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Your sole adult criterion is "career". There are many, many adults who define themselves as far more than what they do to pay the bills.
Perhaps being able to see more than one narrowly define criterion is something your gifted siblings would be better at. Or again, maybe it's the worlds we inhabit. I tend to avoid boxes, and the people who find them comforting.
Career is one of the measureables. Social status is another but you'll be hard pressed to find data linking IQ and social status.
What would you like to use as a measure of success based on IQ for adults? If people from a wide range of IQ's will be in the same careers and successful and have successful lives, exactly what is the value of a gifted IQ? Let's say my IQ is 125 and my brother's is 135 (I just know he's gifted and I am not so mine could be lower and his higher). What did his gifted IQ net him that I don't have through hard work?
The distinction is lost on adults. Only large differences in IQ matter in adulthood. 10-20 points can, easily, be made up for with a little extra effort but in kids that is not the case. In the end, it's not IQ that determines where we end up. It just doesn't matter that much as adults. However, because it is relative to age, it does matter to children. 1 year is 1/10th of a 10 year old's life and that is significant.
So far I've googled suicide rates and IQ and there is a suspected but unproven link to higher Suicide rates with higher IQ and happiness and IQ which found no correlation between IQ and happiness except that the learning disabled appear happier. I'll keep trying to find that difference in adults but I don't think I will. I know many formerly gifted children and they're pretty typical compared to the non gifted adults who achieved the same level of education. From where I sit, a little hard work makes up for lower IQ in a heartbeat.
I would suggest that one can tell nothing about the aptitude of such students in such an environment.
If a teacher thinks that the upper level chem class should have fewer honors students, this seems curious to me. Setting that aside for the nonce, even granting your assumption that the children are PAMPERED and SPOILED, they can still be TALENTED or GIFTED - merely spoiled, as well.
However, in any given scenario there is often a multitude of perspectives. A student might note to you, instead, that they want to understand the context of what is being presented in order to better understand it, and they find their instructor to be frustrating, because she will never explain how a specific lesson works with the others to form a greater whole - and the listener would then be inclined to commiserate with the poor student over having such an unbeknighted teacher!
This or half a dozen other reasons can be behind what a teacher would describe that way - especially students whose teacher is disdainful of the worth of teaching these students in this school, to start with, and is actively trying to get away from them. Students are often more clueful than their teachers suspect.
So, yes - they could be PAMPERED and SPOILED. Or they could be NEGLECTED and UNTAUGHT. We can't tell from this angle.
Show me a class or student (TAG or AIG) who will do little or nothing and look for the path of least resistance, and I will say they are spoiled and pampered.
TAG and AIG people do not look for the path most traveled. A smart kid placed or labeled TAG and told thay are "smarter" than everyone else and will not challenge him/herself is resting on one's laurels.
Why should career be a measurable for adults, it is not measurable for anything other than, a career...which can be achieved through screwing people over, brown nosing, using social connections, family history and capital. Somebody accumulating money is no better than a homeless person believing they are accumulating toilet tissue roles for instance.
What does hard work even mean...? Is one occupation better than another? A few instances of smart work then making capital off capital accrued would produce more instrumental good than 30 years labor at a lower pay rate. Or perhaps, non participatory action n a system you disagree with could be your own version of success.
Most careers are only instrumentally good, a certain means to an end, or an end in itself, but far from intrinsically good. Believing a career is good is definitely subjective, and misguided in most cases.
I've quit several jobs and turned down pay raises, does that make me less successful, less of a man, or downgraded my IQ? I certainly would never measure success by a career, social status, title or anything to that accord.
Two anecdotes. I was working at a grocery, and they did a reset of the entire store. Manager overheard me tell a customer, "I'm not too sure myself where we moved that to, but I know it's down this way. Before the reset, I would have been able to tell you right where it is."
He wanted to test me. He had pictures of the shelves before the reset in his hands, and asked, okay, what's the top left product of the jelly set. I replied "Palmalito guave jelly". I was right. That's applying intelligence to a job that purportedly doesn't require it.
