I need more of this discussion! (I will of course read the rest of the transcript). If I may, I am also smart, and I married someone smarter than me, and we have four kids who are, unsurprisingly, very smart.
I have said for years, and I tell my kids this too, that being smart is like being tall. It's not something you have control over, it's not something you have accomplished. It's something God gave you to use to serve others. Despite this standard, I enjoy being smart, I enjoy seeing my kids excel, and in the back of my mind, I know I'm not quite living consistently with my stated values here. It's hard! The cult of smart (love this phrase, the book is going on my list) is pervasive, sneaky, and warps things in ways I can't quite perceive. My oldest though, is not competitive or ambitious at all, she just enjoys what she enjoys, and that includes reading, spelling, math, and piano, but also pretending to be a monster with her siblings and playing softball and taekwondo. She regularly shows me that you can enjoy things without caring if you're better or worse than someone else.
For me, there is also a strong undercurrent of self doubt. I was finally diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago, after spending all of my adulthood struggling to have something to show for this gift of intelligence. It's hard for me to finish things, to read deeply or analyze multiple sources (caring for small children makes this even harder). In college I switched from journalism because learning to write simple news reports was tedious and hard work. I majored in economics instead, because the topic was interesting to me, I could retain it and do well on tests with minimal effort. I often feel self conscious in circles with other smart people, because I haven't read most of the things they've read, and so I can't back up my claims as well as I'd like to. Now that I have medication to help, I'm slowly unlearning a lot of bad habits, and maybe one day I'll live up to my own standards. Or maybe I'll escape the cult of smart and stop worrying about it.
While of course a person's dignity has nothing to do with their specific traits, I strongly oppose the equivalency of 'smarts' to other characteristics like height. I do not think they are similar *in kind*. Our whole current system is built up on a particular notion that 'smart' people are very good test takers, for instance. And test taking is a particular skill! But it is not equivalent to 'smart'.
There's an argument made in the critique about a particular person who seems to not grasp what an atom is. deBoer would have her teachers write her off as just not very smart, probably not suited to school, etc., BUT maybe she wants to understand the concept deeper, maybe she approaches it *differently* - creating a system where she can thrive should be the goal, not creating a system where a narrow idea of 'smart' means we write off her potential for making intellectual contributions (if she wants to! I'm not saying making scientific breakthroughs makes her 'better' than, say, a welder).
There used to be an emphasis in labor unions and leftist political organizations on popular education - to dig into the history of our movements, to read Marx, to read poetry, to write songs. There was an expectation that every person should have the freedom to make art and explore ideas. That has been lost as people have bought into ideas of 'meritocracy' and a hierarchy of 'smarts' where an elite within organizations think they should dictate strategy to 'the masses'. But the leftist answer isn't to double down on a weird and toxic argument that 'smart' looks and acts a particular way.
I intend to read deBoers' new book when my hold comes in from the library, I'm sure it will be full of ideas I agree with wholeheartedly (in addition to ones I'll enjoy mulling on and disagreeing with). But there are a host of reasons deBoer is very popular among certain factions of the conservative movement that dance with ideas of racial and ethnic superiority. And I wish he would really contemplate why that's the case.
I think it's both definitely the case that there's a much broader variation in learning styles and capacities than schools and tests are prepared to accommodate (I really like the full body learning of Montessori and Charlotte Mason).
*And* I think it's true that teachers and parents should both be genuinely, actively curious about discovering the capacities of the child in front of them, and prepared to discover that children fall along a spectrum.
I think a stronger school design has less pure age tracking and more making sure that every child can explore the edge of their mastery, wherever it may be. So if a kid is struggling, the solution isn't "giving up" but figuring out where it is *fruitful* for them to struggle.
In practice, kids do a lot of fruitless struggling where they haven't mastered the concepts of the week before or the grade below, and the class goes marching on.
When I think about capacity and where the edges of mastery are, I think about the MAP tests that my state uses for K-12 students. It's easy to shiver at the mere concept of "testing", especially for younger children. But I admit I've been intrigued by how this one plays out, as MAP claims to care about *growth* as its metric-- how children "use" what they know in real time, vs. grade-level or other normed achievement ("possession" of externally-determined merit). The fall-winter-spring pattern means that if a child has a lightbulb moment of understanding or mastery during the school year, their growth markers soar, even if they're not (or will never be) closing in on the 99th%ile of intellectual acumen that the "cult of smart" might value most.
