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    Originally Posted by Val
    Originally Posted by aeh
    Well, certainly not every 50-ish individual will learn to read or read well, but it's not a rare occurrence, especially in school systems that use phonetic approaches with those students (like Wilson or OG).

    Oops. I meant that I met 50-ish of these kids over a period of 5-6 years or so. Many/most had IQs in the mid-40s or below (again, floor effects made it hard to calculate IQs in many of them). I thought that level was "severe" but maybe I was wrong?
    No, you're right. 40s is usually considered severe, though, as you say, the precision of the assessments becomes rather loose in that range. It's not that all of them can learn to read, it's that not all of them can't learn to read, if you know what I mean. Also, if you were meeting them earlier in their school experience, they would have been expected to be even earlier in their literacy development. I'm thinking more of IQ 40-50 late adolescents, who have acquired roughly second- or third-grade reading skills, and some 50s late adolescents with grade level decoding skills.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    Originally Posted by Val
    Well...it's pretty easy to REDUCE your intelligence. Hypoxia, certain drugs, chronic disease, chronic malnutrition, and head injuries spring to mind as tried-and-true methods. So in that regard, intelligence is quite malleable. eek


    Good point. Interestingly, you can also drastically reduce a child's IQ by having them spend their first few years in a crib most of the time with a rotating staff of temporary caregivers. And then raise it again if they get adopted into a good home, though you can't necessarily reverse the damage completely. Research on institutionalized and post-institutionalized children is probably the best evidence in support of the idea that IQ is malleable. However, what some people overlook is that this research suggests a critical age period, after which IQ stops being so malleable. A kid with a normal potential who has spent the first 5 years in a severely depriving institutional setting will probably remain in the cognitively impaired range even after adoption. If he'd been adopted after 1 year, he'd have turned out a lot better.

    Originally Posted by Val
    What bugs me about Dweck and her ilk is the feel-good lying and the distortions. Admitting that not everyone has the same level of talent for academics or sports or whatever is discomfiting. But instead of accepting reality, Growth Mindset just pretends that anyone can do calculus or be a pro athlete if they work hard enough. And it blames its victims when they crap out, because, after all, if you work hard enough, you'll increase your ability.


    Yeah. I have a motor coordination impairment due to autism. If I work really hard in karate, I'll get more coordinated than I am now. But will I ever stop being clumsy? I doubt it.

    Originally Posted by aeh
    Originally Posted by Val
    Originally Posted by aeh
    Well, certainly not every 50-ish individual will learn to read or read well, but it's not a rare occurrence, especially in school systems that use phonetic approaches with those students (like Wilson or OG).

    Oops. I meant that I met 50-ish of these kids over a period of 5-6 years or so. Many/most had IQs in the mid-40s or below (again, floor effects made it hard to calculate IQs in many of them). I thought that level was "severe" but maybe I was wrong?
    No, you're right. 40s is usually considered severe, though, as you say, the precision of the assessments becomes rather loose in that range. It's not that all of them can learn to read, it's that not all of them can't learn to read, if you know what I mean. Also, if you were meeting them earlier in their school experience, they would have been expected to be even earlier in their literacy development. I'm thinking more of IQ 40-50 late adolescents, who have acquired roughly second- or third-grade reading skills, and some 50s late adolescents with grade level decoding skills.


    Interestingly, I've read some research suggesting that Down Syndrome kids (whose average IQ is about 50) have a specific advantage in learning sight word reading. They can often be taught to read as young as preschool age, and learning to read generally improves their speech skills. Which we wouldn't have figured out if someone hadn't decided to try to teach a cognitively disabled 3 year old something most kids learn at age 6.

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    Originally Posted by cmguy
    No, I think you understand Dweck.

    I think telling kids "you're so smart" is so toxic. I experienced this firsthand and it was harmful. One of the benefits of having my DS at a gifted private school is that they understand this and praise effort, persistence, and grit instead.
    But isn't sending your child to a "gifted private school" a statement that "you are very smart, so much so that you need an education different from what average children get"? It is a statement backed by tens of thousands of dollars of tuition money.

