How Do You Spot a Genius? 385
Hugh Pickens writes "Ingrid Wickelgren reports in Scientific American that people have long-equated genius with intelligence, but it is more aptly characterized by creative productivity which depends on a combination of genetics, opportunity and effort. 'Nobody can be called out for outstanding contributions to a field without a lot of hard work, but progress is faster if you are born with the right skills. Personality also plays a role. If you are very open to new experiences and if you have psychopathic traits (yes, as in those shared by serial killers) such as being aggressive and emotionally tough, you are more likely to be considered a genius.' True creativity and genius depends on an unfiltered view of the world, one that is unconstrained by preconceptions and more open to novelty, writes Wickelgren. 'In particular, a less conceptual and more literal way of thinking, one more typical of people with autism, can open the mind up to seeing details that most people miss.' Our schools devote few resources on nurturing nascent genius, concludes Wickelgren, because they are focused on helping those students most likely to be left behind. 'We need to train teachers to spot giftedness, which may take a variety of forms and often needs to be accompanied by creativity, drive and passion. Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible.'"
Creativity and Independent Thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
...were treated as a disease to be cured, by any means necessary, by the time I got to 7th grade.
I could read at 4, and was encouraged well by my parents, who spent a great deal of time defending me to Administrative staff.
My HS Principal taught me Karate for several years prior; he knew I wasn't a problem, no matter how bad the asshole teachers hated me. :)
I survived, and managed to do well while my detractors have mostly died off thru poor genes and stupidity.
Odds are, I designed something, somewhere, in a machine that almost everyone here or their relatives have been in.
Sorting out the geeks early is a Great Idea, as long as we can keep the other idiots from either exterminating us, or keeping us in concentration camps. (yes, the TSA isn't the Gestapo, but it's a 'like organization'...)
What times we live in... :)
Wrong idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gifted programmes as they have been developed over the last 30 years are in fact probably the worst thing for someone with exceptional ability.
Too often gifted education:
- stigmatizes children in a way that causes a wide disconnect between their self-esteem and self-confidence.
- encourages kids for being "smart" or "intelligent" which rewards them for something they cannot control, and causes weird neuroses.
- isolates kids from their peer group based on criteria they don't understand, and prevents them from forming natural relationships with their classmates.
- presumes that these "gifted" kids can be engineered somehow into whatever the popular ideal of citizenship is. For example, gifted kids are not encouraged to do sports are a part of their enriched education, primarily because of middle-class ideas of "intellectuals."
- discourages solving problems with discipline and work, which is why you see so many "gifted" drop outs and burnouts.
- shields "normal" kids from the disruptive exposure to intelligence that they too should understand and adapt to.
I spent much of my education in these programmes and they are misguided, idealistic, and reinforce the astonishingly stupid idea that intelligence is a kind of secular holiness.
Should we have streamed classes? Absolutely, but enrichment should be available as an option for kids who are up to it, perhaps with qualified interest, but not the fatuous anointment it has become.
If you ever resented not being in the gifted class, I can assure you that you dodged a bullet.
Interesting the factors involved (Score:5, Interesting)
From personal experiene... (Score:5, Interesting)
In 6th grade I was tested for a number of things when I broke the standard tests. The best guess pegged my IQ at around 165-170. By that time I had mastered algebra, had a firm grasp on a couple dozen sciences, and created a number of interesting small inventions (I reinvented the DC motor and came up with a simple rotary engine.)
The next 3 years of my education inside the LA School District involved watching old movies, repeating the times tables, taking field trips (which in fact I found quite enjoyable) and creative writing. This was an attempt to keep me occupied while my peers caught up, which of course never happened... for obvious reasons it couldn't. However, they pissed away the most important educational period of my life. I could have accelerated and been done with my traditional education by the time I was 13 or 14, and moved on to college perhaps completing that by the time I was 18. Our schools are not designed to teach the bright, and in fact, are often punitive to intelligent and creative young people. In a time when we most need these traits fully empowered and present in our culture, such behavior from our leaders and institutions is criminal. However, it is consistent with the large scale conversion of the American mouth-breathing public into obedient, subservient consumption units in the vast corporate engine that is our culture.
Perhaps it time for a new revolution. One in what's possible for being human.
Re: education vs. learning (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an actual genius - 146 IQ. You have no idea what you're talking about.