The question becomes, of course, what teachers and schools can (should) (might) (cannot) (decline to) (strive to) do with such an individualized take on real-time capacity throughout the school year. And that's a question not only of community values but also of resources. Even so, I see the potential for schools to approach children as "humans who grow according to their capacity, nature, and support" rather than "data points who track or fail to track with grade-level averages".
Completely agree! And I know we are quite aligned when it comes to this topic. The Finnish model of school is, imo, a great example of a way to structure education much more fruitfully. And I really do think you'll find a lot to contemplate in the long critique I linked to!
Tho: one note. I think it's completely wrong to see 'intellectual capacity' as a linear spectrum like height. It's more of a complicated radar diagram or pie chart spectrum & not linear at all.
Yes! In addition to it being a spectrum of TYPES of intelligence. I had to look up the "9 Types of Intelligence" as a refresh, but now I'm intrigued all over.
Yes! And to build off that, just because a kiddo is struggling doesn't mean the struggle itself can't be *made* fruitful. Teachers should inform *how* to approach a struggling student based on their particular propensities. A kiddo with a logical-mathematical approach will tackle developing their linguistic intelligence differently than someone with a propensity to approaching things from an interpersonal angle. And that's good! And healthy!
Yes. What's unfortunate is that teachers with 20-30 kids per class, with 3 classes a day (my brief experience as a middle school ELA teacher in two title 1 schools) ......have a non-existent margin to actually help students develop in personalized ways, as they deserve.
However, it is also true that I’ve often wanted to argue, okay, let’s say those people are just not very smart and capable - shouldn’t they be able to have a decent life anyway? Why must we consign them to poverty? The working retail should support a dignified life argument.
Yep, that's part of the big conclusion of Freddie's first book -- that our economic system is not set up to serve such people. (He's a self-identified socialist, with more extreme proposals many aren't down for.... but that core problem of people not having a decent life still stands.)
The problem is that while “athletic” encompasses a variety of skills and abilities (strength vs. agility vs. balance vs. hand eye coordination etc. etc.) and people who are or can be athletic in one way but not another often miss out on discovering their abilities, intelligence, that is being smart encompasses a far far wider variety of things that we present is narrow. Think about artistic - it’s true that there are kids out there who are easily and immediately labeled as artistic because of an innate propensity and there are kids that are artistic in part because they’ve been raised in an artistic environment but what many people don’t realize is that MOST kids are/will be artistic if exposed to a wide enough variety of artistic outlets because there are so many different ways to be creative. But most of us don’t get that wide exposure. That doesn’t change our baseline ability/possibility though. That kid that she think isn’t very smart - is quiet likely smart in a different way than the one she is looking for/at. For example processing speed is an easy thing to spot but is very different from deep understanding, etc.
I homeschool my kids, and it gives me the opportunity to see how they learn, what connections they make, and how they excel in ways that don't map easily onto typical academic measures. My oldest has a more typical academic intelligence, she loves reading, has a good memory and catches onto things quickly. My son asks deep questions and looks for connections between things, but struggles to learn without that deeper meaning or connection in place. My second daughter has a well balanced capacity for learning, but really shines in her social and emotional awareness. I'm trying to teach her to use her powers for good and not evil. My youngest daughter gets told she is cute all the time, and unfortunately she really leans into that. But I've noticed she has a very discerning ear, she can pick up on different sounds and words, and then imitate them with ease. I see that translating to success in music, writing, or language.
Yes, I'm bragging on my kids, which I love to do. But I myself am amazed at how their intelligence takes different forms and can take them in different directions.
One thing this conversation (and his book Cult of Smart) remind me of is what has been so fascinating in learning about Charlotte Mason's intersection with Classical Education. In a word, educational philosophies that are more ancient are miles away from our the dominant, modern approach.
The most recent chapter I read ("Consider This" by Karen Glass) talks about the complete circle of this approach: a posture of humility --> synthetic thinking in education --> virtue in action.
