PARENT up. We need more like you. Good job on doing the ONE THING that I think does more to raise good (and smart) kids...spend time with them, show them that you love them, tell them they're worth something, tell them you love them. It worked on my brother and me (so much so that we kinda have superiority complexes).
I recently read a bio written about my g-g-grandfather, whom i never met. The bio was written in 1923, and describes a man that "is never idle and believes in improving the mind. He is first, last and all the time a student, particularly along literary and historical line and in natural history and scientific subjects."
I would hope that my bio says something like that at some point, but at the very least it appears that his interests and tenacity to learn may have been passed down, since he and I were raised in completely different conditions by very different parents/parenting styles."
stuff |
If a dumb kid were to decide to work towards being smarter, he wouldn't be a dumb kid anymore, would he?
paintball
Still, without (largely) any theoretical knowledge about the intelligence the human race has evolved to the present state. If there was a two-class system it would have had wider cultural differences already. The spectrum is much more wider.
Kill the failures, look at finland!
My brother and I are both smart in different ways. I'm more able to apply myself to jobs I don't enjoy doing, and accomplish them, but he's got more IQ and is better at what he enjoys. I did better in high school and college because of it (and I don't have his personal issues), but he's at his dream job and is very good at what he does. I still haven't quite figured it out yet.
Both of our parents pressed us to be smart and good at our studies when we were younger, read to us and with us early, and did their best to help us do what we wanted to do.
The article is saying that consistently telling a child that they are 'smart' will lead them to be stupid. The belief that this is some built in, static attribute causes them to stop making efforts to improve.
Scientific American ran some articles last year on child prodigies and expert minds (eg, Expert Mind). The general idea was that child prodigies are not necessarily ``smarter'' than their peers. Instead, they are so passionate about a particular task that they practice significantly more than their peers. That is, hard work accounts for a lot. Being slightly gifted at some task and doing well can be more encouraging than failing, but that just gets the ball rolling. For example, Tiger Woods played hours of golf--he would practically beg his parents to take him out to play.
People aren't born knowing chess openings or golf swings. Helping children find activities that really interest them can be hugely rewarding-- not because they should become child prodigies, but because then the process itself is satisfying, too.
It doesn't help those who are fast learners to sail through anything, yet the American educational system ignores the so-called "gifted", or just piles on more homework instead of making things challenging.
The result, children like the Jonathan of the article. They crumple at the first difficulty and never recover.
I don't think the bulldozer parents, those who shove all obstacles out of their children's way, help either.
I wonder if this study takes into account mental disabilities and the restrictions imposed by it?
I tend to think both theories of intelligence are true. To me, all people have a level of natural intelligence, that can be both improved and extended through hard work and challenging the brain.
What might be interesting to know is the affect trauma, abuse or bad upbringing may have on 'natural intelligence'. I don't think the article covers this.
ilovegeorgebush
It's all well and good to talk about how failure is an opportunity, but educations systems one and all are predicated on success, and only success. You want to get into a top university? Want to get a scholarship? Hope you have as close to a 4.0 as possible. Want to go on to grad school? Want to get grants? Hope you have as close to a 4.0 as possible, and the right score on your GREs.
This is an emphasis on results, not process. No one is interested in how much you learned from that class you got a B- in, all they care about is that it looks bad on your transcript when you are being compared with the guy who got the A+. So long as this is the case, no matter how accurate Dweck's theories about mastery vs. performance theories of intelligence orientation, students will have no choice but to act as if performance is the paramount consideration.
"This is also an implicit critique for those in certain fields of biology, who, unwilling to question their genetic reductionistic assumptions, continuously attempt to explain everything about humanity in terms of genetics or selection pressure, as though their particular field exists within an epistemological vacuum."
No, it is not. Insofar as any discipline is actually scientific to some degree, they should follow the data, and should not focus on what would happen if their findings would be bastardized by some semi-trained K-12 educator. What makes people happy and productive and what is actually empirically true is not necessarily identical.
Consistently telling a kid that (s)he is stupid will cause the kid to believe he is stupid. Wow! such insight!
Wrong-o. Consistently telling a kid that successes are due to being smart will cause them to believe the opposite as well - namely, that failures are due to *not* being smart. On the other hand, telling a kid that successes are due to hard work will lead them to believe that failure can be turned around through diligence.
Read it slower next time.
The basic point of the article is:
1) Intelligence is not a fixed, immutable property.
2) People who believe it IS fixed and immutable tend to avoid intellectual challenges.
3) People who avoid intellectual challenges learn less, and more slowly than people who seek them out.
Therefore, in order to raise smart children, we should:
1) Teach them that intelligence can be increased. (E.g., "Einstein was a great mathematician because he worked really hard at it for a long time" rather than "Einstein was a born genius.")
2) Assign responsibility to effort rather than innate ability. (This works both ways; if the child does well on an assignment, you can say "That's a good job." But if they do poorly, you can say "You didn't put in enough effort." Either way, the problem is with the child's actions, not with the child's identity.)
This makes a great deal of sense to me. I have observed that I learn more from trying things that are hard than from repeating things I find easy. I think the same thing probably applies to other people; so in order to encourage learning, we should encourage people to believe that it's a good idea to try out things that are hard to do and see mistakes as opportunities to learn.
As someone who failed their A-Levels (that's post school, pre uni 16 - 18yr old education for the non-Brits) miserably having been told for years I have to succeed, that I have to get top grades and so forth to go to uni and do amazingly only to not do so great and fall into a pit of "I'm stupid, I can't do this, it's too hard for me" and then giving up.
7 years down the road, thanks for the open university (www.open.ac.uk), an establishment that gives not a shit about league tables but instead actually cares about learning, education and research you know, the things Unis are meant to be about I am now a first class honours computing and mathematical sciences graduate. Not only that but I achieved this whilst working full time and in 3 years, so around 40 - 45hrs work a week and around 32hrs studying, I also feel that what the article suggests is true, that intelligence isn't something that's entirely fixed - some take things in easier than others certainly whilst others have to work hard but I do not feel any more that there's many areas beyond my grasp if I have the time, money and inclination to learn them. This is why I'll soon be starting my second degree in Physics which I will follow up with a Masters and hopefully eventually a phd. Why you ask? Because when you're not forced to learn, and when you're learning because you want to learn, learning is fun and there's little you can't do if you have the raw motivation of wanting to learn behind you.
Fuck the people who tell you you're stupid, it's them that make you stupid. Don't let them get away with it - defy them and learn anyway so that you can come back and gloat about how wrong they were.
That's why the trend towards things like "noncompetetive sports" for kids drives me up a wall.
The theory, apparently, is that if you don't keep score, the little snowflakes won't get their feelings hurt by losing.
That's not to say that winning is everything; in fact I think kids can learn more about hard work and perseverance from losing.
Just wait until these kids start applying for colleges and jobs, unaware that reality deals harshly with those unprepared to earn their place in the world.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The danger is not that your children will fail, and have permanently damaged egos-- the danger is that your child will never experience failure, and thus learn the important skill of picking up the pieces and moving on.
Excellent point. If you are scoring 100% of your shots, the game is too easy.
On the other hand, consistently telling a kid he's a genius when in fact he's a bit of a tard will just make him into an arrogant tard.
Now get back to work!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
I am learning electric guitar. I see the aforementioned "nature v. nurture" debate all the time. When discussing technique, some people progress a bit faster on the instrument than others and attribute it to natural talent. But everyone hits a wall eventually and then it boils down to perseverance and dedicated practice. Neither of those things is fun, especially when you just want to rock out. Luckily there are few things I like more than a challenge, so my slow rate of progress does not always deter me.
But I think kids have an advantage here, not because of their more malleable brains (although that helps) but because they often have fewer preconceptions that they should be immediately successful in what they do. I tend to stick to doing what I'm good at for most of the day and try to avoid being bad at things. I think our culture reinforces this point quite a bit with talent search shows and whatnot. But that is another discussion.
It's about time slashdot started posting substantive articles again. While I agree with the premise of the article, it is important to teach kids to recognize their strengths and go with them. This is in contrast to the article's position of never giving a child a hint that they might actually be good at one thing or another (whether it's innate ability, or through learned experiences). This tip-toeing around kids so as not to set them up for failure will do exactly that.
This article fails to distinguish intelligence from knowledge. I would argue that intelligence is innate but knowledge isn't. Intelligence is the ability to think and learn quickly; knowledge, if you have it, makes intelligence less necessary. You cannot acquire intelligence (except to the extent that using your mind makes it more intelligent) but you can acquire knowledge if you work at it. Just about every problem has a trick or a gimmick to it that, once you know it, you can use over and over.
In school they usually give you the knowledge, in the lectures or the books, and then you have to apply it. Since everyone gets the same knowledge, intelligence is advantageous in that environment. But in life, the knowledge is often hard to find, there is no textbook, and so knowledge has the advantage.
For example, I'm intelligent, but I don't know anything, and nobody will tell me anything...
In addition to this, you could also start teaching your kids at an early age.
Whether this article is correct or just made up it's impossible to trust it based on the magazine's credibility. Check out the latest Scientfic American: a story on Big Foot with the tagline "Sasquatch is just a legend, right? According to the evidence, maybe not..". Another winner is the dubious title "Are Aliens Among Us?"
Looking at their advertisers (paper version), its easy to question the publisher's character. Full pages ads that sell 'valuable collector coins' and these wacky types of stories are the type of thing I expect from the National Enquirer type tabloids not a trustworthy source of science news.
And just because you aren't keeping score, does that mean the kids aren't?
In younger days, I played in a basketball league where the scoreboard was reset each quarter, so no one would be keeping track of who won the game. I know I and many other kids would have our parents sum the quarter scores so we knew who "really" won.
"It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense."
-- Miller, W. I. (1993).
Humiliation. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press)
I think it's important to teach children that they are NOT special, that they can't do everything necessarily, to be cool with that, and that they have to be aware of their areas of lack of knowledge and work further towards improving them. The more you learn and the more you understand, leads to greater appreciation of how much you still don't know. Know that there are others who have skills and knowledge you don't have and suck up to them to learn from them.
The power of intelligence rests on understanding your own limitations and working hard to overcome them. Adults who think they know it all are most often idiots, and unfortunately many are also raising children.
Which leads me to another fave quote:
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
-- Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man. (London: John Murray)
Er, no, I'm not confident I know everything about this topic! ;-)
The article never really states that intelligence is terribly malleable. This is more of a general impression left with the reader - which is mostly incorrect. The article mainly states that it is preferable that children hold a more rose-tinted view of the nature of intelligence, as that tends to make them less prone to fatalism and more prone to work hard. Sort of like how a belief in Santa can make kids behave better.