Similar story happened at Home Depot. Customer came to me and asked if we had anymore of a certain product--I seem to recall it was a certain roller. I told her no, and continued to work. Customer reported me to the manager...when the manager saw I was the person being referred to, he told the customer. "Oh...he packs down the freight every day--he KNOWS what we have and what we don't here in this department."
Career is one of the measureables. Social status is another but you'll be hard pressed to find data linking IQ and social status.
It's fascinating the things different people value, isn't it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
From where I sit, a little hard work makes up for lower IQ in a heartbeat.
You are assuming that the two are mutually exclusive.
As for the definition of "success", I don't think it's possible to measure something that subjective. Further, trying to determine whether intelligence makes a difference in levels of "success", considering all the other variables which would have to be accounted for, is a fool's errand. You're more than welcome to it, but it's meaningless.
What I meant was adults who perform at higher levels the way gifted children do. Giftedness is relative. By adulthood, you will see people with IQ's of 100 performing at the same level as people with IQ's of 130. Education and experience can count for more than IQ as an adult. The IQ range for my family and my husbands is about 100-140. There is very little difference, based on IQ, in how we perform as adults. As children there was a difference.
Age is considered in an IQ test for a reason. It's relative to age. A child who studies calculus at 12 is gifted but when their peers reach calculus, how far ahead are they now? I'm not gifted but I went farther in college than most gifted people do. I just did it a little later.
Honestly, the only difference I really see in gifted adults is difficulty fitting in. If you're gifted enough to stand out as an adult, you're often emotionally challenged. The rest of us seem to have pretty much normalized over time. If you lined up my seven brothers and sisters, you'd be hard pressed to rank us according to IQ based on things like educational attainment and accomplishment.
For children, IQ matters. A child who has an I of 130 at 10 is three years ahead of their peers and won't fit in in the classroom with their peers. For adults, IQ no longer has the meaning of being ahead. IQ only matters in the broadest sense unless you're talking something extreme. I know people who have IQ's in the 160's and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from me and I'm nowhere near that. Now, as children, they were way above me. Not anymore though.
The amazing thing is how accurate you can be in explaining how IQ works - or formerly did, at least, and yet come to such erroneous conclusions - and insist that you are right.
The differences in IQ among adults is quite palpable.
IQ is relative to age at every age, not just at 10. A 30 year old with an IQ of 130 is usually capable of far more than the adult with an IQ of 100.
When the AGEMATES (not peers) of the child who studied Calculus are now, at 18, studying Calculus, if the child continued in Math, the likelihood is high that he is doing post-graduate math that those agemates in Calc are never going to get to, let alone master.
That youdo not perceive a difference does not mean either that there is not one or that others do not perceive it. As ever, your experience does not define any reality other than your own, and perhaps not that.
Actually, with 20 years in R&D and engineering, my sample is far from small. Most of my friends through school were considered gifted. No I am not gifted. Far from it. I just hang out with a lot of gifted people. At least, formerly gifted people.
Us referred to the rest of us. The non gifted crowd. Many of whom are now indistinguishible from the gifted crowd of the past. In spite of not having a gifted bone in my body, I rose to the level of and worked alongside many who were gifted through the years. I really don't see much difference between them and me. My experience is that hard work and perseverance matter more than IQ as adults and given time, many people will catch up to the gifted. I'm not gifted but I held my own against engineers who were. Yes, many of them started college at 16 but what does that mean 10 years later or 20 years later? As time goes on, being the first one in college and out fades as others do what you did and sometimes more. It's not what you have, it's what you do with what you have. IQ really doesn't matter for adults. At least not in the sense that you'd pick a number and declare anyone above it "gifted". I know plenty of people with IQ's of 120 who perform at levels higher than people with IQ's of 140.
I just don't think IQ has the meaning as adults it has as kids. For kids, yes it matters because it's a measure of how far ahead you are. For adults, it's really just a number unless you're way at the extremes. In the middle, it's more of a measure of how easily things come to you. It makes little, practical, difference as all the next person has to do is be willing to work a little harder to attain what a gifted person attains. I don't see it making a real difference in adults.
