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Authors: Darrin M. McMahon
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I HAVE UNDOUBTEDLY SUFFERED from many delusions in my life—and undoubtedly suffer from many still. But being a genius is not one of them. Exacting, if loving, parents saw to it that their son never “got too big for his britches,” as my father liked to say, and an exacting, if loving, family does much the same today. Truth be told, I am far more likely to go through the week thinking of myself as an imbecile—unable to properly assemble my children’s toys, baffled by modern technology, and forgetting (yet again) to take the laundry out of the dryer—than to suffer la folie de la grandeur . My own failings have much to answer for. But there may be an institutional explanation as well. For, in the early 1970s, as a child in the California public school system, I was administered an aptitude test for “Mentally Gifted Minors.” It was, as I recall, somewhat akin to an IQ test, with shapes and pictures and the like, and although many of the specific details of this test have faded from my memory, I know for sure that I didn’t pass. It hardly helped that I was told I almost passed. To be almost gifted is likely as satisfying as being almost pretty. As I watched my little friends trundle off each week to special classes for the specially endowed, the thought provided little consolation.
I recount the story here not only in an effort to combat (however imperfectly) my own sense of self-importance, but also because this book is in part about the power of labels and those who grant them, and the tremendous difficulty of measuring anything as elusive, as multicausal, and as complex as giftedness, creativity, or genius. When I recently spoke with a teacher who helped to oversee the administration of the test I took in California—one of the many fine teachers, I should add, who did their best with those of us who were apparently cheated at birth—she laughed as she recalled the students who had “passed,” and those who had not, and how they eventually turned out. Suffice it to say that she didn’t put much stock in the predictive value of this sort of exam.
Much of the material chronicled in this book would likely reaffirm that basic skepticism. And yet that doesn’t mean that the impact of such tests—and the assumptions that tend to undergird them—are any less powerful or enduring than we typically assume. At an early age, I was told, with all the objectivity of science, that I was not the recipient of gifts. I might have just thrown in the towel then and there, but I am a stubborn sort, and I spent many years disputing the verdict, working away to prove to myself and to others, dammit, that I had not been slighted at birth. It was only much later that I realized that this little exam had unwittingly done me a favor—and not simply because intellectual self-doubtis an ideal disposition for writers and scholars. I had been freed at the outset from a burden that might well have been difficult to sustain. There is evidence to suggest that an exaggerated belief in the strength of one’s innate capacities can actually harm a child’s development, sapping motivation and initiative. And there is even more evidence to show how damaging it can be to tell young people that, according to the numbers, they just don’t measure up.
Standardized tests have been with us since the early twentieth century, and they are here to stay. But at a time when they are assuming an ever greater importance in our educational system, it is worth thinking seriously about their impact, and about the assumptions they entail. For, as this book takes pains to show, despite our foundational belief in the self-evident truth that all are created equal by birth, we in the West (and elsewhere besides) have shown ourselves to be deeply invested in an antithetical proposition, continually reaffirming the natural and inherent superiority of the few.
Why this should be so is as much a question for psychologists, evolutionary
I HAVE UNDOUBTEDLY SUFFERED from many delusions in my life—and undoubtedly suffer from many still. But being a genius is not one of them. Exacting, if loving, parents saw to it that their son never “got too big for his britches,” as my father liked to say, and an exacting, if loving, family does much the same today. Truth be told, I am far more likely to go through the week thinking of myself as an imbecile—unable to properly assemble my children’s toys, baffled by modern technology, and forgetting (yet again) to take the laundry out of the dryer—than to suffer la folie de la grandeur . My own failings have much to answer for. But there may be an institutional explanation as well. For, in the early 1970s, as a child in the California public school system, I was administered an aptitude test for “Mentally Gifted Minors.” It was, as I recall, somewhat akin to an IQ test, with shapes and pictures and the like, and although many of the specific details of this test have faded from my memory, I know for sure that I didn’t pass. It hardly helped that I was told I almost passed. To be almost gifted is likely as satisfying as being almost pretty. As I watched my little friends trundle off each week to special classes for the specially endowed, the thought provided little consolation.
I recount the story here not only in an effort to combat (however imperfectly) my own sense of self-importance, but also because this book is in part about the power of labels and those who grant them, and the tremendous difficulty of measuring anything as elusive, as multicausal, and as complex as giftedness, creativity, or genius. When I recently spoke with a teacher who helped to oversee the administration of the test I took in California—one of the many fine teachers, I should add, who did their best with those of us who were apparently cheated at birth—she laughed as she recalled the students who had “passed,” and those who had not, and how they eventually turned out. Suffice it to say that she didn’t put much stock in the predictive value of this sort of exam.
Much of the material chronicled in this book would likely reaffirm that basic skepticism. And yet that doesn’t mean that the impact of such tests—and the assumptions that tend to undergird them—are any less powerful or enduring than we typically assume. At an early age, I was told, with all the objectivity of science, that I was not the recipient of gifts. I might have just thrown in the towel then and there, but I am a stubborn sort, and I spent many years disputing the verdict, working away to prove to myself and to others, dammit, that I had not been slighted at birth. It was only much later that I realized that this little exam had unwittingly done me a favor—and not simply because intellectual self-doubtis an ideal disposition for writers and scholars. I had been freed at the outset from a burden that might well have been difficult to sustain. There is evidence to suggest that an exaggerated belief in the strength of one’s innate capacities can actually harm a child’s development, sapping motivation and initiative. And there is even more evidence to show how damaging it can be to tell young people that, according to the numbers, they just don’t measure up.
Standardized tests have been with us since the early twentieth century, and they are here to stay. But at a time when they are assuming an ever greater importance in our educational system, it is worth thinking seriously about their impact, and about the assumptions they entail. For, as this book takes pains to show, despite our foundational belief in the self-evident truth that all are created equal by birth, we in the West (and elsewhere besides) have shown ourselves to be deeply invested in an antithetical proposition, continually reaffirming the natural and inherent superiority of the few.
Why this should be so is as much a question for psychologists, evolutionary
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