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This is exactly what I’ve told my kids from the get-go–and am still telling them NOW! :)</p>
<p>~b.</p>
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</p>
<p>You’ve since learned that this is total bushwah, right? It’s nowhere near true. There is absolutely no reason that any adult of “average” intelligence can’t finish college. Maybe they can’t graduate with a 3.8 from Caltech, but there are a lot of colleges for a lot of different people.</p>
<p>
A little EQ wouldn’t hurt either. For a doctor <em>or</em> a lawyer. ;)</p>
<p>And, given that the testing devices are themselves flawed…what looks like a 130 IQ may in fact be a 150 Verbal IQ and 100 Performance IQ. That IQ score is an amalgam of a number of different subtests, and “one” IQ number may not reveal a brilliant person with severe learning disabilities. That doesn’t even get to the other legitimate and spirited arguments that can ensue about testing, etc… ;)</p>
<p>(Yeah, my kids were tested. Never told them the results. I’m not clipping those wings!)</p>
<p>Sooner or later every student has to deal with a number assigned to them be it IOWA tests, IQ or SAT. I would be surpised if anyone 15 did not know their results from some nationally standardized testing and where they fit in the overall picture. I don’t think this is such a bid deal as you could easily augment the probably accurate data the teacher presented (and took some intitiative to find)to add some perspective that the teacher may not have had handy. Overreaction makes it more important than it was. Hiding facts is never a good policy–they always come out. Anyone can take an IQ test online and get a number.</p>
<p>kluge, that would be true if the IQ tests accurately measured IQ, AND if IQ were a static thing. But it’s not. There is this myth that a person is stuck with their IQ, when in fact many factors can affect it. The IQ test may give a general idea of where it’s at, and it may be true that it would be unreasonable for a person with a really low IQ to be a doctor or scientist, but I think there is a wider range than that teacher led her students to believe.</p>
<hr>
<p>Einstein’s IQ has been estimated, but did he ever take an actual IQ test? And, back then, undoubtedly such a test would have been even less accurate (if they even had such tests back then). When he was a child, his teachers said he would ‘never amount to anything.’ Remember, he had trouble tying his shoes.</p>
<p>I would venture to say the best estimates of his IQ are based on what he actually accomplished. People just assume his IQ MUST have been very high. But if he had actually been tested with one of today’s IQ tests at a young age, I wonder what the results would have been, and whether he would have let those results dictate the direction of his life.</p>
<p>An excellent example of not letting such labels mold our kids’ future is found in The Matrix when the Oracle refuses to give Neo a clear answer about whether he is ‘The One.’ He becomes The One because he decides to, not because of any label.</p>
<p>I think that the teacher’s comments are very inappropriate; however, I don’t encourage you to talk to the teacher about it. As others on this thread have said, authority figures can be wrong. Since this is your most sensitive child, it may be good for you to talk to her about the fact that being a teacher/parent/boss/etc. doesn’t automatically give that authority figure any special wisdom or knowledge.</p>
<p>
I have not overreacted. In fact, I have not reacted at all to the teacher or the school. I shared it here instead! ;)</p>
<p>If you know anything about IQ testing, you would realize that an individual IQ test administered in the accepted standard fashion is considered to be much more accurate than a group test or one completed online. </p>
<p>As far as disclosing IQ, it is a matter of individual preference. I personally don’t think that one needs to go around spouting out an IQ number anymore than one needs to go around spouting out a bra size. Both are pretty evident from the outer manifestations! :)</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>
YEP!! This type of discrepancy was evident in the scores of several of my children.</p>
<p>berurah-I share your sentiments that innate intelligence is but a single piece of the puzzle leading to the long term “success” for any individual. We should not restrain our children based so imperfect a “tool” as an IQ test nor should encourage them into something that they hav no desire in pursuing. I know that one of the top grads in my hs class, whose father was a dean at SUNY-Binghamton did graduate from Hamilton College but then went on to become a cabinet maker in New Hampshire and is currently an executive at Wall-Goldfinger, a world reknown office furniture maker based in Vermont.</p>
<p>Obviously everyone has deficiencies which we parents should be aware of them in guiding our progeny. I know that I was wavering between architecture and engineering as a high school student. Our family summered, no in the Hamptons or the Cape, but in six rocking chairs on our front porch. During the evening family conclave following my hs junior year, i brought up this quandry of my to which my father replied, “An architect? Do you really think you have the drawing skills for it?”(or something to that effect) Anyhow, he was absolutly correct and I plowed ahead thinking engineering and never looked back until I had a landscape architecture friend living in an apartment across the hall. He showed me his final term project one day, and looking in amazement at the skills he had in drawing it, I recalled that evening on the porch and said a silent “thanks for the great advice dad”. All the training in the world could not have given me the skill that my friend Dan came to so naturally.</p>
<p>But it is too simplistic to place boundaries around our students based on any one factor and your daughters teacher, while perhaps sincere in her beliefs, was not considering the whole picture.</p>
<p>Lealdragon, I basically agree with what you say, and I also note Berurah’s comment re: EQ, but it’s still true that a lack of IQ is a limiting factor, just like lack of height. Many people underperform their potential, as related to IQ. Fewer people overperform that potential. I fully recognize the other talents people use to accomplish their goals, and don’t mean to overstress the particular basket of skills that corresponds to IQ scores. But there is some degree of validity there, and denying that isn’t realistic. I think most of us would be able to form a pretty decent estimate of a person’s IQ after a few hours of serious conversation with them - within 20 points or so, which seems to have been the teacher’s general parameters - and I bet that the variance between our estimates wouldn’t be that great. Tests are cruder than that, but they give reasonably consistent results, which corresponds to scientific validity.</p>