Most of the more down-to-earth people I know see it exactly the other way around: The struggle is what they hate, the kill is what gives them satisfaction.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...at least as far as how to make your kids smarter from the start. QUIT LETTING THEM WATCH INORDINATE AMOUNTS OF TELEVISION, MOVIES, AND VIDEO GAMES. Make them read. The more they read, the better their critical thinking skills, the better their grasp of grammar and spelling, and the more knowledge they will gain. I wasn't allowed to watch TV when I was a kid. Period. We owned an Atari 2600 (when N64 was the newest console), but that was it. While banning your children from the television entirely isn't the best idea, I read a ton, and now I'm generally more intelligent than most people my age - not just book smart; I just comprehend things better than most of the kids who were in my classes in college and whatnot. Raising your kids to never fail is bad, but raising your kids to never do any mentally-intensive work is bad, too. Playing Call of Duty for ten hours on a Saturday isn't going to do a whole lot for your cognitive development.
I'm a geek girl. Seriously.
-Philosophy is more or less useless, and always has been. I hold it in roughly the same regard as theology. (Except some British philosophy of science, of course.)
-The rest of your post consists of a mix of gibberish and truism. Empiricism is indeed error-prone. But it sure beats the options - such as wishful thinking, ideology and religion (not to mention philosophy).
-Correlation often implies causation. What's your point? Who exactly are you referring to?
... not to put them in the public school system.
Here is a list of books on accelerated learning techniques to help you grow your brain.
http://all-technology.com/eigenpolls/altbooks/
I remember reading an article on Ted Turner that said something like 'He makes a point, in meetings, to throw ideas out there. Ten, twenty, fifty, and most of them are abysmally stupid. But generally, discussing the stupid ones leads to the good ones. And nobody ever remembers the 49 stupid ideas; they remember the one good one.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
In New-York they studied lots of kids learning the piano. Kids from all backgrounds learn the piano so it was easy to get a varied sample. The result was those who practiced more did better. This was universal. Its possible only some kids were capable of ultimately becoming the next Mozart but while learning no kids progressed without practicing and no kids failed to progress while practicing. The naturally talented kids who could effortlessly steam ahead without practicing just did not seem to exist.
Of course outside piano practice it can be sometimes tricky to identify what you should be doing to productively practice. But the basic theory holds quite well if you cast back over your education.
Its not terribly romantic mind but it does explain a fair bit.
My oldest daughter Leila's IQ is 65. Her little sister Patty's IQ is 135.
Leila's umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck when she was born. There's no way she could ever have become a neurosurgeoun with that handicap, any more than ny friend Mike, who had polio as a child, was ever going to be a professional football player.
You can only work with what you have.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I do think intelligence is fixed, what you can do with it is not. All people are intelligent (yes some more so) but all brains are of similar size/structure. Some people have a desire to learn and achieve, some people don't for a variety of reasons (lack of confidence due to previous failures or maybe just plain lazy). The former I'll surround myself with, the latter I don't want anything to do with.
Well... from the article:
"Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort."
That little prick was writing operas by the time he was 4 years old. How much "tremendous and sustained effort" can a 4 year-old have made?
Why are we so unwilling to admit that some kids are born smarter than others? From high-school on, I always found tall, slender, smart girls hot. I married a tall, slender, smart girl. My daughter is now a tall, slender smart girl. I am not particularly smart (except for when it comes to picking a mate). Who wants to bet that Britney Spears' kids probably won't win a Nobel prize in physics, even though they are probably go to fancy private schools and will have every advantage (except a stable home life, of course)?
All I'm saying that if you want to have really smart kids, it's good to start with at least one really smart parent. Beyond that, the affiant sayeth not.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For those of you who are too, ahem, busy, to read the article it says that if you create an environment where the child's ego and self-worth are linked to his or her intelligence they will likely avoid situations that will challenge them intellectually.
Actually really interesting stuff.
-- The unsig...
Here's another article in the same vein:
...
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
Not that slashdot is on the trailing edge or nothing
"Mastery-oriented children think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating offering opportunities to learn."
Hey! I said that! I should be asking royalties.
Onda Technology Institute
In many cases children are merely vanity accessories for their parents' fashionable self-esteem. A good, smart child is better for showing off than a dented, rusty child, with bad brakes, and a...oh, sorry. Was I talking about children or cars?
Commodities. Many parents have reduced their children to off-the-shelf extensions of their own egos. And what do many do if they raise a lemon? They complain to the manufacturer! No, seriously, it's the teacher's fault, society's fault, anyone's fault but theirs.
Is overpraising a child detrimental? Only when the praise serves as a vain reminder to the parent or teacher that they should get the gold star for the child's accomplishments. The best parents/teachers are those that acknowledge that a child receives personal accolades upon merit, and are willing to accept an altruistic repose with regard to success ownership.
Can parents over/underpraise their children? Yes, but you must know the root cause of why they do it in the first place. After all, the children are merely pawns in the vainglorious pursuit of parents salving their own psychological issues when they were children.
- "Perhaps it's a psychogenic disorder."
-v.- "Of what specific nature?"
In education we call this "failure attribution" and the article misses another possibility: The Teacher Just Doesn't Like Me. My context is high school. Unfortunately I've met numerous parents who perpetuate the idea that low performance stems from personal feelings of the teacher. This is usually the result of:
The point is that it's possible to attribute your failure to others, and that this behavior is learned. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's entirely learned. Parents go so far out of their way to protect their child's self esteem that it becomes completely divorced from reality. So you get kids who do bad things and feel great about themselves. Or you get very lazy children who want (and expect) you to pick up their slack. To the point, you get children who have no interest in self-improvement because they think they couldn't possibly be improved upon. Call me old fashioned, but things can always be done better.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Perv.
Well, though intelligence is important, it is not the most important. That position would be held by creativity. And that ability is not something you can teach. It has to be developed based on curiosity and the ability to make many mistakes without giving up.
Recall that Thomas Edison needed to try 3,000 different filiment elements before he came up with carbonized bamboo. That's creativity. While the IT industry has seen rote tasks easily offshored, the design and invention is the hardest to offshore. Why? Because the Indian and Chinese cultures are not like the American one, which prizes invention and creativity.
So it is not enough to raise smart kids. You have to raise them to be creative risk takers. Failing that, you have a bunch of automatons.
is she 18 yet?
To: Ed.Dummies @ slashdot . com
From: UrEngTeach @ pisspoor . hs . edu
Subject: Re: Raise cattle but REAR children
Geez louize
It seems from the article (yes! I read it) you could conclude that all it would take for some students to become better is to encourage them to persevere at the tasks and challenges that they may encounter until they succeed. The problem with that, is most modern education systems evaluate ability via fixed time based evaluations (tests,exams). Much weighting goes on these time-based evaluations. Perseverance, however, requires time, time that the student may not have to master the problem according to their level of understanding. With the outcome being, potentially A-Grade students get pushed through education systems at not so A-Grade levels which may hinder their future options or potential.
This might be why parents may place such a huge emphasis on fast success.
Modern education systems do not celebrate "slow" learning and "slow" learners.
Is this a societal problem?
I'm 17 years old, and my parents have always been very open-minded while raising me. Indirectly I have been encouraged to a way of autodidaction and philosophical reflection. While this may be a difficult thing to achieve, I think it's better to be slightly more subtle when trying to raise an "intelligent kid" as opposed to the dichotomy suggested in the summary - between the theory of a fixed intelligence and a mastery-oriented attitude, I think there's much more. More about the actual encouragement of free thought and individual reason. Having said that, it's naturally also important to motivate children, inspire them - both for the purpose of encouraging self-learning and the purpose of helping them find their interests and character. For example, introduce them to your interests, like computers or science. If they show interest themselves, further it by teaching them more, but also give them an overview of a wider array of hobbies and suchlike.
And axiomatic mathematical a priori reasoning is relevant to this topic... because?
As for philosophy, I indeed consider most of it useless, self-referential gibberish without much practical utility. There are exceptions, of course, such as the philosophy of science, but it is hard to imagine another field of endeavor where so much brainpower has been deployed throughout the ages, only to accomplish so little.
I liked the article.
I'm thinking of using it to counterbalance what I feel is an overemphasis on Myers-Briggs categorizations that are being used in some of the classes I work with. (I supply "back office" support to an adult education program that changes individuals from welfare recipients to taxpayers).
I also like most of what I see in the slashdot comments. Though it does seem to me that several have missed the point: it isn't about spending quality time with the kids; it is about setting up a situations where they might learn how to learn.
Ok, so as a child, I failed at sports. I accepted that and found things I could excel at (age 10 or so). I rode a bike and went sailing instead of playing football or basketball, which had a tendancy to break my fingers. Yet, I was forced into things that I failed at over, and over, and over. To what end?
I learned my lesson about failure, and picked up the pieces, and did quite well, yet the educational system has absolutely NO provision for flexibility.
When I entered the 'real world', I was prepared. I took an internship that turned into a job that had me working 70 hour weeks. I loved every minute, even though a screwup on my part could cost a client hundreds of thousands of dollars. After that job, college was easy.
Yeah, we need to introduce children to 'life' and 'reality', but don't make it sadistic.
Look the best way to rear your children can be found right here. If you follow those instructions TO THE LETTER. You'll never have any problems with. Application of number 7 is especially useful for inspiring confidence in yourself.
I think the real point is that environment can spoil natural intelligence if the intelligence is not fostered with a good work ethic. I doubt many on this forum would deny the genetic predispositions to intellect.
-l
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Quite a bit more than you think. Thats 4 years of your life. It's what most people complete college in. Look at what skills a College grad has that a HS grad doesn't. I'm not saying that nature doesn't have a bit to play in it. If you coddle kids they don't pick up skills. It's simple. Play a kid music every day of his life. When they're two give them a piano. Let them pound the hell out of it every single day. You don't think after 2 years of pounding on something you'd be able to put together something intelligent? Heck even most adults with no musical talent could put something together in 2 years. Not to mention that between 0 and 10 or so you learn faster/better than afterwards.
Accomplishing any task requires 3 things.
1. Innate ability.
2. Training / Education to develop that ability
3. Diligence to work on the task until it's done.
I will probably never run a mile in 4 minutes because I don't have the innate ability to do that, and even if I did, I haven't developed that ability through training and diligence. I can design a web site or repair a pinball game, because I have the talent, the training (some of it self-taught, but that counts), and I work at it.
no big sig
I happen to believe that intelligence is fairly predetermined (and yes, there are things you can do to encourage its use).
I also happen to believe I have a lot of it, so no defeatism here!
Well competitive sports drive me up the wall. There is only one real sport today, and that's the UFC, and that's only because it is illegal to kill people. Before that it was the gladiators in Rome. It is you and nothing else versus the other guy. Anything else is a joke. Sports are an approximation of combat, us versus them, me versus you, somebody wins and somebody loses. Real men rely upon themselves alone as the truest test of ability. Team play is VASTLY overrated, and is generally for pussies who need to be carried.