No citations to give here. Just look around you. How many gifted adults do you know compared to how many gifted kids you knew in school. For the most part, for all their "gifts" they seem to have blended into the woodwork as other who are not as gifted chose the same career paths and same degrees. Once it mattered because it influenced things like GPA but there are other things that matter more once you're out in the real world.
Because of my career choices, I've been exposed to more formerly gifted children than most and I don't see them standing out like they once did except for those on the far end of the spectrum. They still do but not for their intellect. They stand out because they cannot relate to anyone else. They lack people skills.
Aconite:
What we have is not somebody who is not gifted. What we have is somebody in denial (or ignorance) of her own ability, convinced by how we taught (and teach) girls about their own aptitude, that she was not as smart as her siblings or the others around her.
In general, girls learn to hide or diminish their own abilities even (or especially) when they succeed.
1) At 10, 10 points on your IQ corresponds to a year ahead of someone else. 2) It doesn't carry that meaning at 25. A
1) It only means the first given equivalent opportunity.
2) Yes, actually, it does. At 25, the 110 IQ person could be ~2.5 years ahead - using the old ratio method of determining IQs, which hasn't been the major method for quite a while.
FOR EXAMPLE: DH & I have an above average IQs. Most of the things we do in life require that we know how to obtain and maintain relationships with mostly average IQ people. All the friends and acquaintances we have met have taught us one thing....we appear normal and have the ability to converse with people on any level, from teen to 100 years old very well. Teens thing we are "cool," people our age use us to get advice on how to fix their life problems, people 10 years old than us see us as mature for our age, people who are much older than we are see as wise for our age.
But the overall mass of average people thinkwe'ew just like them because I do really well with communicating with them. Then something comes along in converstion that they are really passionate about but they can not put into any real words how they feel...then guess who is giving the words they need. Suddenly, we go from normal and the same to having groupies. I HATE that. DH has it much worse than I. His groupies are from multiple states and other countries who about worship him with, "You're stuff is so cool man!" and call him on a daily basis. During teaching events, the groupies drag people to DH because "This is the guy to talk to. He is the best at explaining it and he's so cool." DH doesn't think hes so cool or that the person who drug them over really has the inability to speak on the subject. Although they are still good friends and he wouldn't change a thing about them, when he comes to a challenge or a road block in his work and needs someone to turn to, he turns to the two or three friends that really are like him he rarely talks to to brainstorming with.
He burns out someday on with these groupie friends who act like he never has a trouble in life and like he always knows the answer when we both know he has a lot of questions that he can not answer that these people would be confused with in a minute of conversation trying to explain it. He gets days where he will be working on something that is making him scratch his head while the whole time on speakerphone, he's got guy after guy calling and going on about how he's the best and going on and on about it. It is very frusterating. What he really needs instead of, "You'll get it man!" and the prep rally crap is someone who will ask, "Have you tried this?" And after a day of this, sometimes all it takes is to come in and talk to me about it, a female with less experience in the subject then the men he's been listening to all day who have actually made similar items (the only really difference is the finishing details and the creative imagination that makes DH's stuff, what the product does is the same.) Then I'll throw out a simple thought off the top of my head and that'll be it. Now if these other men had just dropped that worshipping crap for a couple minutes and just thought about it, he'd have never have to come in and talk to the simpleton on the subject.
Thank you.
That was all very well said and captures the experience terrifyingly well. I fear the one to who it was immediately addressed will not hear it.
Show me a class or student (TAG or AIG) who will do little or nothing and look for the path of least resistance, and I will say they are spoiled and pampered.
TAG and AIG people do not look for the path most traveled. A smart kid placed or labeled TAG and told thay are "smarter" than everyone else and will not challenge him/herself is resting on one's laurels.
My point was not that what you are saying is false, but that the representation by the instructor in question might be skewed.
And the TAG/AIG kids learn best not to rest on their laurels when a) they are not the only smart ones in the room, and b) they have had to learn things that were actually difficult for them to do.
No news here.
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