Analytical thinking is necessary and has its place in education. What it has produced in modern practice is a very narrowly defined goal for education -- which is cultivating a person who knows a lot, or who is strong solely in "intellectual" terms. And it's naturally rewarded in our economic job market! The end goal is a good job, oftentimes. The end goal, among others in the ancient approach, is right action (virtue).
While it's so easy to think of education in terms of intellect alone, that has lent itself to undeveloped, atrophied hearts, minds, and souls. If we only form one aspect of a person, only place value on that one aspect of a person, and monetarily reward them accordingly.... no wonder parents are stressed for their children's intellectual abilities.
I would hope for a world where it's acknowledged that intellect is indeed a gift given in differing ways to people (see also: the 9 Types of Intelligence). Intellectual rigor and excellence is very, very good! And yet we are heart, soul, mind, and body - whole people worth developing as such. Thus my fascination with the classical tradition at the moment.
I homeschooled classically. While I only have four data points from a very specific pool, my young adults are excellent independent critical thinkers, and darn good humans of virtue. A classically education definitely helped achieve these goals. Many of the Catholic schools in my diocese (Fort Worth) are going classical as well. It takes a lot of teacher training to accomplish that.
Finally, some honesty. I’ve been saying this for years. Intelligence is just an attribute like musicality or athleticism. It’s a really good really important attribute and it’s been overlooked, downplayed, ignored, and stepped on for the last 50 or so years in the US; but in other cultures, they really respect intelligence! Why ?? because it can help you solve problems! in math, medicine, engineering, psychology and it can actually make society and culture much better. So yes, we WANT artists, musicians and athletes but we also NEED intelligent people and it’s really BEEN DEVALUED and ignored.
Unfortunately, intelligence is not evenly distributed among racial/ethnic groups in the USA (and elsewhere in the world). THAT'S an insurmountable problem for everyone for what should be obvious reasons.
I need more of this discussion! (I will of course read the rest of the transcript). If I may, I am also smart, and I married someone smarter than me, and we have four kids who are, unsurprisingly, very smart.
I have said for years, and I tell my kids this too, that being smart is like being tall. It's not something you have control over, it's not something you have accomplished. It's something God gave you to use to serve others. Despite this standard, I enjoy being smart, I enjoy seeing my kids excel, and in the back of my mind, I know I'm not quite living consistently with my stated values here. It's hard! The cult of smart (love this phrase, the book is going on my list) is pervasive, sneaky, and warps things in ways I can't quite perceive. My oldest though, is not competitive or ambitious at all, she just enjoys what she enjoys, and that includes reading, spelling, math, and piano, but also pretending to be a monster with her siblings and playing softball and taekwondo. She regularly shows me that you can enjoy things without caring if you're better or worse than someone else.
For me, there is also a strong undercurrent of self doubt. I was finally diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago, after spending all of my adulthood struggling to have something to show for this gift of intelligence. It's hard for me to finish things, to read deeply or analyze multiple sources (caring for small children makes this even harder). In college I switched from journalism because learning to write simple news reports was tedious and hard work. I majored in economics instead, because the topic was interesting to me, I could retain it and do well on tests with minimal effort. I often feel self conscious in circles with other smart people, because I haven't read most of the things they've read, and so I can't back up my claims as well as I'd like to. Now that I have medication to help, I'm slowly unlearning a lot of bad habits, and maybe one day I'll live up to my own standards. Or maybe I'll escape the cult of smart and stop worrying about it.
(They haven’t read most of what they claim they’ve read either)
While of course a person's dignity has nothing to do with their specific traits, I strongly oppose the equivalency of 'smarts' to other characteristics like height. I do not think they are similar *in kind*. Our whole current system is built up on a particular notion that 'smart' people are very good test takers, for instance. And test taking is a particular skill! But it is not equivalent to 'smart'.
This critique of the Cult of Smart is very much worth reading in full (warning: it's long): https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/09/we-dont-know-our-potential
There's an argument made in the critique about a particular person who seems to not grasp what an atom is. deBoer would have her teachers write her off as just not very smart, probably not suited to school, etc., BUT maybe she wants to understand the concept deeper, maybe she approaches it *differently* - creating a system where she can thrive should be the goal, not creating a system where a narrow idea of 'smart' means we write off her potential for making intellectual contributions (if she wants to! I'm not saying making scientific breakthroughs makes her 'better' than, say, a welder).