Back to the point: sure, noncompetitive sports aren't that great, but competitive sports as we know them aren't a panacea either.
That little prick [Mozart] was writing operas by the time he was 4 years old. How much "tremendous and sustained effort" can a 4 year-old have made?
The article isn't saying that everyone is born with the same intellect - the article is saying that everyone can develop their intellect through "tremendous and sustained effort."
If Mozart had been a lazy SOB and retired at age 4, and I hadn't been a lazy SOB, the article suggests that I could lap Mozart despite starting much lower than him.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I eagerly await the research that identifies the genetic marker for a predisposition to seizing onto overly-simple explanations for complex traits and/or behavior.
My point was merely that spouting the oh-so-tiresome boilerplate about "correlation and causation" whenever faced with some inconvenient result is a big waste of everyone's time.
Certainly correlation in itself does not imply causation. Correlation, plus a credible mechanism does make for a decent hypothesis, however - one that can often be tested by various means. The parent offered no actual substance in criticizing various unspecified scientific disciplines, however - he just put forth a tired cliché - hence my reply.
PS.
If correlation "often" implies causation or not is a matter of the definition of "often".
DS.
Drive will get you much further than intelligence, though it's probably just as much a part of your genetic makeup to HAVE drive as it is to have a high IQ.
Do you think Microsoft got where it is because of Gates's intelligence or drive?
You mean I'm not smart just because a bunch of people told me so? Who knew?
New York Magazine published a pretty good article about how actively boosting a child's self-esteem often has the opposite effect to what a well-meaning adult intends.
The 5000 foot view is that in 1969 a guy named Nathaniel Braden published The Psychology of Self-Esteem a wildly popular book among academicians, whose whole point was that self-esteem is the single most important personality trait. True or not, his conclusions spawned the next 38 years of effort to boost self-esteem, particularly among "low social status" (read "poor and minority") children.
Many years later, Prof. Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve U, then a leading member of the self-esteem movement (as a CWRU alumn, I remember reading his abstracts at the time and thinking it was all ridiculous--yay me!) did a massive review of the research. He found something like 15000 research articles on the matter. His team began their review by establishing academic standards and throwing out articles that didn't meet them.
They ended up with 200 articles out of 15,000 that could be considered academic research quality. Whoops.
Of the 200 valid articles they soon realized that most either failed to establish the efficacy of self-esteem boosters or denied it outright. Double whoops.
Baumeister became a convert and now preaches the evils of vacuous self-esteem bolstering.
Then came Carol Dweck, whose 10 years of experiments in NYC public schools pretty much killed the "science" of self-esteem dead, dead, dead. FWIW, my wife, a public school teacher when she's not birthin' babies, is a huge fan of Ms. Dweck.
That said, old habits die hard and to this day we still have identical trophies for every kid on the soccer team, and we don't tell them whether they won or not.
Slashdotter parents, RTFA, Google all the names in it, read the research. You'll be convinced, too, and moreso than if you stuck to SciAm.
"'I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's precisely why I succeed''." - -- Michael Jordan
Absolutely true.
The trend toward non-competitive sports and not keeping score isn't for the kids any more than wiretapping and who-knows-what are "for your safety".
Kids love competition. Experiencing both winning and losing, and facing superior opponents, develops your own skills and gives you a sense of humility that you'll never get being coddled in a "noncompetitive" nursery-school sandbox.
Non-competition is so that the administrators and parents can feel good about themselves and, if the kids don't turn out as desired, can fall back with "but look how nurturing and caring we were!".
The schools fail in so many ways. And I mean that in both senses, as when a child fails, it's the teacher who fails the child.
One of my daughters is "gifted" and one is mentally handicapped. Their schools were ill-equipped to deal with either of them.
Educators keep writing letters to newspaper editors bemoaning lack of "parental involvement" when the only involvement they really want from parents is fund raising (We're having a fun razor? Yippee!)
None of either of my daughters' teachers listened to a word I said. If they had, their jobs would have been a hell of a lot easier, as I knew my kids better than anybody, including their mother. Invariably toward the end of the year these know it all teachers would admit to me that I was right and they should have listened.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Aesop was prescient.
I'm always on the Tortoise side of the race. The classic split is "super-bright kids who become bored, and don't learn how to grind out long projects." Then they get F's in school, which doesn't know what to do.
I learned decades ago that sometimes you can just haul through the problem even without genius abilities.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The point though is that it isn't so important if some kids are smarter than others. The mere fact of people worrying about smart kids underacheiving due to lowest-common-denominator schooling indicates that the issue is not merely someone's ability.
I do agree though that kids, whatever their own abilities, benefit immensely from smarter parents.
However, kids benefit from even such simple things as being breastfed as infants (or rather, one should probably consider it that kids have their development hindered when not breastfed).
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Gifted children are taught by their parents, pushed by their parents, and learn to please their parents by doing what their daddy wants them to do.
quoted from wikipedia "he often spent much time at the clavier [keyboard], picking out thirds,
Also he didn't write an opera at age four, he's first opera was written at about age 11.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
another reason to blame your parents in therapy. My parents were....horrible to me....they told ...they told ...me...i was smart.*sob**sob*sob*
It's about the perspective. If you tell your slender, smart girl that she is just that every day she'll stop caring about being even more slender, tall (:D) and smart.
Why encourage "just beeing you is good enough" when you can strive to be better?
That is what the article is saying. Inspire your child (and yourself) to reach newer, higher, better levels.
Since when does it hold that grades = intelligence?
PS.
The empirics involved do not appear terribly impressive at first glance, but that's a separate discussion that requires more reading time than I have available right now.
DS.
I learned far more from non-competitive sports than I ever did playing competitive ones, including important lessons about recovering from failure.
True. As a kid, I often got bored in school and didn't bother to make an effort doing school work, because I just knew I could do it.
:)
This still affects me today, as I'm trying to force myself to "work hard AND long" and expand my attention span, while the other kids from school already learned that because they were forced to.
My teachers hated me
That's great, but that doesn't mean competition is bad for kids. You aren't suggesting that, right?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I guess nobody can call you an Apple fanboy!
But although I'm hyperlex myself, with an IQ of 142, I disagree. I think you have it backwards; reading doesn't cause you to be intelligent. Being intelligent makes you read.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I remember this scene from the movie Radio Days, where the lower-middle-class family at the center of the story is out shopping, and they encounter one of the star contestants on the radio show "Whiz Kids," who is shopping with his own family.
The narrator's star-struck father suddenly becomes incensed that his own son is such a mediocre nobody, swatting the boy with his hat and hissing something like, "Why the hell can't you be like him, huh? HUH?"
And the thing that made the scene kind of painful for me to watch was knowing that the son could be just like the "whiz kid," if his own parents gave a damn about anything he was doing, which, of course, they didn't.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
Given two people with similar degrees from Oxford and from the Open University, I'll take the OU graduate every time.
The UK education system is seriously fucked up. It's goal based now. The purpose is to get you to pass exams, not to educate. We might be better off with the International Baccalaureate outwith political control. The other thing is that education should be life long. It should just be a standard part of being a citizen.
The brain changes shape, it takes several years, it has to modify the strength of all these trillions of connections but with enough effort eventually you get good at what you're learning.
Deleted
More evidence that the theory of evolution, whether true or not, is a socially moronic principle. It causes so much negative human behaviour it is indeed more harmful than it is worth. It supports racist ideas, promotes fatalism, and catalyzes a me-first, survival-the-fittest attitude where the needs of other humans are seen as less important.
Not per se, no. But the implementation often does far more harm than good.
Many people seem to confuse criticism of how badly competition is often taught with criticism of competition in general. There also seems to be a fairly common view that sports are worthless unless there's some kind of competition involved.
I sometimes wonder to what extent it's connected to the grossly-simplified view of so-called "free market" economics that seems myopically focused on the competition involved. (Ditto evolution -- it's particularly exasperating when a screwed-up view of evolution is used to bolster a screwed-up view of economics.)
1) The goal of the modern education system (at least here in the US) is to bring every child to the same level. Many are brought up to that level, many are brought down to it. The author's tone suggests seems to support the notion that busy work is the path to 'smarthood'. Ala - 'kids that study hard are smart.' This is exactly the same crap that the schools like to dish out as well. While it is a valid teaching method for SOME, I believe the real value of keeping everyone overloaded with school work is control.
2) George Carlin puts it best, but you might consider that the vast majority of us in America aren't really being raised to be 'smart'. Rather, the entire system seems designed to create sheeple by the millions. This ties in with what I was trying to say above, but if the system can't keep you constantly toiling for your next biscuit, they'll quickly lose their ability to influence you. When the student becomes smarter than the teacher, it is often time to either find a new teacher or begin blazing new trails. When an employee discovers they're smarter than their corporate owners they will likewise feel the need for change. Of course, there are other barriers to that sort of change, but the principle still applies.
3) Perhaps the author just didn't ever get into the gifted program, and is still grousing about how much easier the 'smart kids' had it?
I believe creativity is king also, and as I recall, old Einstein felt the same way. I can't recall the quote as it's been many years and many joints since I was obsessed with the man, but he leaned towards creativity more than intelligence, also.
Unfortunately, most kids today are inundated with a lot more visual input, such as video games or TV, than in the past. Although some video games might teach some problem solving skills, at a young age children should be more apt to read or learn from live human beings. Their interests are easily swayed to passive brain activitieswhen not supervised. Creativity can't be taught, but if parents would lead by example and introduce different pursuits or interests to their children at a young age then they might not turn out to be stupid lemmings as adults who only know how to get the most frags in the latest FPS. I must admit, if I were a kid now and had the option of Halo3 versus reading a decent novel, which do you think I'd pick? Luckily, my folks were strict and 'old school'. Like a previous poster, I didn't watch much TV coming up. My mom would lose her shit if I turned on a TV during the daytime. Sucked at the time, but I benefit now.
I'm fairly certain, although perhaps some people are more predisposed to being curious, that being forced to read for enjoyment at a young age attributed greatly to my creativity. Most parents suck at being parents--their are wayyy to many breeders out there for my taste. In my own family, I have cousins considered poor white trash who've had multiple kids and I absolutely know they've done it for the government checks. It's disgusting. Oh well, I'm getting way off topic, but fact is to inspire children to learn you've got to expose them to many different things and see what peaks their interest. Once a child creates--the sole basis of creativity--usually they wish to again. Wake up, parents, and stop coming home and sitting on your fat asses and watching the latest reality show with your kids. Do something, anything, but get involved. Yeah, this is why I usually don't post on slashdot. Just turns into a rant over the decline of humanity! Hopefully we won't end up with a future as portrayed in 'Idiocracy', but considering the amount of stupid breeders in the world, it's possible.
Kids may love competition, but what they don't love is getting involved in a moderately fun sport and then having their parents treat it like a life or death matter if they win or lose.