<p>P.S. Berurah - my Mom never would tell me or my sisters our IQ test results either, and I respected that. But we figured it out anyway. :)</p>
<p>I will agree with Kluge, on limiting factors. I have seen some tremendously ambitious and dedicated students, who desperately want to do well in high school or college, but whose performance is very seriously compromised, not only by learning difficulties, but by low average native intelligence. For these kids, all the hard work in the world does not make up for these basic deficits.</p>
<p>Oh Berurah,
I couldn’t get past the part about your daughter actually telling you what went on in her class!!! LUCKY. </p>
<p>In all the years my boys have been in school I can honestly say they have NEVER come home and described to me something that went on in their class! (Unless you want to count me asking questions and them responding with, “yes,” “no,” “what’s for dinner?”)</p>
<p>originaloog~</p>
<p>That is a beautiful post, and I very much appreciate everything you said. </p>
<p>The idea that innate intelligence does not tell the whole story has been played out again and again and again in the lives of many people close to me. My cousin, who wrote a book on space at age 11 and was accepted to MIT seven years later, dropped out and worked in a record store for years. He still does not have a college degree. </p>
<p>On the other hand, my kids’ pediatrician, a Colombian born and educated man with a <strong><em>SEVERE</em></strong> learning disability which required MUCH adaptation (and assistance) to get through med school, is one of the finest physicians I’ve ever known, and he is the inspiration behind my D’s dreams. </p>
<p>My fouth child, who has tested within the average intelligence range, is one of the most “gifted” people I know in terms of EQ. He may never be accepted to Duke like his older brother, but he will be one HELL of a success—there is <em>NO</em> doubt in my mind whatsoever. </p>
<p>My fifth child was diagnosed with a learning disability for which she is receiving services in school. Super high functioning in math, she stuggles with the verbal stuff. </p>
<p>Though there may be some boundaries placed on people by their general ability level, most of the walls are self-imposed or set by others who do not come to know the complex individual behind the “number.”</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>weenie - that’s the difference between boys and girls. My wife thanks her lucky stars that our youngest is a girl - even though she feels pangs over having our two boys away in college she feels like she’s getting the full benefit of the last kid at home. “I don’t know what I would have done if she had been one of the older ones.”</p>
<p>I think one should always explain with any kind of IQ test that it only generates that score based on a certain situation. One shouldn’t look at a set up like that and assume a doctor can easily perform plumbing because they scored higher on the IQ test. </p>
<p>And as smart as we all are, we still take the car to the auto mechanic don’t we? And as good a cook as we are, a chef can take the same ingrediants and make the meal taste and look 10 times better. </p>
<p>IQ tests only test for a certain type of intelligence or knowledge. I remember taking a test in school about carreers and it said I should go into forestry or nursing? ??? K. People learn in different ways and people have different intelligences as well as levels of intelligence.</p>
<p>weenie~</p>
<p>My oldest son shared much of what went on in school, particularly around the academic stuff, but OMG, the rest of mine??? EVERY LAST DETAIL…including but not limited to what “everyone” said about the new boots, who broke up with whom, what the teacher ate for dinner last night, what the teacher’s DOG ate for dinner last night, the bets they made with various friends/teachers over various football/basketball games (I had to cough up payment for one of my middle son’s bets yesterday–a container of Arizona green tea! <em>lol</em>), etc., etc., etc. </p>
<p>What I’ve found REALLY interesting is the difference between my oldest son and my middle one. My middle one, now 13, wants to tag along with me EVERYWHERE, EVERY single errand, just so “we can talk.” I’m taking advantage of every moment of it, not only to share his experiences, but to continue my motherly brainwashing about any- and everything for as long as possible! <em>lol</em> ;)</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Berurah: to quote dmd77:
.</p>
<p>IQ tests are, just like SATs and other tests, indicative of a certain type of intelligence, but by no means governing anything, especially “inteligence”. Like dmd, I have met a number of very smart plumbers and other contractors who also happened to be intelligent in working on such things. I would advise you to push one or more of your kids in that direction, if they seem to have the knack for it, so that you will have at least one kid who can support you and DH in your old age. [;)]</p>
<p>One thing that many people don’t understand about standardized testing is that because the tests are normed–the average is set to 100 by definition–revisions may make comparisons inappropriate. The “old scale” IQ test was renormed sometime in the 1960s (and possibly since then). People who got a 100 on the “new scale” test would get around 115 on the new one. <a href=“Home | Cornell Chronicle”>Home | Cornell Chronicle;
<p>Beruah, you might assign a bit of counter-reading – The Mismeasure of Man by Steven Jay Gould ([at</a> Amazon](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Man-Stephen-Jay-Gould/dp/0393314251/sr=1-1/qid=1165611127/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6650125-0920736?ie=UTF8&s=books]at”>http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Man-Stephen-Jay-Gould/dp/0393314251/sr=1-1/qid=1165611127/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6650125-0920736?ie=UTF8&s=books)) is a lovely explanation of why it’s not valid to pretend that an IQ score is a fixed measure of something tangible in the head.</p>