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EXPANDING MINDS Are we getting smarter? April 20, 1998 |
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This forum's introduction
Questions answered in this forum:
Why do we still look at IQ scores? Is technology the cause of rising IQ scores? Has environmental or health factors increased IQ scores? Do current IQ tests reflect the idea of multiple intelligences? How does a person's race or socioeconomic background affect his or her IQ score? Should student testing be changed to reflect the times? Viewer Comments
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Vince Devlin of West Chester, PA, asks:
The question that interested me was: "Are we getting smarter, or is the nature our intelligence changing?" As a high school mathematics and computer science teacher, I am aware of the many questions concerning testing. It is difficult to define "smart" unless we define the criteria that will be used in the evaluation.
My question: If today's students are developing in areas that differ from those that existed in the past, should testing be modified to focus on these areas, or should we continue to use the testing methods that produced the technology that has allowed these students to evolve? Since "yesterday's students" have produced today's technological world, how much tinkering should we do with "tomorrow's world?"
Prof. Ulric Neisser of Cornell University responds:
Yes, I do think the nature of intelligence - better, the balance between different intellectual skills - is changing. What should we do about it? I can't say for sure, but my inclination would be to continue or even to increase the schools' emphasis on the "old" skills of reading and writing and mathematics. As you say, the new skills seem to be doing just fine on their own; meanwhile, the old ones are increasingly at risk. I don't see any harm in trying to devise new tests that are specifically focused on visual and spatial and abstract-pattern skills (indeed, this is bound to happen), but whether such tests will tell us more than the ones we have already remains to be seen.
Prof. Alice Honig of Syracuse University responds:
The human brain took millions of years to evolve, as we note from examining the rough tools of Paleolithic man.. Then we get to the sophisticated tools..for scraping hides, for opening oyster shells, for carving on bone or cave walls, etc. of Magdalenian man.. late Neolithic man. The brain changes slowly. We still have powerful responses of the thalamus and hypothalamus... If a child is traumatized by abuse or threats or neglect on any frequent basis, the brain connections over the first years will inevitably trigger alertness to hurt, to danger.. That child will be unable to learn in a school situation in the same way as a child can who has been safely nurtured and treated with gentleness and genuine focused attention during the early years. We need NEW uses for the brain.. That is, brawn to lift 100 pounds will not be as marketable as brain commitment to solving the puzzle of how to prevent bank failures all over the world through computer glitches in the year 2000! or how to help a very jealous sibling with her or his sufferings when a new baby is born into a busy nuclear family. When we lived in extended families and tribes, this latter problem may be been easily solved. Today, we live in nuclear families with busy dual career parents. So more skills are needed in many areas, not just how to build a better computer to beat a human chess champion but how to help harried parents and how to help the shy college student with skills in going job hunting or date hunting! I do not believe we have a rise in IQ. But we do have a rise in the numbers of facts we know, in our knowledge base, in our achievements, such as literacy. In some countries, there are plenty of bright folks, but no opportunities for schooling for children, particularly, as with the Taliban now among the Afghans, for female children. Let us remember that what we learn can grow, of course, with more learning from teachers, from media ..from books, from computer data bases...but how we learn and how we reason abstractly are crucial for intellectual depth.. If we reason so that we commit genocides and holocausts..then we have a long way to go before we can say that we have increased human intelligence! School curricula need to enhance a sense of wonder and joy at the bounty of the biological world, the miracle of the plethora of life forms.. The amazing incredible plethora of innumerable galaxies and black holes and comets and curvature in space-time!.. why on earth we spend time about whether our neighbor's nose got fixed or bosom, or the size and price of neighbor's or in-law's new car when there is an awesome universe of knowledge out there waiting for us to work gloriously until the day we die toward understanding and mastering knowledge..... I will never understand.. There is so much to learn!. I can only sing folk songs in a half dozen languages ( one of my hobbies). but think of the hundreds of wonderful folk songs people have composed to express love anguish, to lull infants into dreamland..oh!..just in folk songs alone I could spend lifetimes in more learning!. aside from all the articles on child development I need to read and to write also in life!. that is the gift of dedication teachers need to work toward.. And with the hope explicit whenever possible to their students, that this passion for learning will be used to help humans toward a more kindly, more empathic, more productive life together on our overcrowd but fascinating planet Earth. My mom, who is 97, was a school teacher for 45 years. An immigrant child, with feet twisted from poverty and never having had shoes of her own..only hand me downs, taught generations of poor children..and brought in books from our apartment all the time..so the children could see the Dore illustrations of the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"..so children could hear the mournful story of Evangeline..or the great rhythms of Hiawatha in Longfellow's narrative poem. And on weekends sometimes, she would take two trolley cars back to her junior high school and take some of the children by subway to visit the Museum of Natural History in New York City..while our papa walked us to Prospect Park and helped us enjoy the flowers and climb on the climbing bars. That was a teacher!
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