There's a rather large difference between them having a race amongst themselves and playing a baseball game in from of 100 screaming parents.
Non-competitiveness is, indeed, for the parents, so the parents will no long act like asses.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I think i disagree semantically with the article, but agree in spirit.
I have a 2nd job where I teach kids math after school. A lot of kids are pretty upset about school by the time they are at tutoring. But to me, what is more important than the kids learning the math is watching them learn to be confident in themselves and their abilities.
But when I think of intelligence, I think of the biological / genetic version which I view as less malleable. However, I don't think there is any appreciable way to measure it. I think the only thing you can test is Knowledge. Not Knowledge as "just facts," but understanding processes and procedures (such as Math, English, etc.) You have to learn the rules to be judged by them.
So in the end, you can increase your knowledge which will make you look more intelligent when people test you.
It's not about smart/stupid as far as I can see, it's about motivation and effort. You can be brilliant intellectually and completely unmotivated. In fact that seems to be the raison d'etre for teachers and our educational establishment.
From what I've seen of the world, motivation is far more important in determining success than intelligence.
Deleted
This really makes sense, and explains a lot of the attitudes I see on a daily basis in my IT job.
Telling someone they're smarter than everyone else is just going to make them think they're above hard work. They're going to have an inflated ego, and get what I call the typical "IT mindset." How many of you know the stereotypical computer geek who talks down to everybody? How about the coder or sysadmin who doesn't bother to document their work because "no one else could possibly understand it?" Face it, most of us did pretty well in grade school and high school, and I'm sure a lot of our parents thought we were special. I'm a little bit different. My parents always told me I was smart, but I knew for myself that most of my success was due to working my butt off. While other people were getting A's without even studying, I went nuts just trying to keep up. By the time college rolled around, I realized I just wasn't as good at "being a student" as other people were.
Concentrating on hard work rather than trying to nurture an innate genius that just isn't there will always yield better results. And despite massive evidence to the contrary, working hard almost always pays in the long run. In my chosen field, that translates to constantly keeping my skills sharp and proving to my employer that I'm worth the salary they pay me. Some people in IT do this by hoarding information about what they work on (never a long-term answer) or building up a "rockstar" facade. You may get ahead in the short term by doing this, but it'll all come back to haunt you the next time the CxO's find a lower cost outsourcing destination.
My sister is 16 years younger than me, and when she was about 8 I started taking her whitewater kayaking (a sport that I love). She got incredibly frustrated when she couldn't get the boat to go where she wanted it to (a common problem when learning to whitewater kayak). This mirrored other experiences where she would get extremely frustrated when accomplishment didn't come easily.
Rather than refer to intelligence or smarts or ability, my tack was always to emphasize that it is difficult to learn things. I tried to manage her expectations by reminding her that the process of learning always involves failure, so if she wanted to learn anything she better get used to failing and getting frustrated as she learned. "If you could do things right away it wouldn't be called 'learning'."
She did become an ok kayaker, although she's more into karate and volleyball now. But as she's grown up we've seen less pouting and tantrums, and more and more confidence.
I guess that implicit in my message is the assumption that she could learn anything if she tried hard enough. But I didn't couch it in that language.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A kid can learn to face failure at anything they are trying to learn to do. Skateboarding, rock climbing, skiing, bicycling, karate, etc are all noncompetitive sports, but they are still difficult to learn and get good at.
Or did you mean like playing soccer without keeping score? I think that's fine for very little kids, where the main thing is to instill a love of physical activity and see which activities they like better. But when kids get to 8, 10, and especially teenagers, yeah, I agree that there should be winners and losers at the end of a game.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Don't marry yer sistor er cousen, and it helps if you pappy lenrnt that secret two
Sig Hansen?
Heh, among my study group friends we had a saying, "Remember the Indians". Racist overtones aside, we were alluding to the immigrant students in our classes who seemed to always be asking incredibly stupid questions in great volume.
Everybody else just kept rolling their eyes since they already knew(or at least thought they knew) the answers to what was being asked. Then when test time comes around, the grades were what mattered, and while some of those people rolling their eyes actually did know the answers already, the majority didn't know them as well as they thought, or at least not as well as the students who were constantly hounding the teacher with questions and studying for hours to make up for any lacking areas of comprehension.
So we'd repeat that phrase to remind ourselves to never forget that lesson in hubris, and if we ever doubted our potential to get a good grade, we always had the opportunity to ameliorate our shortcoming with time and effort in the same way that those students kicked our asses.
Same here. I always found school far too easy, and by the time I got to my last year at University, I didn't even bother to do my final project (partially because I knew I had a decent job lined up already, mostly because I spent all my time just playing computer games).
which is totally what she said
Sorry, that isn't the theory at all.
In fact, the article reflects more of the reasoning behind not keeping score.
The reason for doing it is to reduce the impact of the over-bearing and over-controlling adults who get too wrapped up in the scoring and the winning/losing. When the adults get too worried about winning, the kids end up in an environment where they are under pressure to reduce risks. And reducing risks means not trying new ideas on the playing field because they might not work which could in turn cause the game to be lost. Or worse the coach reduces risk by not putting certain players in the game, and then those same players have less opportunity to develop.
Those players will develop something though, and that is the belief that to avoid losing the best way is to not try in the first place.
How do you propose fixing schools? Any additional money you give them is immediately sucked up by stupid irresponsible projects by administrators (implementing the latest buzz-word, buying equipment without investing in training*, etc.)
Back in the day, the school district my mom worked at bought every classroom 5 brand-new (at the time) Apple PowerMac 5500 computers. They provided exactly 0 training on how to use them. The computers mostly collected dust. Imagine how much better things would have been with, say, 3 computers per classroom and a couple weeks of training for teachers?
When she got a throat ailment, her doctor prescribed a microphone and amplifier so that she could teach her class without straining her throat. The school district made her (and her doctor!) fill out tons of forms and turn them in. A month later, there's still no microphone. The only way she was able to get a microphone for her classroom was by threatening to go to the union's lawyers. (After she send that email, bam, there was a microphone and amplifier the next day in her classroom!)
Of course unions add to the whole mess as well, you have teacher's unions which are dedicated to retaining every teacher on staff-- even the really, really bad ones. Additionally, union rules mostly assign better pay and better positions based only on experience (or more accurately: time worked), not on performance.
I don't know what the solution is, but to say something like "schools aren't good at handling 'gifted' or special needs kids" without offering any solutions just simply isn't helpful. There are a lot of people in education who are dedicated to... education.
There are teachers who work in schools when they could be making three times as much in the private sector, despite all the bullcrap they have to go through. I honestly think that borders on heroism in the current educational climate, I know personally I'd have quit and gone to the public sector in a flash.
Comment of the year
David, you are quite right and I hadn't been thinking of it from the hyper-competitive parent angle. I myself experienced more of the "never, ever care about winning or losing" adults, which only fed my and my friends' competitive fires further.
Perhaps the solution is to let kids play with as little adult supervision as possible? They'll certainly develop good skills in dealing with peers.
On my NOLS course, one of the instructors laid out the four quadrants of expertise, in the order that most people progress through them.
"Unconscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but don't understand that you're bad at it
"Conscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but understand that you're bad at it
"Conscious Competent" -- you're good at something and understand why you're good
"Unconscious Competent" -- you're good at something and can't really explain how you do it
Most people only reach the third level for a given activity. The last level would be people who are "naturals" and can't really explain why they are so much better than others. The most dangerous place to be, in terms of risk activities like climbing, is the first level. At least at the second level you understand your limitations and can stay within your bounds. The first level people are the ones who take stupid, uncalculated risks and get killed. Getting through this level is one of the main purposes of taking classes or doing an apprenticeship with someone more experienced.
The other aspect is to focus on what you DO and ACCOMPLISH rather than what you ARE. Thus a smart child is defined as someone who accomplishes smart things--not just someone who tests well or comes across as smart. I think this is at the heart of teaching kids how to succeed. It's not enough to feel smart or special. If you're not getting A's in your classes, you're not ACTING smart. Yes, it requires hard work to do so--part of being "smart" is working hard. It's dumb to fail at something just from lack of effort.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There's a difference between four years of one's (semi-)adult life, and starting from scratch.
Or, out of those four years, should we count the first 1-2 years where Mozart was probably barely able to hold on to a pencil and do something nondestructive to/with it?
The only way to make smart kids is to eat the proper nutrients while pregnant, and to read to the bump in the tummy, once through, all the school texts from grade one to/and through university.. every subject... Only lazy mums have dumb kids...
Take daily: an Amino acid Complex.. 1000 units of vitamin C.. Extra Zinc.. Folic Acid.. a B Complex with Minerals...
If you want to preserve the vagina for continued future satisfying sexual activities, then have the kid cut out, not passed through the vag, or the trauma of natural birthing will really loosen it up, and may very well damage it and wreck it for all future vaginal orgasms...
And read those books to your tummy, with love... Just read slowly once over... The kid's mind will record all that data... Then when the kid is born, it may well be smiling and talking within a few seconds or minutes... And don't forget to explain to it, how it will be born, and what it should expect, and how to deal and react with its sudden presence in the world... And the moment its born say to it in joyous excitement, "Welcome to your world your majesty".. which will break the cycle of it being born in our culture's base "original sin", which is being born into democracy's slavery system, in this hell on earth...
Do all the above, and birth a new Human.. or don't do it, and birth just another mindless little monkey in hell's herd...
Just wait until these kids start applying for colleges and jobs, unaware that reality deals harshly with those unprepared to earn their place in the world.
That's when they turn to their mommies and daddies and ask them to sue anyone they can get their hands on. And mommy and daddy, not having enough money to hire a good lawyer, will instead turn to the government and push their nanny agenda on the govnerment, from local to federal...which will in turn send a mass of lawsuits flying every which way.
Man is it a good time to go into law or what?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Why is the title (in the browser titlebar) for the print version of this article 'Nothing Says "Early Earth Was Cool" Like World's Oldest Diamonds?' If you drop the "&print=true" from the URL, the title is correct.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
Definition: IQ
What does mostly incorrect mean?: It means that it is very hard to substantially and lastingly boost IQ.
My brother the oldest of us was:
1) Put into a gifted program at a very young age.
2) Told that his IQ was significantly above average.
3) Constantly coddled that he's a very gifted individual and should use his talents.
Me:
1) I was one of those kids that went to the "special" classes in 1st and 2nd grade. I had a lot of catching up to do. This was embarrassing for me at the time.
2) Never told my IQ (maybe it was low I don't know).
3) I eventually got sick of being with the "special" kids and realized I wasn't as dumb as they thought I was.
4) The only advice given by Dad when I had trouble with my homework was "Figure it out!" I used to be so frustrated with him for that answer, but it worked I did try to figure it out.