If your child is so super intelligent that ordinary schoolwork bores them, they should be smart enough to breeze through the tests. They should just "play the game" while at school and do their own learning at home, or in additional enrichment programs (most are free for low income).
That works for about 3-4 years. At some point you just stop trying.
Here's a video on division [youtube.com]. I know you already know how to divide... that's the point. I want you to watch it. It's about 10 minutes long.
Have you gotten through it yet? Yes? Great. Now go watch it 10 or 15 more times.
I'm serious. Because that is what it is like trying learn with normal people. I got it the first time it was explained... but the teacher wants to explain it over and over and over and over again so that everyone gets it.
In 2nd grade I was reading 8-9th grade science books. There were YEARS in elementary school when I did not learn a single thing.
It kills a persons soul to sit through lectures on things they already know for that long.
After fighting with teachers to get me into higher level courses, I was finally pulled from school, and was home schooled. I was in 6th grade, and studying junior-level college material.
Don't look for geniuses (Score:5, Interesting)
Look for smart and motivated people who do brilliant and interesting stuff instead. You won't always know who those are at age 9, and who qualifies will change over time as some really bright kids decide to spend their time killing their brain cells while some not-quite-as-bright kids choose to hit the books.
Slapping the label "genius" on a kid doesn't help them, and arguably stunts their social development. Taking any kid that wants to do something awesome (and reasonably safe) and giving them the help they need to do it helps any kid whether they're a genius or not. If the kid wants to do some science, great! If the kid wants to compete in a chess tournament, great! If the kid wants to play the violin, great! Find a way to make that happen.
Re:Wrong idea. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you ever resented not being in the gifted class, I can assure you that you dodged a bullet.
I wasn't. Precisely because my parents wanted to avoid this. The bullet that hit me because I was kept amongst the normals was just as bad. Not only did I not fit in, I missed out on many of the opportunities that only get offered to the gifted because I wasn't in the crowd when the goodies got handed out.
Re:From personal experiene... (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal experience matches yours up until sixth grade, when I was chosen as part of the Study of Mathematically and Scientifically Precocious Youth at Johns Hopkins University. They performed a huge battery of tests on us, and offered us accelerated courses in math on weekends (which was great, because you are right, there was nothing that was at all interesting being taught in middle school/high school). I dropped out of high school after 10th grade (all A's) and entered college at 15.
And got kicked out of college at 18 for being too immature. And going to work for five years, developing some life skills, and going back to college to graduate at the age of 22 maybe a year after my high-school peer group.
It's tough to know what to do with the outliers. These days with the availability of college courses on the internet; I would suggest that these precocious kids should stay in high school taking courses like creative writing and metal shop; learning about life -- and spend half the day taking online courses. Starting college at a very early age is probably not a good idea; although starting college with a great background is.
Re:Interesting the factors involved (Score:5, Interesting)
Most have some brain disorders like dyslexia. There's something about the type of brain wiring involved in certain disorders that frees up the problem solving areas of the brain. I think part of the hard work involves overcoming the disorders. Most geniuses are unconventional thinkers. I remember a quote that genius was being about to connect A to C without going through B. It's that out of box thinking that defines true genius. Being able to take an equation with 12 steps and reduce it to 3 or 4.
Genius is being able to jump from A to C, then go back in and fill in B.
Insanity is being able to jump from A to C when B doesn't connect to both of them. A lot of political thought falls into this category.
Re:Where's Waldo? (Score:5, Interesting)
How very true. Schools can't give extra resources for the academically talented, or people complain. Just like you can't selectivly give better coaching to kids that are great at basketball....oh wait, poor example. Just like you can't selectively give special coaching to kids that are good at acting... oh wait poor example. Just like you can't give extra coaching to kids with musical ability.... oh wait, poor example.
Yes, it's true. The *only* place where it is taboo and will raise parental complaints about special treatment is if you identify academically talented kids and give them what they need to develop their ability. Around here, schools have been browbeaten out of doing anything for the identified gifted. They used to have those programs. But because of complaints and budget cutbacks, two things happend. 1) The "gifted" program is a 1 hour per week pull-out, and 2) anybody that asks to be in it can be in it.
what is "True" intelligence? (Score:4, Interesting)
IQ or psychometric 'g' means something specific and robust: that within a single person the performance on some categories of cognitive skills (and other even low level neurological tests) are quite correlated with the performance of other cognitive skills. Think of a test with dozens of subscores, each with one kind of problem.