There used to be an emphasis in labor unions and leftist political organizations on popular education - to dig into the history of our movements, to read Marx, to read poetry, to write songs. There was an expectation that every person should have the freedom to make art and explore ideas. That has been lost as people have bought into ideas of 'meritocracy' and a hierarchy of 'smarts' where an elite within organizations think they should dictate strategy to 'the masses'. But the leftist answer isn't to double down on a weird and toxic argument that 'smart' looks and acts a particular way.
I intend to read deBoers' new book when my hold comes in from the library, I'm sure it will be full of ideas I agree with wholeheartedly (in addition to ones I'll enjoy mulling on and disagreeing with). But there are a host of reasons deBoer is very popular among certain factions of the conservative movement that dance with ideas of racial and ethnic superiority. And I wish he would really contemplate why that's the case.
I think it's both definitely the case that there's a much broader variation in learning styles and capacities than schools and tests are prepared to accommodate (I really like the full body learning of Montessori and Charlotte Mason).
*And* I think it's true that teachers and parents should both be genuinely, actively curious about discovering the capacities of the child in front of them, and prepared to discover that children fall along a spectrum.
I think a stronger school design has less pure age tracking and more making sure that every child can explore the edge of their mastery, wherever it may be. So if a kid is struggling, the solution isn't "giving up" but figuring out where it is *fruitful* for them to struggle.
In practice, kids do a lot of fruitless struggling where they haven't mastered the concepts of the week before or the grade below, and the class goes marching on.
When I think about capacity and where the edges of mastery are, I think about the MAP tests that my state uses for K-12 students. It's easy to shiver at the mere concept of "testing", especially for younger children. But I admit I've been intrigued by how this one plays out, as MAP claims to care about *growth* as its metric-- how children "use" what they know in real time, vs. grade-level or other normed achievement ("possession" of externally-determined merit). The fall-winter-spring pattern means that if a child has a lightbulb moment of understanding or mastery during the school year, their growth markers soar, even if they're not (or will never be) closing in on the 99th%ile of intellectual acumen that the "cult of smart" might value most.
And re the title of your post, "Some People Are Taller," it's interesting that MAP itself also chooses this metaphor when explaining itself to families-- see especially numbers 3 and 8 in their list of FAQs: https://www.nwea.org/blog/2021/12-common-questions-parents-ask-map-growth-assessment/
The question becomes, of course, what teachers and schools can (should) (might) (cannot) (decline to) (strive to) do with such an individualized take on real-time capacity throughout the school year. And that's a question not only of community values but also of resources. Even so, I see the potential for schools to approach children as "humans who grow according to their capacity, nature, and support" rather than "data points who track or fail to track with grade-level averages".
Completely agree! And I know we are quite aligned when it comes to this topic. The Finnish model of school is, imo, a great example of a way to structure education much more fruitfully. And I really do think you'll find a lot to contemplate in the long critique I linked to!
Tho: one note. I think it's completely wrong to see 'intellectual capacity' as a linear spectrum like height. It's more of a complicated radar diagram or pie chart spectrum & not linear at all.
Yes! In addition to it being a spectrum of TYPES of intelligence. I had to look up the "9 Types of Intelligence" as a refresh, but now I'm intrigued all over.
Yes! And to build off that, just because a kiddo is struggling doesn't mean the struggle itself can't be *made* fruitful. Teachers should inform *how* to approach a struggling student based on their particular propensities. A kiddo with a logical-mathematical approach will tackle developing their linguistic intelligence differently than someone with a propensity to approaching things from an interpersonal angle. And that's good! And healthy!
Yes. What's unfortunate is that teachers with 20-30 kids per class, with 3 classes a day (my brief experience as a middle school ELA teacher in two title 1 schools) ......have a non-existent margin to actually help students develop in personalized ways, as they deserve.
However, it is also true that I’ve often wanted to argue, okay, let’s say those people are just not very smart and capable - shouldn’t they be able to have a decent life anyway? Why must we consign them to poverty? The working retail should support a dignified life argument.
Yep, that's part of the big conclusion of Freddie's first book -- that our economic system is not set up to serve such people. (He's a self-identified socialist, with more extreme proposals many aren't down for.... but that core problem of people not having a decent life still stands.)