My brother dropped out of community college (after 1 semester). Went into sales telemarketing etc. Lost his job never bothered to look for a new one. Living with my parents now... he's 33. Regularly asks me for advice in anything from paying bills to computer questions.
Me, went to a halfway decent Engineering school and graduated with good grades. Got a good job; good salary and own my own house now. I feel challenged and am happy with the challenges my job provides me. I generally seek intellectual enriching activities. What helped me? Curiosity. Asking my dad endless questions on how cars, computers, and electronics work. He now asks me questions.
IMO, one problem (of many - education is a complex issue) is that we approach schooling as if it were an assembly line. Students are treated as identical, passive recipients of information rather than as people actively trying to hone their abilities. Is it any wonder kids are bored out of their minds in school? And sadly, those areas of schooling in which an ability-improvement role is actually a focus - the arts and athletics - are the same ones being de-emphasized in our attempts to shore up other fundamentals.
Of course, that brings us back to your point of how do you fix it? Well, one idea off the top of my head is this: in special ed (at least in VA), teachers are required to create individualized learning plans for their students. Why don't we do this for every student? There's a wide spectrum of ability in "regular" students, not just in special ed students, and I bet that sort of individual plan could really help students achieve more. The downside is that is a very labor-intensive process, so it'll be costly. But I suspect it'd give you more bang for the buck than a lot of other potential ideas (expensive computer equipment, etc).
Tom Perkins ... said that he has failed often, but that his successes outnumber his failures.
On a related note, something I've picked up on from my grandfather and grandfather-in-law (both successful businessmen), is it's not that they never made mistakes, but that they never made the same mistake twice.
Failure is like money: inherently, it's neither good nor bad, what matters is what you do with it
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
-Calvin Coolidge
Do what I did. Marry a Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist, and do what she tells you to do.
I agree completely that a work ethic and motivation are crucial factors - which is what the article in large part is getting at. Having an IQ of 150 will do you no good if you spend your days as a high school dropout playing WoW and munching potato chips, or if you have a learning disability such as dyslexia that goes unnoticed.
The problem is that you are highly unlikely to get into, and much less to get through any kind of decent college with an IQ of, say, 90. Which is also significant.
Still, if we want to discuss the malleability of self command (roughly = contentiousness in big-five speak), that is a completely different discussion. I have recently seen some research that indicates there is most likely a very substantial genetic influence in that as well.
It's contained in this little verse, whose author escapes me:
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a mother who read to me.
(Hint: You can easily substitute "father" for "mother" in the above.)
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Yes, Mozart was born a genius. But that doesn't doom those of us who weren't. It's comparable to athletic talent - there are some people who were born enormously talented, and don't have to work hard to be great athletes. But the sports world is full of people of average talent who worked their asses off, and achieved greatness despite not having "natural" talent. The very best, of course, are those who combined natural talent and hard work - Tiger Woods being a prime example. Going back to intelligence, yes, of course some kids were born smarter. But those who weren't can close the gap through hard work, and often surpass the "smart" kids who never learned to challenge themselves. That's not to say that they'll catch the smart kids who also work hard.
All kids are not equal, but encouraging effort and achievement is good for all kids. Praising natural ability encourages reliance on ability over effort. Teach your kid to be an overachiever, not an underachiever, regardless of their inherent talent or intelligence.
You are right, and the article hints at this problem somewhat toward the end. The author set up "Brainology" clinics with schoolteachers and schoolchildren to talk about developing brainpower. Clearly, this is the kind of encouragement that these children should be getting, but more importantly, the fact that it had such a profound effect means that schoolteachers weren't aware of it. And I think that the educational system is abyssimal in this regard-- they do not follow scientific finding in education, either because of bureaucracy or ignorance (or both), and even worse, when they do attempt to taylor learning based on scientific evidence, they get the science wrong.
Clearly, you picked up this skill despite your environment. So there's a balance that must be reached. I recall a gym teacher in elementary school who was determined to believe I was a non-athlete because of my performance in baseball (bad), despite the fact that I was way ahead of my peers in terms of fitness (I played a lot of hockey). He would consign me to sit on the bench with "the nerds", while the "real athletes" played. What an asshole. Anyway, I ended up making varsity Cross Country my freshman year, and went on to become league MVP (undefeated runner) as a junior. I hold two course records at my high school, and they've remained standing for the past decade.
It's amazing what kids are capable of. I've always believed (and my opinion has not waved as I've become an adult) that adults are almost always the problem. The "problem" part of a "problem child" does not exist solely within the child-- it's a property of that child's relationship with others. Sometimes the problem needs to be recified with the child. Sometimes the problem needs to be rectified with the adult.
What? Can't a fella at least ask?
There is no "American educational system" worth talking about, certainly not one about which generalizations like this are useful. There are many state, federal district, and territorial educational systems run under different sets of policies and practices, each of which is further broken down into smaller districts that have their own policies and practices, and how gifted children are treated varies from school district (and even school) to school, and even teacher to teacher.
Certainly, there are programs within school systems in the US that provide more challenging material, more independence, and higher performance expectations (not just greater quantities of material) to gifted children. There are, no doubt, places within American schools systems that fail to do this. But certainly it is not the case that that failure is universal.
Challenges are just another excuse to crack open a beer or smoke a bowl. After all, programming intoxicated == best code ever!
You'd be surprised. His father pushed him really hard almost from birth.
But, that's not the point of the article. The artcle. OK, so Mozart had great potential when he was born and his father pushed him. He was almost certain to achieve greatness (although some people in that situation can be pushed to madness).
The article is about overcoming limitations and learning to cope when you fail to achieve something. It is saying that if you are taught that you are only good at one thing and you are never "allowed" to fail then you may grow up never trying.
America, Home of the Brave.
And that anecdote seems to match my experiences. I am not as worried about looking foolish in intellectual matters, things outside of intellectual matters are quite different.
So I feel perfectly comfortable tossing out a hunch in class only to have it shot down by good counterexamples (within reason of course since there's no reason to bog down a class with unhelpful statements), instead of sitting in the back of the class with an idea but either be too self-conscious or disinterested in the rest of the class members to speak up.
Or how in high school I would usually pick up the material fairly quickly. But when it came time for the teacher to ask the class if they understood what was presented people would invariably say "yes" even though it was clear from their body language and the comments they made just quiet enough to avoid detection by the teachers that they did not. So I'd eagerly ask what I thought people were not getting just because I thought it was pointless to have sometimes half the class not understanding some concept or fact.
The result of these experiences is a hunch that it is quite healthy to have a sense of tentativeness about your own ideas and be eager to test them out, even if it means being proven wrong in front of others. Although this sort of practice is much more applicable to older children than younger ones.
Yup. One great example is that there are cultures with musician castes. It's certainly not the case that everybody who's born into such a caste is a great musician, but training children in music from very early ages is quite normal. Youtube has an nice video of a 5 year old in Burkina Faso getting some training on the balafon, that's illustrative.
Are you adequate?
That reminds me of something my middle school math classes did. They called it the "Problem of the week". They basically threw a highschool-level math problem at us, put it in a cute story form involving "bobo the clown", and gave us a week to solve it. We basically had to write a report on how we broke the problem down and solved it.
I loved it. At age 12, I started writing hypercard (an old mac app on par with visual basic) "stacks" to help solve problems, or demonstrate them.
Looking back, I think the "Problem of the week" was really a big part of teaching me to love challenges, especially ones I wasn't yet totally equipped to confront -- that, and my father encouraging me to learn how to answer my own questions. The love of intellectual challenge is still a primary driving factor in my life.
I think the lesson you learn from competitive sports is that losing isn't failure if it's an honorable loss. When my kids at school tell me about games they won or lost I always ask them what they did (or the other team did) better in order to win. The answers get better and better as the year progresses, which is a good sign.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
So this means Mario is making our generation more capable! We all learned pretty quickly that the only way to progress is to keep trying and look for successful strategies. If we carried this into our daily lives we should be well-prepared for success, according to the article.
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
This point is perhaps particularly relevant to the extremely gifted. Lack of challenge and lack of feedback can easily produce the 'helpless' personality type even in people with an IQ of 200. Going to a school where there is no possible way of failing prepares you for real life in no way at all. Speaking from my own experience, here in Quebec, school grades of 98% are eminently attainable without real effort, and there is no higher grade (god help those in places with letter grades!). If you are one of the students who can do this (and the exams are structured so that you can usually do well simply on the basis of internal evidence; I think it possible that a sufficiently cynical teacher could teach average students to ace them cold), no one will believe you when you say you are having trouble understanding the material, and no one will provide you with any motivation to do any better—or frankly, any guidance about anything. When you get into the real world and people start asking you to do the impossible, guaranteed failure scenarios being a genuine part of reality, it all falls apart. It's a big shock, and many of the most valuable people are lost, I think.
"The reason for doing it is to reduce the impact of the over-bearing and over-controlling adults who get too wrapped up in the scoring and the winning/losing."
So we stunt children's psychological development because their parents are immature asshats? That doesn't solve the problem; it perpetuates it.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
when your best just isn't good enough? http://despair.com/fail24x30pri.html
"From high-school on, I always found tall, slender, smart girls hot. I married a tall, slender, smart girl. My daughter is now a tall, slender smart girl." ... and now you want to marry your daughter? I'm calling the police.
:)
(Kidding! Sorry, I couldn't resist
The article begins with a story about a child claiming that school is too easy and the work is pointless, and then glosses right over why he would make such a complaint. I was one of those gifted children; occasionally I got the "you must have worked really hard" praise, but it always sounded absurd. All of the busywork they shoveled down my throat *was* pointless, and I still feel bitter thinking about it. Compare how much money is spent on sped kids to those on the other end of the spectrum. That's the real problem.
Like the fictional composite kid in the article, I breezed through school without even trying. I could have been valedictorian if I had only applied myself a little bit. Instead I started seeing high school as "I already know this crap" and instead ignored homework and took numerous zeroes on assignments my last two years. Aceing tests balanced that out some (or the whole system was extremely skewed) so I still ended up 6th out of ~200 with an average of 96.5.
When I hit college, however, I was in for a rude awakening. College is ALL about effort and work. Everyone (to some degree) at college is smart so it's an even playing field. If you don't put in the effort, you will fail. I did. I received my first failing grade not of my choosing and it sent me into a downward spiral: depression, drinking and basically an attitude of "what does it matter?" I received my associate's but not my bachelor's. Nearly 20 years later I'm a certified systems engineer with 23 years of professional computer experience, but that incomplete degree haunts me and hinders me in several ways from achieving the upper levels of my career.
I'm taking this article and a few others I found Googling "grow your brain" to heart so I don't allow my daughters to make my same mistakes, or actually allow them to make plenty of their own mistakes. They're both naturally gifted in different ways, but I'll encourage them to grow their abilities to apply effort, learn from mistakes and to fail in good spirit.