Why is it that people who are good at word analogies somehow are also good at number sequences? No a priori reason, but it's true. Which is why the common human experience for thousands of years is that some people are smart and others are dumb.
Clearly this correlation does not extend as strongly or at all (barring major developmental defects) to other tasks which certainly involve neurological capability, such as catching a ball, recognizing faces rapidly, recognizing emotions in faces, tapping rhythm accurately, or seducing women.
Re:Exactly what I was going to say (Score:2, Interesting)
Great minds think alike.
If this is true, then what about the abilities of magnets, where like poles repel and opposite poles attract?
Also, the educational system of the sixties ensure people that excelled, but didn't have the financial wherewith-all. were made to conform to a lower standard just to make them like everybody else. I still haven't conformed and have no intentions of doing so. Mensa is a joke. you have to pay a fee for like-minded people to stroke your ego, whoopee. Everything I have become I did out of sheer cussedness. I have a long way to go and I cannot and do not expect assistance. Every time I ask for help I have my ass handed to me. Oh well. I have come to the thinking that only small steps, under the radar, so to speak with my own money is the only way. Striving for notoriety, money, degrees are for lamers. True genius looks at the long term without compensation, for the good of the greater populace. Tesla was screwed by big money and mediocre people like Morgan, Edison (a real hack). It's the little man with too much money and too few morals that really shit in the punch bowl.
Re:Toni Morrison? (Score:4, Interesting)
argument from authority.. having a bunch of awards bestowed by society doesn't make someone a genius. Usualy, geniuses are the forgotten ones who die penniless. many times they are pariahs of the societies they were raised into. The people who get all the awards and trappings of 'intellectual achievement' are called 'overachievers.' they bust their asses and/or are politically well-connected and have wealthy parents.. The problem is that many of these trappings are not really based on merit. All they require is an average effort from a well connected person.
Re:Wrong idea. (Score:2, Interesting)
Being chippy isn't really a sign of intelligence either. I've met a few geniuses and the thing that links them is indeed a kind of benevolent curiosity about others.
I thought one in particular used to spend time around some really dumb and lost people, and he didn't seem to care how misguided and stupid these people were. It wasn't until years later that it occurred to me that he was at a level so far from the norm that what I saw as such an obvious difference in those people was so marginal from his perspective that he was just indifferent.
It's like a billionaire seeing someone who made $50k/year and someone who made $750k/year as essentially in the same wealth bracket.
My points about the errors of gifted education would seem to stand.
Re:Wrong idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
You overlooked the #1 argument in *favor* of gifted class -- for many kids, it's the first time in their lives they get to spend extended amounts of time with "their people". I made my first real friend within a month of getting into the class. I was in middle school. It was literally the first time I'd met anybody who was equally smart, and was into the same things I was. I ultimately became friends with pretty much everyone in the class, and we all *might* have tripped over each other in high school (maybe in math club or later, in the Amiga users' group), but the point is that it meant I could finally have real friends after an utterly friendless elementary school experience, in a large school that nevertheless did an amazing job of keeping kids anonymously away from each other.
My brother's mother in law is a gifted teacher, and she agrees 100% that a major need for gifted class is to give kids who've always been untouchably-geeky outsiders a safe environment where they can make friends & avoid self-destructing before high school.
Over-rated (Score:5, Interesting)
Genius is an accident of birth, and true genius can be as crippling as any mental health disorder you can think of. It means flunking out of school easily or being tested for things like ADD only to discover that you were merely bored. It can make a job that isn't challenging a living hell as your mind simply can't cope with the monotony.
Genius level intelligence means a life of being shunned by school mates and later co-workers if you aren't careful to mask your intelligence. It creates a lot of social problems and can really hurt dating until you get really good at masking it. Genius is over-rated by those who lack it and rarely appreciated by those who have it. The most important skill a genius has to learn is how to mask their intelligence, so that those around them don't consider them to a 'genius'. Kind of sad when you think about it.
If you have a genius level child, the most important thing you can do for them is help them to develop their social skills, it will be their greatest challenge.
Re:Wrong idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
- isolates kids from their peer group based on criteria they don't understand, and prevents them from forming natural relationships with their classmates.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but as someone who was both inside and outside such classes, this is certainly not true, in significant part because being in an integrated class makes the problem worse.