    I don't often directly tell my oldest that he is very smart. But when I had him take the SAT before age 9, one reason was to give him some data on how smart he is. When I tell him he should try to become a competitive candidate for admission to the most selective colleges, that is another way telling him he is very smart.

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    This blog post on a recent paper co-authored by Carol Dweck, Mindset Interventions Are A Scalable Treatment For Academic Underachievement , confirms my view that she is intellectually dishonest.

    GROWTH MINDSET 3: A POX ON GROWTH YOUR HOUSES
    by Scott Alexander
    April 22, 2015

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    But my own summary of these results is as follows:

    For students with above a 2.0 GPA, a growth mindset intervention did nothing.

    For students with below a 2.0 GPA, the growth mindset interventions may not have improved GPA, but may have prevented GPA from falling, which for some reason it was otherwise going to do.

    Even in those students, it didn’t do any better than a “sense-of-purpose” intervention where children were told platitudes about how doing well in school will “make their families proud” and “make a positive impact”.

    Titles, abstracts, and media presentations are not your friends. Titles, abstracts, and media presentations are where authors can decide how to report a bunch of different, often contradictory results in a way that makes it look like they have completely proven their point. A careful look at the study may find that their emphasis is misplaced, and give you more than enough ammunition against a theory even where the stated results are glowingly positive.

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    Some may say that determining whether growth mindset raises grades is an apples-and-oranges application. To the degree that a growth mindset encourages embracing challenge and appropriate risk taking, it might actually lower GPA for students moving from comfortably easy material to studying at their challenge level or zone of proximal development.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    But isn't sending your child to a "gifted private school" a statement that "you are very smart, so much so that you need an education different from what average children get"?
    This statement may express the views of critics of gifted education.

    By contrast, a statement which proponents of gifted education may make might be: "You are ready to take on a challenge, and unfortunately may lose that ability/readiness if you do not have the opportunity to embrace struggle and striving." Note this has no comparison to others, but rather is a statement about one's own developmental needs, and the ways in which the needs may match the available opportunity, and the potential negative consequences if one does not avail themselves of the challenging opportunity.

    Quote
    When I tell him he should try to become a competitive candidate for admission to the most selective colleges, that is another way telling him he is very smart.
    Some may see this as a statement that a particular program of interest at any of these colleges may provide a challenge worthy of his potential, the proverbial antelope for him to chase.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    But isn't sending your child to a "gifted private school" a statement that "you are very smart, so much so that you need an education different from what average children get"? It is a statement backed by tens of thousands of dollars of tuition money.

    It certainly is not. My child is not eligible even for public K. The public system does not want us, not the other way around. We have 2 working parents, so we do require some kind of private school or child care. I'm very glad we have found one that seems to work well.

    I still like Dweck. She has given me a language and toolkit that works for me in my life. And no outpouring of opprobrium will convince me otherwise.

    Last edited by cmguy; 04/23/15 06:27 AM.
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    Originally Posted by indigo
    By contrast, a statement which proponents of gifted education may make might be: "You are ready to take on a challenge, and unfortunately may lose that ability/readiness if you do not have the opportunity to embrace struggle and striving." Note this has no comparison to others, but rather is a statement about one's own developmental needs, and the ways in which the needs may match the available opportunity, and the potential negative consequences if one does not avail themselves of the challenging opportunity.

    I totally agree with this.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    I don't often directly tell my oldest that he is very smart. But when I had him take the SAT before age 9, one reason was to give him some data on how smart he is. When I tell him he should try to become a competitive candidate for admission to the most selective colleges, that is another way telling him he is very smart.

    The issue isn't whether your child knows they are smart, but whether being smart is what they are praised for. It is when a child realizes that they are valued for being smart that they develop the need to maintain that appearance at all costs--even at the cost of actually learning or growing. It's when being smart becomes your identity and source of self-esteem that the label becomes a source of anxiety and challenge becomes something to avoid.

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    Well said.

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