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The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

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Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#31

Post by thaumasiotes »

shripadk wrote: post #30
nicolethenerd wrote: post #4

There is a distinction between the pressure that comes from growing up in a "tiger family" and the consequences of growing up with the "smart" label, and I feel like the author is conflating the two. Personally, growing up with the label (but not the parental pressure) was one of the best things that could have happened for me and my education - the fact that others believed (whether true or not) that I was lightyear…

The difference is subtle. The difference is that you were called "smart" in the areas you showed interest in. That propelled you to improve further and always be ahead of your contemporaries. In her case (and many in China and India - where I come from) society has certain expectations from you. It doesn't matter if you are interested in something else entirely. Maybe you have a liking for arts. Or for music. These a…

> Around a million students (10.43 lakhs in 2018) take up the IIT JEE exam and only around 10,000 qualify.

> To prepare for this, you would have to spend countless hours solving and sleepless nights studying. And even after all that, your chance at success is 0.01%.

Your numbers suggest 1%, not 0.01%. 0.01% of a million examinees would be 100 passing scores.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#32

Post by shripadk »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #31
shripadk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is subtle. The difference is that you were called "smart" in the areas you showed interest in. That propelled you to improve further and always be ahead of your contemporaries. In her case (and many in China and India - where I come from) society has certain expectations from you. It doesn't matter if you are interested in something else entirely. Maybe you have a liking for arts. Or for music. These a…

> Around a million students (10.43 lakhs in 2018) take up the IIT JEE exam and only around 10,000 qualify. > To prepare for this, you would have to spend countless hours solving and sleepless nights studying. And even after all that, your chance at success is 0.01%. Your numbers suggest 1%, not 0.01%. 0.01% of a million examinees would be 100 passing scores.

Ah sorry I meant to say 1% (I was thinking 0.01 in my head). Edited it. Thanks!

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#33

Post by crooked-v »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #19
nicolethenerd wrote: post #4

There is a distinction between the pressure that comes from growing up in a "tiger family" and the consequences of growing up with the "smart" label, and I feel like the author is conflating the two. Personally, growing up with the label (but not the parental pressure) was one of the best things that could have happened for me and my education - the fact that others believed (whether true or not) that I was lightyear…

> And more importantly, the fact that I believed it meant that I was able to operate free of insecurities or imposter syndrome that so many of my peers faced. How the heck did you convince yourself to believe it? As a "gifted" kid, what I learned very quickly was that adults will happily exaggerate minor talents (which one acquires primarily through just spending time on them, a task made markedly easier when everybo…

I still remember eighth grade and the teacher who used the 'smart' kids of the advanced math classes as an excuse to not actually bother teaching anything and make it all 'self study'. My math grade went from a solid A to a D in the course of one semester because I couldn't just figure it out myself from the book.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#34

Post by crooked-v »

amrx431 wrote: post #9

I have suffered from this personally. I was a "smart" kid. I was always top of my class till 10th standard. Everybody called me smart and intelligent. The schoolwork till 10th never challenged me. But when the complexity increase with pre college courses and STEM I was lost because I never had tackled this kind of difficulty before. I went into depression for couple of years. I was saved by Hamming's "You and Your re…

Same kind of thing here. I coasted almost all the way through high school, got given endless slack in my last year of high school because everyone knew I was 'smart', and instantly ran into major trouble in college.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#35

Post by DoreenMichele »

crooked-v wrote: post #33
XMPPwocky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And more importantly, the fact that I believed it meant that I was able to operate free of insecurities or imposter syndrome that so many of my peers faced. How the heck did you convince yourself to believe it? As a "gifted" kid, what I learned very quickly was that adults will happily exaggerate minor talents (which one acquires primarily through just spending time on them, a task made markedly easier when everybo…

I still remember eighth grade and the teacher who used the 'smart' kids of the advanced math classes as an excuse to not actually bother teaching anything and make it all 'self study'. My math grade went from a solid A to a D in the course of one semester because I couldn't just figure it out myself from the book.

I was one of the "smart kids" the teachers held up as an example. It made me a target of rampant hatred and helped to socially isolate me at school.

It's part of why I walked away from a National Merit Scholarship and dropped out of college at age 20.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#36

Post by pizza »

striking wrote: post #29
pizza wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to hear I'm not the only one as a kid whose reflex was to get suspicious of/thought it was lazy when/ people would quickly decide "you're smart". It seemed to me just like a way to score cheap points. It also made me feel worse about not understanding things easily.. people were telling me I was smart, after all! :P My sister, on the other hand, gets annoyed at my perspective - she finds it tiresome when pe…

You can be nice about a well-meaning but ultimately misguided complement without taking it seriously.

Agreed, though it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that, haha.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#37

Post by renlo »

camdenlock wrote: post #12
zarathustraa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.

Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?

Just for argument’s sake, my opinion is that intelligence is a kind of social construct. What we view as “intelligence” is the manifestation of traits that are important for our current society to function. i.e, we value bridges, so the traits of bridge builders are viewed as positive traits, which we call “intelligence”. In other environments these traits might not be seen as intelligent. For example, from what I’ve gleaned from reading books written a hundred or so years ago, “intelligence” could only be possessed by members of the upper classes, so even if you could build bridges, if you weren’t born into a certain class you were seen as mentally inferior. So our definition of intelligence shifts over time based on whatever society deems as important.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#38

Post by noobiemcfoob »

zarathustraa wrote: post #10
bitreality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reads like a 1000 word humblebrag.

Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.

Shared reality is a social construct

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#39

Post by abootstrapper »

I was called “smart” growing up. Looking back I believe it was a huge disservice. School was generally easy for me, but I was afraid to ask questions to risk appearing “not smart.” I learned a hard lesson in college. Smart isn’t something you are, it’s something you can become, through perseverance, dedication, and grit. Luckily I posses those qualities.

We don’t use the S word around our kids. And when strangers tell me our young children are smart, while they are in earshot, I say, “Thank you. They work hard and practice a lot.”

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#40

Post by smt88 »

emsy wrote: post #23
smt88 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever biological concept you're thinking of here, you're incorrect to generalize it to humans. Our complex brains, societies, and medicine (like birth control) significantly change our mate selection. We are not antelopes.

Societal factors do exist, but are often overstated or don’t bear a scientific foundation. A lot of social sciences have done real harm to scientific progress and the field of evolutionary psychology.

Birth control and women's rights, and marrying for love[1] are fairly new (within the last 20-100 yrs) and limited to a handful of countries.

We just don't have data on how humans behave when such huge reprodutive variables change. Seeing how a single generation responds isn't a long enough time period, because children accumulate the social norms of their parents.

1. https://www.livescience.com/37777-history-of-marriage.html

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