Picture a kid in grade 4 (~9 years old) who could generally read, write, and speak at a grade 12 level (~17 years old). Put that kid in a class of children who may or may not even be able to read, write, or speak at a grade 4 level. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think all of those kids are going to socialize well with that kid, no matter how gentle, friendly, or outgoing he was, when they can't communicate ideas at the same level? Or do you think they'll just go with the simple route of ostracizing (and eventually try bullying) that kid?
I was that kid, and let me tell you -- it didn't work for me at all. In the times when I wasn't in an enriched class (at one point because my parents felt as you did, and worried I would somehow be socially stunted), I was usually ostracized by my classmates because it simply wasn't cool to be with the smart kid, or because I didn't have the same interest in music or fashion that the other kids did. Indeed, during these times I often socialized more with kids in later grades than myself, as the communications gap was much smaller. When I was in enriched classes, I had lots of friends and good relationships with my classmates, even when I didn't always share the same interests with them.
Putting all the kids in the same class doesn't magically make socialization easy when there are vastly differing levels of communicative ability. Indeed, virtually every class stratifies into groups based on differing levels of communications and interests, and if you're the one ultra-smart kid in a class of regular kids, you'll quickly find yourself in a strata all your own -- and kids can be merciless to other kids in their own strata (and not just due to intelligence -- I saw the same things happen to kids from less frequently represented religious and ethnic backgrounds face the same struggles, which is probably why most of my best friends throughout grade school were the Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu kids in my predominately white grade schools).
I don't necessarily disagree with everything you said above, but you totally missed the mark on that one.
Yaz
Re: education vs. learning (Score:4, Interesting)
You're a fucking moron.
Like the GP I'm also a genius (IQ 130+) and I had the exact same experience growing up in school. I never took notes and I never did homework, in school and in the university classes I took. I can skip half the class and still ace every test. I remember every school year being the exact same goddamn thing; 4th grade math? 5th grade math? 6th grade math? All teaching the same shit, over and over and over and over. Of course through all this we never made it even halfway through any of our textbooks, let alone finished one; how can you finish a textbook when you have to read and learn from it at the rate of the slowest and dumbest person in a 30 person class?
I know exactly where he's coming from. In 6th grade I was reading multiple novels a week and had a college reading level. I know exactly what it's like to sit in a classroom while the class slowly, haltingly stumbles, one student at a time down each row, through reading one paragraph at a time from the textbook aloud to the class. I'm lost in the book, reading 7-8 chapters ahead as usual, so of course when the teacher gets to me and I "don't know my place", I get in trouble. So then I had to learn the skill of covertly reading ahead but still keeping track of the classroom's progress so I didn't get in trouble.
Obviously you don't have the first fucking clue about anything, so why you bothered commenting here is a mystery to me. If you just wanted to stroke your ego by poo-poo'ing on the GP's claim of genius, then you should have at least attached your name to the comment so we could all know who you are and how smart and brilliant you must have been to make that observation!
Re: education vs. learning (Score:4, Interesting)
Without that repetitive, mind-numbing homework, you can't just breeze through the tests. One of the huge problems I had with our kid's public school, is that they spent most of the time [literally] training for test-taking, and very little practicing the basic math they were learning. As a result, the teachers were saying that our son was one of their best sutudents, and was just a little slow on the tests, but it's okay because he got good grades, and Algebra (or geometry) should be no problem.
He couldn't add 8+7 except on his fingers.
My fix? I said that when he comes home, he is *first* responsible for doing an hour of that repetitive, mind-numbing math addition problems, until he could get the 60 3-digit addition test in 150 seconds (as specified by the book we have).
Once he got that, then he could go on in the book. He does those repetitive mind-numbing practice problems until he gets the answers perfectly.
Then he goes on.
At some point, he's going to speed up, because he has truly mastered the previous topics. Well, he already has.
He's also then responsible for an hour of active play. After that, comes homework. If he gets it, fine and well. If he doesn't, so be it. But I am just about done with caring about how well he learns nth degree metephysical imaginary-world architecture (or how he does on his 20th autobiographical display board).
Maybe next time he does the autobiographical display board, he can show two addition problems: one the left, 3+5 =6 (more or less). On the right, 3+5=8. In the middle, can be written " ... lots of pointless mind-numbing drill ... "