Hmm. I'm concerned about this bit:
�The essence of this book, and the reason I found it so exciting, is that it is moving away from this idea of talent as something that some people have and some people don�t. It�s showing talent as something developable,� said Carol S. Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of the new book�s foreword.
Sounds dangerously like phony egalitarianism to me.
I'll go back to our hackneyed sports analogy here. No one would seriously suggest that sprinting or jumping talent is something mostly "developable" and not innate. Yeah right, like someone's going to take a kid who runs the 100 in 13 seconds with a tailwind and "develop" her into Flo-Jo without kilograms of steroids and bionic legs? I don't
think so.
(Though perhaps Ms. Dweck did indeed come close to making that suggestion?!?)
Yet educators and others continue to claim that we can raise IQ or pretend that it doesn't matter anyway. And now we having giftedness "waxing and waning" as though brains were tide pools. I guess this gives these folks an excuse to keep believing they have no role in creating gifted high schoolers who perform "solidly in the middle."
The review (and presumably the book?) makes some good points about teaching kids to try hard. And the guy from Hunter College made great points. I just get dubious when I see the stuff about giftedness "waxes and wanes."
!
Val
<RANT OFF!>
