The other day in Collis, I overheard someone who appeared to be a Dartmouth admissions officer talking with a visiting high school student and her mother. The admissions officer scanned the student's transcript and explained that the most important thing the student could do in her upcoming senior year was to take on a challenging course load and seek leadership roles in her school community.
A strong finish could make up for low grades as an underclassman, even to the point of winning her a spot in the Class of 2014, apparently. As the woman's advice implied, GPA or SAT scores aren't the only indicators that a student will do well in college. Admissions officers want energy and motivation as much as they want smarts.
It seemed too perfect that I should hear this while reading Richard Nisbett's new book, "Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009). Nisbett takes a hard look at the standards by which we assess intelligence, focusing on the invisible factors that may shape the statistics that form our societal attitudes on race, socioeconomic class and genetics.
In a section I found particularly interesting in light of that overheard conversation, Nisbett examines the relationship between class and intelligence. Citing research that shows that above-average socioeconomic status and above-average IQ often go hand in hand, and that early adoption by upper middle-class families can drastically improve a child's IQ, Nisbett looks at the flaws in the studies by highlighting the advantages of well-off children. He then suggests ways we can share these advantages with the less fortunate.
Written in clear, compelling prose, Nisbett's book brims with insight about education and closes with practical advice about how to make yourself and your children smarter. Aside from shattering a host of claims from past studies, especially those that he believes overemphasize the role of genetics, Nisbett's approach is very can-do. When he wants to be blunt, however, Nisbett doesn't hold back. I thought of my friends who have signed up for Teach For America when I read one of Nisbett's no-bullshit nuggets of truth in a section about the best ways to make your kids smart: "Avoid rookie teachers."
The main myth Nisbett sets out to debunk is the belief, widely held by scientists and education professionals, that "You are only going to be as smart as your genes allow." As the author says and proves, again and again, no matter how much our intelligence is written in our genes, those genes cannot limit the extent to which our environment can improve our minds.
At times, Nisbett tries to wrap up dense sections of his explanations in terse, clear language, and the result is a smattering of end statements just as reductive as the conclusions of the researchers he contradicts.
Even though he cites the results of a particular study on Asian-American IQs that showed they are on average slightly lower than the IQs of other Americans, he still made me shudder when he concluded: "Asian intellectual accomplishment is due more to sweat than to exceptional gray matter." Since Nisbett previously made a distinction between IQ scores and intelligence, I don't think he can equate IQ and "gray matter" so facilely.
Generally speaking, though, Nisbett dodges land mines such as these racially sensitive issues. He directs his attention towards the research of "hereditarians" among others of his misguided predecessors whose work has, in his opinion, provided insufficient proof for overly cut-and-dry conclusions.
The most common fault he identifies in these studies is self-selection. For example, in many studies of intelligence in academia, parents must sign their students up for experimental programs. These parents, he explains, likely care more about their children's education than do the average parents in society, thus skewing the survey sample.
Amidst a deluge of information, Nisbett's most striking take-home message, at least for me, was this: "If we want to make the poor smarter, a good way to do it might be to make them richer." Amen.
