Intelligence And Special Snowflakes: Do Modern Parents Interpret The IQ Test Wrongly?

Are you hoping to immerse your two-year old in a full-time Chinese immersion program, teaching him the flags of the world with flashcards, or starting Singapore Math already? Are you breastfeeding for an extended period of time and making sure you all sit down for family meals after your little one is weaned? Are you doing all this in the hope that your child will have excellent IQ scores and achieve academic success?

It may be time for another look at reality.

What Are IQ Tests, Really?

What do IQ tests measure? Ask many people this question, and most will reply that IQ tests measure somebody's general intelligence (in comparison to the rest of the population, they may or may not add). Reality is both more complex and more interesting. First developed in France by Alfred Binet to identify which pupils were likely to need extra help getting through the school system after compulsory schooling was introduced at the start of the 20th century, IQ tests weren't meant to offer bragging points or figure out which students were gifted at all. 

David Wechsler, an American psychologist, took a broader view of intelligence as "the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment" and took a modified version of Binet's original test to a whole new level by the 1950s, when he created his own test.

Scores for IQ tests are now determined by measuring someone's particular score against that of other same-age individuals in bell-curve fashion and much like infant weight charts. If you score 100 on an IQ test, that means your score is better than half of your peers as well as worse than half of your peers.

They measure, rather than someone's overall intelligence, how well someone performs on an IQ test, in other words those academic abilities measured by the test which that person is able to display on the day of testing. Not only does an IQ test not have some magical ability to provide an objective look into someone's innate intelligence, it also fails to even test such important areas as creativity, practical intelligence, and emotional intelligence.

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In addition, IQ tests also fail to reveal what a person's true potential is, even in the narrow academic sphere it seeks to measure in the first place. And that's before we even get to the bit where questions posed on IQ tests have a single correct answer, much like the standardized tests offered to elementary school students, whereas in "real life", it's actually divergent thinkers, those who offer out of the box solutions, who tend to have the highest potential.

The IQ test might have an almost unruinable reputation, but does it really deserve that? 

Are We Interpreting Intelligence All Wrong?

'We're All Gifted'

With "IQ-stimulating" games and programs marketed to parents of children not even able to walk yet, and much talk about how screen time for children, or being unable to breastfeed, or being a working mother, or not being able to afford that Japanese immersion program can harm your sprout's IQ score, it's hardly surprising that there's a backlash.

While some parents may set out, subconsciously or quite in the open, to convince those in their social realm that Junior is "gifted", often after hot-housing said kid with videos, flashcards, and early academic programs, others have jumped on the "everyone is gifted" bandwagon. Referring to Harvard's Howard Gardener's theory of seven distinct intelligences, they hold that everyone is a special snowflake in their own way.

Gardener said:

"We are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences —  the so-called profile of intelligences — and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains."

He had a point. No matter where we start out, what our potential may be at birth, humans do tend to eventually find their niche, their thing that they are particularly good at or devoted to or interested in. These niches can easily fall outside of the spectrum of skills IQ tests look for, and can indeed be distinctly unacademic. Yet, these niches all represent things that society needs and that can offer individuals intellectual and personal fulfilment. While only a tiny percentage of the population will meet the narrow requirements we currently seek for academic giftedness, everyone can come closer to meeting their personal potential.

Growth Vs Fixed Mindsets

It has been a while now since Carol Dweck published her groundbreaking book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dweck's theory holds that those children who believed that their intelligence was pretty much set in stone didn't do as well academically as those who believe that their abilities could always be improved on. These diverging approaches were term the fixed mindset and growth mindset respectively.

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This particular, and very valid, school of thought led to a whole movement in which students were praised for "trying" rather than for their success, because being told "you did great, you are so smart" apparently led to students with a fixed mindset. Dweck herself later noted that the way in which people were applying her work was not what she had initially hoped for. Indeed, praising children for their effort (where they may not even have made any) could be just as bad for their personal development as praising them for their smarts.

Such a thing as innate, predetermined, fixed, native, or whatever you want to call it, intelligence or potential may exist. How many people truly reach their potential, truly make use of all the possibilities that reside within their brain, however? Is reaching your potential even possible? We don't yet know enough to answer these questions, which are ultimately still more philosophical than practical.

Yet, we can learn from Carol Dweck. Just as those who have practiced taking IQ tests tend to score better than those who have not, those who know that practice at life and learning may not make perfect but certainly makes better are likely to do better at learning. Better at least, at learning those things they want to learn.