This is the secret to why immigrant Asian children have been outperforming Anglo children in school. The idea that hard work = good results is something very ingrained in cultures influenced by Confucianism. You work hard to get good grades to please your parents, and the Ancestors. If it takes burning midnight oil, if it takes going to cram school, whatever it takes, you do it. And if you fail, you do it again and again until you succeed.
Once these families get a dose of the self esteem ueber alles school of child rearing in the US, they tend to regress towards Anglo means after the second or third generation Asian-American children.
It's all about self-efficacy and internal locus of control. Self-esteem is about "I'm a worthwhile person because I'm me." Self-efficacy is more like "With enough effort, I can do anything I can set my mind to." A person with an internal locus of control blames "not enough practice" or "I didn't study like I should have" for failing a test. A person with an external locus of control thinks "I failed the test because I'm stupid" or "I failed the test because my teacher has it in for me."
Self-esteem, self-efficacy and locus of control are part of a bigger entity called one's self-concept. The individual parts that make up self-concept tend to get conflated, particularly in the case of those whose knowledge of psychology does not go beyond Psych 101 or High School psych courses. However, studies have shown that these are separate aspects of self-concept which can be experimentally manipulated and scientifically quantified.
Legitimate mastery experiences do far more to improve self-efficacy, and in turn, improve self-concept, than all the unearned praise you can lavish on someone. It is worth noting that Nathaniel Branden never published any peer-reviewed research on any of his ideas, and that most of them came from his guru Ayn Rand, who never took a psych course in her life, much less a philosophy course. Branden did receive a BA and an MA from accredited schools of psychology, although his doctorate came from a questionable, non-accredited source.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I remember this lecture in that psych class I took in college. I thought it was dumb then, and I think it's dumb now. Or maybe it's just semantics. I'm hoping someone can explain this to me (although, my hopes are low given my tardiness posting). I define intelligence as adaptability, and proficiency in learning; i.e., one's abilitiy to assimilate new information and then apply it. I'm a scientist, which is why it's biased in this direction; my idea of intelligence is lacking in that it does not take creativity into account. Ignoring that failing for now, I think that intelligence is fixed, and failure to complete a certain task (at least, at first) is little sign of intelligence. It turns out that task completion is skill based, and skill is the product of experience and intelligence (e.g., exp*int, although I'm not so naive as to think it's that simple). Smart people fail all the time (geniuses, tend not to, but that's because they require very little experience). When I fail, it isn't because I'm stupid, and it's not because practicing is going to make me less stupid, it's because I don't have enough experience. Practicing will give me more experience and make me better at completing that task. The idea that intelligence = skill is a corruption of those words, in my opinion.
A good teacher can get his entire class to ace AP Calculus exams, or get someone who hates writing to be competent (even skilled) at it. Likewise, bad teachers or chance can get people with great innate talent to hate what they are natural at.
From what I've seen, almost anyone can be taught enough mathematics, language, and athletics to be competent. This doesn't mean, of course, that anyone can become an Einstein, a Charles Dickens, or a Babe Ruth- but unless you're born mentally or physically disabled, you can become a engineer, a journalist/tech writer, or a ditch digger. (There's a very limited number of major league spots available- anyone who tells their kid they can grow up to be Michael Jordan is an idiot. The most athletically talented people I've ever met never even made it to the minor leagues. You can still make a living off physical strength in the military or in construction, but those aren't jobs most people would choose).
Certainly the best in any field will have innate talent as well as investing considerable effort. The merely competent, though, can have talent OR hard work, without needing both. (Most will have some of each).
Also, chaos theory implies that even slightly different experiences as a child can have major long-term changes. Different food eaten during pregnancy, owning a set of blocks at an earlier age, having an older sister- these have significant effects on a kid. It's as impossible to rule out nurture as it is to rule out nature.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I came to a similar realization around my fifth year of high school. I had coasted through grade school getting A's and the occasional B. However, when I started high school and started a new system, which relied entirely on self-motivation (online home schooling), I failed to put any effort in. Subsequently my grades plummeted and I ended up getting a GED rather than a diploma. I had always known that I was "smart" but it was only then that I knew that everyone was essentially "smart" and it all came down to the effort you put in. So I started college armed with this perspective and I feel pretty good about my direction.
I thought it was funny that this was my Einstein quote of the day:
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
a) When Mozart was 4, or even 14, his operas weren't very good.
b) Mozart's father was the original source of his strong drive and intense focus. It's not clear that he retained that intense drive and focus as an independent adult.
Yes, Mozart was born more talented than most other musicians. That wouldn't have made him famous. But he was in an environment that recognized and cultivated that talent.
That said, Mozart doesn't appear to have been strongly self-directed. His directions were imposed from the outside, first by his father, and then by some social groups that he was affiliated with. (His wife doesn't appear to have been particularly effective in directing hime. Nor does physical need...he essentially starved to death, though it was actually sickness that did him in, there's a fair chance that he wouldn't have seccumbed if he hadn't been physically weakened.)
If you want to have smart kids, then you *DO* want to start with at least one really smart parent, because in the early years the child will need to be directed by that parent. So there doesn't only need to be a smart parent, that parent has to be around and involved! But even that doesn't suffice. The parent has to properly motivate the kid. That's what this article is about.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Children using the Suzuki Method would be a good example not only for your point, but the topic at hand. I'm amazed at what my 5 year old daughter can play (now starting her second year) and she was actually fairly far behind the others who started at the same time. Within the last month or two, she's passed most of them, and it's largely been a matter of getting her to understand the work ethic involved. We hear the same from all of the other parents.
Programmers in mirror are brighter than they appear
Dude, you are so wrong ...
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I grew up always being praised for being smart, for being gifted, and the like. I was reading at 2, talking and walking really early, and my twin brother was the same. I went to a gifted elementary school and because of that acceleration I breezed through middle and high school and got into a great college.
When I got there, I hit a wall. Many classes where "dumb" people did better than me and I managed a B-C average. Hell, sometimes I didn't care to go to class at all. I waited til the night before to study, and laughed at the kids who spent all week doing organic chemistry problems. I was always "busy" though not really doing anything but playing computer games.
I'm sure many people can relate to this. Still, procrastination and issues related to it constantly plagued me. Anyway, I squeezed by and graduated and got a job and it was great... for a while. Until it started being challenging.
During my last job, I finally figured out what it was, which is what the article says. A combination of an over-protective mom who couldn't let me fail and a slew of teachers who couldn't handle my ability to just devour information created a huge problem with the fear of failure. I had no idea how to deal with failure even as a kid, since I never *had* failed. I'd never been allowed to, that I can remember. If I was doing something wrong or slow, my mom would always cut in and fix it for me with a "you're smart, you can do this faster, let me do it for you". I never got to solve my own problems when I made mistakes. Since college and work can be tough, they finally presented real challenges for me and I didn't have anyone to save me. And of course, the problems there led to massive issues with avoiding potential failures: procrastination, laziness, shirking difficult projects. I've spent a lot of time reading books and in therapy to deal with it.
Finally, after having moved away from my parents and their influence, I started figuring out what *I* want and started breaking out of these habits. I pursued a Masters degree at night while working full time, and it was surprising how I could do both of these things and manage a 3.7 GPA and good salary while as an undergrad I couldn't do either of them. I'm still dealing with them to some extent, but I know I'm on the path to eliminating it completely.
If you can relate to these issues, check out The NOW Habit and books on the "Achilles syndrome" or fear of failure in general. It's possible to reverse the bad influences and teachings of your parents and teachers.
"Also he didn't write an opera at age four, he's first opera was written at about age 11."
11? What a slacker!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I once came in contact with a Super Genius in third grade: little Timmy, when asked to draw a bird, painted an amazing piece of art equal or superior to Audobon! And for show 'n tell, little Timmy brought in a fully functioning, portable weather station made out of kitchen stuff and trash. And this was back in the '50s, somewhat predating digital electronics available to the masses. People in that intelligent range are surely anomalies.
If your class was anything like the ones I took, then those students didn't do well because they studied, they did well because they cheated as a group.
If you mean their raison d'etre is to make kids unmotivated, I think you hit the nail on the head.
The school system isolates smart kids from any meaningful feedback except test scores, and it accustoms them to the constant drumbeat of, "Wow! You're great!" Eventually, they start to panic and feel like failures whenever they don't hear it.
The not-as-smart kids who are just interested in having a decent job and a decent life are unmotivated because they feel completely cut off from the real world. They all have, or start with, a strong desire to work to improve their own lives, but they're told to do schoolwork, and there is no credible person available to explain why schoolwork is relevant to the real world. Teachers can't convince kids they know anything about "the real world." (Teaching does share substantial "real world" aspects with other professions, but those common aspects are paperwork and bureaucracy. It's best not to mention paperwork and bureaucracy when attempting to motivate teenagers.)
In all cases, kids end up feeling trapped in the system and inhibited from working to further their own interests.
The intellectually oriented kids are best off. They understand that doing coursework prepares them in some measure for their future work. Obviously it isn't ideal, but it isn't completely worthless, either. (If you thought it was completely worthless, well, you weren't smart -- at least not about that particular question.) The not-so-intellectual kids have good opportunities in school to work to their own future benefit, and are repeatedly told so, but they don't really believe it. And you can't blame them. There's no practical way for kids to verify the value of the work. They have to rely entirely on the credibility of their teachers, who have little credibility to tell any kids (except aspiring teachers) that schoolwork has any relevance to their future. Every ounce of skepticism felt by students translates into lower morale, less effort, less achievement, and more frustration.
The solution? Make education an attractive profession. Double the salaries; recognize and reward talent; make sure teachers get more payback for their hard work than an occasional picture in the local newspaper. Teachers must be successful professionals, not just idealists or old-fashioned wives or people who just wanted lots of time off and didn't care what they were paid. Education has to provide opportunities for smart, competent, materially ambitious people. Otherwise you end up with only idealists on the one hand and underachievers on the other. Students respond to idealists but fundamentally don't identify with them; they tend to regard them as out-of-touch with the real world. As for the underachievers, well, who can feel good about taking advice from them and *shudder* following in their footsteps? No, kids need to be taught by people they can optimistically identify with. For the vast majority of kids, that means bright, hardworking, materially ambitious people, people who currently regard education as a shabby backwater.
It's about developing traits, not how much you can memorize in your head, which is what the 3Rs really do in the long run.
When I was in high school, I didn't work hard. I got good grades overall, but some areas were weaker than others (writing for example). Praising me for "working hard" to get that A in math or chemistry would have backfired, because I knew I wasn't working hard, those were just classes that were easy for me.
I used to ace vocabulary tests in my SAT prep class. I would literally scan over the latest list of words before the class, then finish the test before all the other students, and always get 95%+ scores. (And that vocabulary knowledge didn't vanish, I've retained it, probably because I was also an avid reader)
I know I am not a genius, but I am also pretty freaking smart, in certain areas. I don't know why, whether it is genetic or learned.
