In footnote 38 on page 208, Shenk
quotes Mitchell Leslie in an article he wrote about IQ testing. In this foot
note, Leslie mentions that “proponents (of IQ testing) considered intelligence
the most valuable human quality and wanted every child and adult to get tested
in order to determine their place in society”. They argued that our country
would be more efficient if student with high IQ’s were sent into more
challenging classes to prepare for college, and students with lower scores got
less demanding course work with dimmer job prospects”. Discuss if students
being “classified” into knowledge categories may actually stifle their
educational growth. Contrast this method with the biological concept of
competition in nature promoting natural selection. Discuss how natural
selection based on intelligence would affect humans as a species. (Liz Gorelick
- lizgorelick@yahoo.com)
Students being classified into knowledge categories would definitely stifle educational growth for multiple reasons. The first being that people with lower IQ scores may develop a lower self esteem due to feeling inferior to people who were labeled as having higher IQs. Since these people have been categorized as not being worth as much to society in terms of academics and becoming a "professional", they may choose to just give up on their education. Since they've been told by society that they have no prospects of becoming someone like a doctor or a lawyer, and that is what they wanted to be, they may just give up on their dream.
ReplyDeleteIt is also a bad idea to place people into a hierarchy for education because people who would generally have good study habits and could keep with higher IQ students because of their work ethic, would just choose not to keeep on going with their good ethic. As Shenk would argue that people are not born naturally intelligent or gifted, and it is the environment mixed with genes that help someone develop intelligence, someone with a low IQ but good study habits would be equal with someone with high IQ but bad study habits. The two would balance out, but since they have been categorized, the one with the high IQ has been deemed more important to society even though he may not deserve it. He could become a doctor just because he is told he has a high IQ and is exposed to higher level classes, but turn out as a bad doctor because he did not study hard enough. On the other hand, the person with the lower IQ could have become a equal if not better doctor, but they did not have the exposure to the proper classes because of categorization.
The Pygmalion Effect and a study by Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) would be a good example for this scenario. A part of a classroom was randomly selected, and the teachers were told that these students would "bloom" in the following academic year. The teachers did not know that the students were randomly selected, so they assumed that these "blooming" students would be the smarter students. They unconsciously categorized the students in their minds and treated them differently. By the end of the year, the students who were supposed to be more intelligent, even though they were chosen at random, had higher test scores than those who were not categorized as "gifted". (http://www.duq.edu/cte/teaching/pygmalion.cfm). The students who were categorized as blooming were probably given better treatment and attention then the rest of the class, and that is why they were able to put up higher scores at the end of the year.
In this case, natural selection if not really occurring because the students who had the potential to do well in school, but were not randomly chosen, were set up for failure. They were not given the proper attention that would have helped them develop their intelligence and education level. In a modern natural selection, they would not be able to be as well of as the children who were able to receive the necessary attention to do well in school. For the rest of their lives, they may feel inferior just because they were not treated fairly. Since they did not consider themselves as intelligent, they may not do as well as the others and flourish as they could have.
Like the response above, I fully agree that classifying students into classes based on the test scores or IQ would be stifling and detrimental to their academic growth.
ReplyDeleteThe effects of such a system would mainly be mental and emotional. Like the person above, I agree that subjecting someone with a lower IQ to a lower class would foster a low self-esteem. By separating from an early time the students with higher scores from students with lower scores, it would create a sense of futility and hopelessness. It would create the mindset in students that if you're mediocre, then you will always be mediocre. Or if you are below average, then you will always stay below average. And this is something that contradicts the entirety of David Shenk's book. As Shenk states in his introduction, "I am arguing that very few of us ever get to know our own true potential, and that many of us mistake early difficulties for innate limits." (12) As this quote highlights, this entire book describes how talent is an ongoing process. By stigmatizing students who do not perform as well as other students perform, educators are proposing that those students are limited in their intelligence. And this mindset will effectively put a stop to any later development and a stop to any chance of the students realizing their true potential. Educators, instead, need to be teaching these students equally. For the lesser-performing students, being in a dynamic classroom with teachers and other students to help them will be a postive classroom. As studies show, "when students make the connection between their performance and feeling good about themselves, intrinsic motivation is enhanced and positive behaviors continue." (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept08/vol66/num01/Seven-Strategies-for-Building-Positive-Classrooms.aspx) And for the students that perform well from the beginning, having been labeled as "high-achievers" will have been harmful to their educational development as well. As Lewis Terman's study, called "Genetic Studeis of Genius" showed, schookids who had been identified from and early age as "exceptionally superior" grew up to be "less and less exceptional". As Shenk describes this phenomenon, "child achievers are frequently hobbled by the pyschology of their own sucess." (91-92) So being lifted up as "smarter" may create a mindset that actually may prevent further growth, and may prevent these students from reaching their true potential.
Sara Yoojin Lee (yoojin3795@hotmail.com)