The problem is that while “athletic” encompasses a variety of skills and abilities (strength vs. agility vs. balance vs. hand eye coordination etc. etc.) and people who are or can be athletic in one way but not another often miss out on discovering their abilities, intelligence, that is being smart encompasses a far far wider variety of things that we present is narrow. Think about artistic - it’s true that there are kids out there who are easily and immediately labeled as artistic because of an innate propensity and there are kids that are artistic in part because they’ve been raised in an artistic environment but what many people don’t realize is that MOST kids are/will be artistic if exposed to a wide enough variety of artistic outlets because there are so many different ways to be creative. But most of us don’t get that wide exposure. That doesn’t change our baseline ability/possibility though. That kid that she think isn’t very smart - is quiet likely smart in a different way than the one she is looking for/at. For example processing speed is an easy thing to spot but is very different from deep understanding, etc.
I homeschool my kids, and it gives me the opportunity to see how they learn, what connections they make, and how they excel in ways that don't map easily onto typical academic measures. My oldest has a more typical academic intelligence, she loves reading, has a good memory and catches onto things quickly. My son asks deep questions and looks for connections between things, but struggles to learn without that deeper meaning or connection in place. My second daughter has a well balanced capacity for learning, but really shines in her social and emotional awareness. I'm trying to teach her to use her powers for good and not evil. My youngest daughter gets told she is cute all the time, and unfortunately she really leans into that. But I've noticed she has a very discerning ear, she can pick up on different sounds and words, and then imitate them with ease. I see that translating to success in music, writing, or language.
Yes, I'm bragging on my kids, which I love to do. But I myself am amazed at how their intelligence takes different forms and can take them in different directions.
One thing this conversation (and his book Cult of Smart) remind me of is what has been so fascinating in learning about Charlotte Mason's intersection with Classical Education. In a word, educational philosophies that are more ancient are miles away from our the dominant, modern approach.
The most recent chapter I read ("Consider This" by Karen Glass) talks about the complete circle of this approach: a posture of humility --> synthetic thinking in education --> virtue in action.
Analytical thinking is necessary and has its place in education. What it has produced in modern practice is a very narrowly defined goal for education -- which is cultivating a person who knows a lot, or who is strong solely in "intellectual" terms. And it's naturally rewarded in our economic job market! The end goal is a good job, oftentimes. The end goal, among others in the ancient approach, is right action (virtue).
While it's so easy to think of education in terms of intellect alone, that has lent itself to undeveloped, atrophied hearts, minds, and souls. If we only form one aspect of a person, only place value on that one aspect of a person, and monetarily reward them accordingly.... no wonder parents are stressed for their children's intellectual abilities.
I would hope for a world where it's acknowledged that intellect is indeed a gift given in differing ways to people (see also: the 9 Types of Intelligence). Intellectual rigor and excellence is very, very good! And yet we are heart, soul, mind, and body - whole people worth developing as such. Thus my fascination with the classical tradition at the moment.
I homeschooled classically. While I only have four data points from a very specific pool, my young adults are excellent independent critical thinkers, and darn good humans of virtue. A classically education definitely helped achieve these goals. Many of the Catholic schools in my diocese (Fort Worth) are going classical as well. It takes a lot of teacher training to accomplish that.
My husband teaches at a classical Catholic high school <3
Finally, some honesty. I’ve been saying this for years. Intelligence is just an attribute like musicality or athleticism. It’s a really good really important attribute and it’s been overlooked, downplayed, ignored, and stepped on for the last 50 or so years in the US; but in other cultures, they really respect intelligence! Why ?? because it can help you solve problems! in math, medicine, engineering, psychology and it can actually make society and culture much better. So yes, we WANT artists, musicians and athletes but we also NEED intelligent people and it’s really BEEN DEVALUED and ignored.
Unfortunately, intelligence is not evenly distributed among racial/ethnic groups in the USA (and elsewhere in the world). THAT'S an insurmountable problem for everyone for what should be obvious reasons.
What a trifecta of great people in conversation! I look forward to reading/listening to this.
His book "Cult of Smart" was SO intriguing (as is much of his writing these days).