I know I could have performed better in school, if someone had figured out the right way to motivate me. This topic is especially relevant for me, now that I am a parent. I want to know the answer, but simply changing the style of praise isn't going to cut it.
The reason is because most of us generally hold intelligence in much higher regard to the other traits you straw-manned. Oh, you're stronger or taller then me? Good for you, you are more capable of doing a few trivial things that I don't care about better then me. But if you're smarter then me, why then, the insinuation is that I'm inferior to you in something I actually care a lot about. You'll find offense in the insinuation of superiority in any trait you value highly, so for example, the statements "Let me pay for that, I'm much more successful and have more money then you" or "Let me talk to her, I'm more attractive both mentally and physically than you" or "Let me raise your children, I'm better at it" are also plainly offensive.
IAAC (I Am A Composer), and I have to say that these arguments get applied too often to music, and this triggered my bullshit Mozart fact-o-meter. Mozart was 8 when he wrote his first opera, and nobody performs it, because his later operas are so much better. Lots of talent, but lots of learning.
Most people never learn to compose because they think they can't. They've bought into the Hollywood Amadeus nonsense that God comes and talks to you, and then you just write it down. It's less glamorous to admit that that person, although talented, also worked extremely hard, and that you, with a similar extreme effort, could do the same. Writing music is hard work; it's the toughest thing that I know how to do that I can do well, but I resent when people act like it's magic. Being the absolute best at something probably does require a bit of magic, but too often we just use that as an excuse. Though not everyone has the same innate talent for music, it probably didn't hurt either that Mozart's father was also a composer, and he would have been surrounded by excellent musicians and trained on the piano before the toilet. Music, and only music, is all that Mozart did from birth. He worked in one style, that had certain formulas for creating melodies, harmonies and forms. (check out his dice music!) He was damn good, but he was also incredibly hard-working.
Also, as per one other myth from Amadeus: "He could hear the music in his head!" Any composer worth his/her salt can do this with tonal music from the Classical Period. Same way a good mechanic can hear a certain sound from your engine and know that it's cause xyz. It's what they do, and sort of an expected skill amongst composers.
Parents.
Either you have good parents who encourage you, or your parents suck. Most parents suck cause their parents suck. Leaving us with a society of failures who are becoming more and more dependant on the government every generation.
Because calling a kid "smart," taken by itself, does not really tell us much about the child. What it does is to reify as an intrinsic and objective property of the child what, in truth, is the value that we put on an ill-defined set of qualities of that child. What we're really saying is that we approve of the child's qualities, but we say it in such a way erase ourselves from the picture. This allows us to pretend that the child is "good" by some objective standard, and to avoid confronting our preferences and submitting them to criticism.
Are you adequate?
Geegads, you realize how hard it is to have smart kids? You know I used to wonder how a kid could wind up swallowing a magnet, till my son (the budding physicist at five) showed me the magic trick of "sticking" pieces of metal to his cheek. That last section you've got there made me smile, smarter kids do some crazy sh*t. Funny thing is I'm a little scared, of how far this could go, ya, see he's convinced that if he learns enough science he can grow up to be like Spiderman or figure out the "Powers" of any given X-Man (they all go to college ya know), if he's ready to eat magnets at five, what will he be into a few years from now? - lasers, tractor beams?
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Another important to think about is that it is never too late to go back to school. As a parent, you're probably keenly aware of time constraints, and that going back will be difficult, and costly. But now that I'm in an undergrad degree program for the second time (I have a philosophy Bachelor's; doing CS this time around), I have to say that I am constantly inspired by the older students in my program. Many of them have children, and some are even retired. These people typically run circles around the first-time students, and they're more likely to put the teacher on the spot for non-performance. I mean, we're paying for it this time!
Anyhow, I think the consensus is, once you get back into the swing of it, you'll find that the sacrifices become easier. Even if that means working from 9-5, going to class from 6-9, and then spending your entire weekend doing homework.
Even if they cannot spell it :)
Let's try again, this time in a more structured fashion:
-Significant hereditary/genetic impact (indicated by sibling studies/adoption studies/twin studies)
-Significant non-genetic impact, BUT no effective long-term method for boosting IQ has been found (so far), despite significant efforts*
*There are many identified environmental/biological factors that can depress intelligence though, especially through early exposure.
Why people feel the compelling need to make carbon copies of themselves to fill up our already poisoned planet is a mystery to me. Besides, kids make you old, stupid, trapped and broke. Childfree is the way to go.
Breastfeeding is sort of the "default mode" for humans. As is not getting exposed to large doses of heavy metals in infancy, and so on. But that's not usually what we are usually discussing when talking about IQ mallability.
This is a good reason for why compulsory public schooling is a bad idea altogether. We live in a different world now, but most really successful people in our nation's history learned a lot from their parents, community leaders, and friends' parents. If they went to school, it was for a few years, to become numerate and literate, but then it was right back out again. The primary source of education, from adolescence through adulthood, was books -- including the majority of our founding fathers. Now, less than half of Americans read a single book in any given year, but I digress. Public schoolteachers have forever been the bottom of the barrel; I believe that school is a demotivating and only marginally educational experience for many students, but it's hard to imagine that this will change for the first time in modern history (or quite possibly, human history).
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
"C'mon, do you really believe that a four year old Mozart sat down at the piano by himself and composed an opera while drinking earl grey tea?"
No. Mozart was long dead before Earl Grey tea was known as such (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Grey_tea and compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart)
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I remember reading that some forms of dyslexia are language specific. I found it interesting that some Asian people who are very intelligent and good at their own language, had trouble with learning English. A person who is dyslexic in English may not be impaired using a symbolic language such as Japanese.
I am not sure if any of this will be helpful, but I remember finding it interesting myself.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Oh, leaf me alone.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Step back for a moment and ask yourself, would you rather parent a stupid teenager or a smart one? The smart ones hack Dad's on-line brokerage account and drain his 401k to fund spring break in Rio de Janeiro.
As always, be careful when you wish.
On the other hand, the idea in the main article, that intelligence is mutable, and a persons' persepctive on the mutability of intelligence affect their ability to alter their own intelligence is useful.
And, as always, if you find yourself raising a child, your #3 job is to limit your kids' screen time (#1 is feed, clothe and house them, #2 is love them unconditionally). Limiting the time they spend in front of a TV or computer will do more to increase their intelligence than anything else you do. In fact, if you keep your kids TV viewing under 1 hour per day, you virtually guarantee that they will be in the top 1% intellectually in their generation.
IMHO, someone who knows a topic, any topic, both in theory and in practice exhibits intelligence.
I was talking to an exotic animal handler once, and when she found out I was working on an MS in math, she started the usual, "Oh, you're so much smarter than me, I can't do math, yada yada yada..." I politely pointed out that to run a business centered around exotic animals and to care for them on a daily basis outside of their natural environment requires a lot of intelligence.
Another example is a local teen who dropped out of high school to do decorative stone work. He was making $100/hr during his summers off and figured, "Why stop?"
On the other hand, in some places the primary virtue of public school is that it insulates children from their parents and community :-)
Optional schooling or privatized schooling -- either one -- would limit the vast majority of lower-class kids, and a very large number of middle-class kids, to the class they were born into. They would be limited by the attitudes and understanding of their parents and the people they look up to. Perhaps by some theory they could be said to deserve that fate, but even from selfish point of view, our economic fate is tied to their future economic productivity. I think far more is gained by rescuing talented kids from those classes than is destroyed by marginally limiting the development of kids with savvy parents.
This ignores the fact that we ALL know/knew kids who were smart, and DID NOT work hard, and got straight A's.
I was told I was intelligent as a teen.
I did not believe a word of it.
Because I was a straight-C student.
And how hard I worked didn't seem to have much relation to my grades.
I can't really explain this - other than I must have been a late bloomer, because now, in my late 30's, I'm working my ass off, and I'm getting straight-A's.
There is more to this, than their oversimplifying theory.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You make an excellent point, and I would like to extend it to include handling disappointment as well as failure. I know some parents who are scared to death to tell their 3 year old "no" because, "she doesn't handle disappointment well." They see it as a fixed trait that they can't do anything about.
If they observe a better-behaved child the same age they either lament that they are not as good of parents as that child's parents, or comment that the other parents are "lucky" to have such an "inherently well-behaved" child. They then dismiss advice with, "That won't work on my kid. I tried it once." Instead of teaching her to handle disappointment, they go to elaborate lengths to avoid it.
Along with handling failure, we need to teach our kids to evaluate risks. I see so many adults today who either won't take a risk when they should, or take on too big of a risk when they shouldn't. We want our kids to be able to handle failure, but we don't want all their failures to be huge ones either.
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Motherf*ckr!
You just described me perfectly. (only I have a slender, good looking, smart son too.)
Then I realized - I had already marked you "friend" at some point. heh.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
My son reads slahsdot and if I said anything less, he'd be crushed. :)
Hey, Steve!
At 11, I was just learning the finer points of nose-picking and paste-eating. I think the most advance artistic achievement I had by age 11 was a birthday card I made for my Mom from construction paper and a doily.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Last Spring there was a concert by Music of the Baroque of a piece Mozart wrote at age 6. It was quite excellent. There was subtlety, humor and great use of dynamics. It was as good as anything else that we being written at the time. I remember reading the program notes because I couldn't believe it was written by a child. He and his sister were stuck in Vienna or somewhere together, away from their parents and they made a game of composition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
IAAAC (I am also a composer) and although I learned most of my technique at the conservatory, I was composing long before I started my formal studies, and I have spent the last 10 years trying to forget much of my formal studies (not all. I had an orchestration class that was most inspiring). It was not so much a matter of thinking I can as believing it was something I had to do. For me, it is magic, but then, I'm not very good. Hard work is unloading vegetable trucks at the Fulton Street Market here on Chicago's near West Side (which is something I did during my undergrad days before I figured out how to make money playing in bands).
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Psychology of Self-Esteem was written by Nathaniel Branden , whom many Slashdotters may recognize as a well-known Ayn Rand disciple and libertarian. His views on self-esteem are not dependent on his political philosophy, and there are many who agree with one and disagree with the other.
I think he had a valid point in that self-esteem is vital, because someone with too low a self-esteem won't try anything, and therefore will fail. The article you link to (like TFA) says that you should praise effort rather than innate ability, which makes sense.
Saying "you're smart/fast" only works as long as the child succeeds, and makes the child feel bad when he fails, because the basis on which he has built his self-esteem is no longer true (he is not in this case fast enough to win the race or smart enough to solve the problem.) The child praised this way fears failure because it invalidates his self-esteem. On the other hand, saying "you're a hard worker" is still true even in cases where the child fails. This maintains the basis of the child's self-esteem, and reinforces what is needed to solve the problem or do better next time (more hard work.)
