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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: j g cordes who wrote (34498)	4/12/1999 9:35:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I don't really like talking about IQ, because I know it's only a rule of thumb. You can lump people together according to where they score, and line them up, and most of the time they will come out in about the same place, but the scores are meaningless. You can get 130 on one test and 160 on another, which is why MENSA just says, top 2%, on any standardized test. I know I test high. I know people who don't test high resent people who do test high. I don't think I am necessarily smarter than people who don't test high. Even if I were, so what? What matters is what you can do. It's nice to test high, you get special benefits, but I feel creepy accepting them, like I get to ride at the front of the bus and everyone else at the back. My kids are in GT Center, which is much nicer than regular public school, on the basis of test scores, and there is just this arbitrary cut-off at 150, so 149 IQ won't make it, which is crazy. Although they do define giftedness as having talents, that isn't how kids are put into the centers, it's on this arbitrary cutoff on a test which isn't all that accurate, anyway. And then there is the problem of the people who test high and never do anything with it. And the people who think that social problems should be addressed on the basis of test scores. All in all, it's very problematic. I don't think about it much at all.

To: j g cordes who wrote (34498)	4/12/1999 2:54:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Child genius is a fascinating subject. Hypatia herself must have been a child genius. Michelangelo did work at 16 that made Lorenzo de Medici set him up in a studio in his palazzo. J. S. Mill was overeducated by his father but survived a breakdown to become a great thinker and writer. McCawley was another -- when asked if his finger still hurt from a burn when a young child, he replied "Madame, I find the agony has somewhat abated." Mozart is an outstanding example -- both in performance and in composition. Alexander was a child military genius. There is a considerable difference in high achievement, kids who do very well in school in conventional studies, and creativity -- those who do things never done before. Mozart as a performer was miracle enough, but that he started to write music worth listening to today when a child is really quite astounding, since the nearly all children lack the experience and knowledge necessary for creative art and science. I suspect the brain structures necessary for mathematical thought and music composition are quite similar and very different from the mental prints needed for images which that need to be expressed through hand-eye coordination and training. I also suspect that the hand-eye skills require very early training to reach real superiority. The nervous system develops in the early years. Learning occurs discontinuously in spurts. There are times in a child's life that if learning is missed there remains a deficit. The best example is speech. There is growing evidence that the amount of talking, spoiling, and attention that the primary caregiver gives the infant is immediately reflected in IQ and other measures of verbal intelligence. I know of no studies of a child's mathematical tutoring, but it would hardly surprise that the aptitude may develop very early.