Hi Bostonian,
I want to say it is Rena Sobotnik. I actually talked to her. She had gone to Hunter for elementary and high school and wondered why no one from Hunter did anything extraordinary. So I didn't read the research, I heard from the researcher. I was on a committee for the NY Gifted and Talented Conference, which got dismantled....another story and why NYS gifted is a mess.
Anyway, the study made an impact at Hunter as I was talking to a mother of a grade 1 student when dd was 4 and she spoke to me about the parental concerns that the study showed.
You know that saying that if you don't know real sorrow, you never know real joy? Perhaps you just can't motivate yourself if the path is always cleared. Like DD told Hunter she didn't want to go, her OLSAT was awful for the K admissions, when the spots are wide open. So she had to take the OLSAT again and she got into the district G&T but not the citywide accelerated. She is learning the difference because I made her take the OLSAT again, so she could have a shot. And tried for the Special Music School since the first year she refused to do 3 out of the 4 things they asked her to do.
Here is her anxious mother trying to get her the "right education". Then she gets a piano teacher last year who teaches at Special Music school who desperately wants her in and we try again. So the whole process.
This year we do the OLSAT again and hope for a spot -- and I can push for a spot. DD knows she had to take the stupid test again to try for a spot.
That all takes it toll on a kid's psyche of trying and trying. Hence, that makes them try harder when they don't get what they wanted. Although I really wished Hunter had taken her and she had cooperated more, in the long run, maybe she is striking a path through a denser wood that makes her fight more for what she will want in the future. Who knows?
Ren
That's her, except that the last name is spelled "Subotnik". Quoting the interesting profile of her
http://www.apa.org/ed/schools/gifted/focus-researchers-subotnik.pdf 'After Rena arrived at Hunter, my office became the site
for her next research project. Each morning �I would arrive
and two seventh grade boys would be at my conference
table, poring through battered tin boxes of file cards,
writing down the names and addresses of former
students at the Hunter College Elementary School.
Donna Shalala, the then President of Hunter College,
had given Subotnik seed money of $5,000 to do a
replication study of the Terman longitudinal studies
with graduates of the Hunter College Elementary
School, to see what they were doing now.
Subotnik explained the rationale and findings for the
study: �I used the graduates from 1949 to 1959 because
those groups were most likely to have been admitted
based on IQ. (The first class of HCES graduated in
1949 and the class of 1960 and beyond for a while were
admitted using various experimental criteria). The
graduates were in their late 30�s to early 50�s. I used
Terman�s mid life questionnaire as a model for my
research instrument. I discovered that the graduates
were not especially eminent or renowned, in spite of the
high IQs and opportunities. There didn�t seem to be the
kind of drive exhibited by these wonderful people to be
significant contributors beyond their own community.
�This research affected me in two ways. One was it
made me realize viscerally that IQ was not a sufficient
predictive variable in relation to eminence or great
creative productivity. It also made me realize that I
wanted to use whatever gifts I had to make a mark on
the field.�'
<end of excerpt>
As self-appointed Defender of the (IQ) Faith, I will point out that no mention is made of a control group of children with similar IQs who did not go to Hunter. "Eminent or renowned" compared to what?