So it's not really an issue of whether or not self-esteem in itself is a good thing, it's a matter of how you properly help a child to build well-grounded self-esteem as opposed to an overinflated ego which is based on one's perceived inate abilities. This well-grounded self-esteem is based on hard work and determination which, no matter how great one's innate abilities, play a key role in whether one will excel or underachieve.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
Fortunately for her, my daughter inherited her Mom's beauty and intelligence. All she seems to have gotten from me was my foul language (which appears to be something else we have in common, jafac).
You are welcome on my lawn.
A couple of days ago though, she suddenly stopped and said "I guess you're so smart becuase you ask the stupid questions!"
Also, in my experience tutoring a few friends, I tend to find that people learn a lot faster once you've convinced them that they ARE intelligent and they CAN understand what's going on. Thier own self limitatiom is a major factor slowing them down.
(Yes, I know this is slashdot and I'm going to get slated for claiming I have a girlfriend but, as it turns out, getting dates is a skill. One just as learnable as any other. As long as you know where to look ***plug alert*** David D'angelo ***end plug***)
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
R.I.P. The liberal mentality...
Slashdot is taking the news very hard.
Yes, the early works are impressive--for a six year old--but they are nowhere near the level he would later achieve. While people do perform them on occasion (10 performance out of easily 10000+ performances of Mozart a year (chamber groups, operas, pianists, etc.) does not a trend make), they are a historical curiosity, and will never find favor the way the later works have because they are student works and lack the complexity and depth of his later music. (Could I do that at six? Hell no...)
It's certainly not fair to compare the boy with the man and expect similar results (though such a comparison is illustrative with Mendelssohn), and that is not my intention. My point is that he didn't come out of the womb writing, and though he did have many advantages such as a highly musical family which was completely dedicated into turning him into a star, and a quite stable set of styles and forms within which to work, he developed substantially over time, and doing music every day probably had quite a lot to do with it.
Talent is absolutely a factor, but it's certainly not everything. Being in Chicago, you may be familiar with a certain greatest basketball player of all time who got cut from his high school team and decided he didn't ever want that to happen again... I'm not arguing for mass delusions of grandeur; I just think many people feel like they aren't good enough to create, whether music, art, etc., and it's a shame.
I am still a kid in 11th grade. If I were to ask my parents how they would raise me differently, they would say that they would get me out of the public school system earlier so that I could learn with kids near my intelligence. If you do not get challenging work, you will not work hard, and you will not learn to work hard. I coasted on my intelligence until tenth grade and then worked incredibly hard to actually do my work. I still have no idea where I would be if I had been truly nurtured throughout my education.
The article pointed out that the child that is good at problem solving (consistently) is there because the *child wants* to be good at problem solving and will put in the effort. Actually, replace problem solving with any other activity, mental or physical. Having parents doing the pushing is what contributes to the "fixed mindset".
My guess is that Mozart is not one of the people to be used in relation to this article. I would guess that he is an exception rather than the rule. The occurrence of that sort of gift would be 1 in a billion. The rest of us have to do the best that we can.
I don't have kids, yet, but when they are kids I will be pushing them to be kids and just play. It works for the animal kingdom, and it will be good enough for any monsters I sire.
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Well I've been lurking around here since 2000(?), and since then I've a child of my own. As much as I love the tech stuff, OS wars, etc. family topics really grasp my attention. I'm so thrill to see such an interesting and 'intellectual' discussion/tips on raising children here at /. Thanks for so many useful comments and tips.
I think most of us wish to spend as much time with our children as possible. My boy's the greatest joy and grace bestowed upon me. But with longer work hours (thanks to remote login, globalization), made longer with CPEs (thanks to continuing professional education), plus the physical limits of the human body (we just want to crash when we finally head home), plus the nagging wife (maintenance), it can be challenging to set yourself in the right frame of mind for 'undivided love, attention and patience to the child'. By the time you're done with the chores (so you can continue to bring bread to the table), it's 2am, and the child's fast asleep. Hey, we don't all work on a farm.
My 2 cents: who said raising kids was easy? Say goodbye to the PS3, your health (sorry, no more sporting weekends), your social life (no more pubs after work), that new digicam/laptop (sorry, the child's education fund comes first). With the limited time and stamina left in us, what remains has to go to the child, if he/she's ever going make it (the education system's not going raise your child).
And this is just one child we're taking about. I heard siblings also comes into play. I've love to do that (not for the smart factor, but simply because I love a larger family) - if they could keep our jobs from India, and if there were 48 hours a day.
the television is harmless entertainment. you limit exposure to television simply because you want your kids to spend time doing something challenging, not because the tv is some sort of alien brain poison which decreases iq
all kids need downtime. hell, all human beings need downtime. there are a number of ways to spend your downtime, and watching television, for hours a day, is one of a number of harmless choices no worse or better than any other carefree time waster
as long as the significant balance of daytime activity is spent doing something that challenges the mind, AND the kid has carefree downtime (spent doing a number of things, which could include tv or not, no matter), you are raising a healthy intelligent child
there's this weird, dare i say, stupid fear of the tv as some sort of iq destroyer. it's quite a bizarre fundamentalist cult, like apple aficionados or free software zealots
oops, wrong website to mention that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
all children and adults need downtime. how you spend that downtime doesn't matter, but you don't want that downtime to be a majority of your time. it's as simple as that
it's not about television, it's not about video games. hell, if a kid is playing something like civilization, he's growing some iq points there. what it's about is epnding the balance of your daytime engaging your mind, AND having some carefree time too. wathcing tv during that downtime, as long as it is a MINORITY of your time, is perfetly ok
so where does this bizarre FUD spewing cult of television=brain poison come from?
television is harmless. no, really, television is 100% harmless. lack of effort is the problem. of which constant television watching is a SYMPTOM of, an effect of, not a CAUSE of
avoiding television is like avoiding kleenex when you are sick because you see sick people with kleenex all the time. you have your cause and effect all screwed up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you allude to a secret fixed intelligence everyone has. ok, let's for a moment say you are correct, that your thesis is true. now the problem is measuring it
if we were to have a magical device that could measure this secret value we'd have something here. but being that we don't have a magical device to put an absolute sticker on the back of everyone's head, we are left with what the article says is a better measure of intelligence: a subjective, malleable one
but i'll give you the benefit of the doubt: as soon as you invent your magical objective intelligence measuring device, get back to us. until then, the conclusions in the article are superior to yours, because the fixed number you allude to is completely and utterly beyond anyone's ability to measure with any remotely useful accuracy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Outside of overweight beta males and their dyslexic offspring, who cares about the scoring of kids' games?
- First, there is not "one" definition of intelligence, but at least several very different intelligences (kinetic, language, musical, visual, etc.), located in different parts of the brain.
:-)
- Second, how you wire your neurons it's up to you a great degree something you can choose. This is how you solve problems and connect ideas.
- Third, there is practice and experience.
- Forth, there's also motivation that chemically affects how well memory stores information.
So it's not about being politically correct here, nor is it about trying to establish that all of are are equally "intelligent". The point here is that a learning attitude towards life, not caring about "abstract" intelligence absolutes that brings a "I'll to it better on-average each month", where setbacks are great feedback for improving and trying new approaches, and keeping a high morale (motivation, interest, "Do or not do, there is no try" - where the point here is not on NOT failing, but on believing will reach destination sooner or later) will make you not only perform better, but will make you more "intelligence" by anyone's definition (though it does have more to do with attitude, with learning to learn, and with developing your hidden mental abilities, which everyone has)...
I have a stupid example: in my family nobody dances...they are not made for dancing, the have two left foots... So I thought likewise for years, and hated being forced into a dance scenario. One day I was a couple having so much fun (and dancing with great feeling) I recognized I wanted to feel the same way...(ie: not dancing well, but having so much fun and style). I went to classes, reminding me everyday that I didn't want to be "good", I wanted to have "fun" each day, I would not compare me to others, I'd not evaluate advances in the short term, I'd see others learning faster as a great indication of how to get better and a "sources to learn from"...I brief, I stopped caring about being smart, relaxed and went for the fun...and that enabled the change. It's not that I can dance now, it's that I don't care about doing it right, and end up doing it pretty much right to the point of having people I don't know come by and saying "wow, that was amazing" and comments like that. This was when I was 29, and because I challenged the idea that I was hard-coded as a bad dancer...and the idea that dancing is for non-intelectual types (sounds stupid, yeah).
The same happened with presentation skills. I decided I wouldn't feel bad nor good about any particular presentation. I'd just pay attention and get better over time. I had scene panic in day 1. Two years later I was presenting in public events with great please. By boss told me I didn't have to do it better, I only needed to have more fun. It was so true, I though that advise was completely stupid and maybe even dishonest. The advise was definitely right on track, and I managed to to get really good on client feedback surveys. I had fun, I prepared so that clients had a bit of fun, challenge, etc. Before all this, I focused on being totally right...felt the need to show I knew a lot, assumed a defensive positions when challenged (or got nervous).
I learned all this at age >28, after moving to another country (I lieved with my parents before). You can't be any smarter that you are, but you ARE MUCH smarter that you think. You can exploit your potential by NOT caring to be smart, NOT caring of being less/more smart than someone else, BUT by having fun, persevering...getting amused, seing mistakes as guides and part of the process, and by paying attention at what works, what does not, why...and did I mention fun and "no competition focus" worked wonders? You end up being very competitive if you stop trying to compete, and start having the right approach.
This is from my experience, so I am glad there are 30 years of studies that in a way resemble what I learned for for me. As Esther Dyson once say "Always Make New Mistakes"...and I'd add: don't be set back, it's the way to learn
unfinished: (adj.)
if it makes you feel any better, i was cheering for salieri
to have smart children is to have had smart parents yourself.
This is a TEST Comment Salman Khan Salman Khan http://www.google.com/
oh man, T-ball was infuriating for me as a child because (aside from there not being any pitching) both teams would simply go through the whole batting order once, then switch. It didn't matter that we got 4 outs in an inning. And I'm not an overly competitive person, but it just didn't feel like a real game when it didn't matter one bit if someone got out (I don't remember if we kept score or not).
You didn't say what kind of piece it was. (Clearly it wasn't an opera...I don't believe that any operas he may have written at that age have survived.)
From what I've heard Mozart mastered the composition of short pieces at a younger age than he mastered the composition of longer pieces. (Were I otherwise I would be quite surprised.)
I'm sure that Mozart and his sister competed at musical composition and performance. This is a part of the "family dynamic". That he father wasn't present at that particular time doesn't imply that he hadn't shaped that dynamic. I suspect, though of course I don't know, that the "composition game" was created at an earlier time period, and that his sister noticed, perhaps, that if she was composing with Mozart, she didn't get called away to do the dishes...or something similar. My parents were like that with homework and studying (to an extent, not completely). I was often able to escape more boring tasks by being engaged in either homework or even recreational reading.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.