A New Theory of Human Intelligence | Scott Barry Kaufman | TEDxZumbroRiver

I would like to offer you today a broader definition of human intelligence one that I think takes into account the whole person both our deepest challenges as well as our most profound strengths I believe our standard model of intelligence is systematically letting far too many kids fall between the cracks in an educational system that has such limited notions of human potential let me share with you two school evaluations that I think do a nice job illustrating this point so this one is a middle school assessment about a quiet but friendly and hardworking young man who's enrolled in a small private Academy depending on the subject he works at a variety of different grade levels his teachers report he's a willing participant in every facet of school and comes fervent even obsessive about activities of particular interest showing superior grasp of academic concepts in his homework class discussions and projects he occasionally suggest alternatives to teacher directed assignments so that he can demonstrate his comprehension and skill as a result his relationships with peers older students with mutual interests and adults continue to improve okay now I want to show you another school evaluation about an eight year old boy who was referred to a neurologist according to this neurologist information provided by mother and observations in the office setting indicate that difficulties displayed have a multifactorial basis including attention deficit hyperactive disorder mild oppositional defiant disorder generalized anxiety disorder and mild unevenness in skill development now when I ask you all a question raise your hand if you thought I was talking about two completely different children so I see some hands here I mean would it surprise anyone in this room to know that this was actually the same kid Blane at different points in this kid's life one when he was eight years old and one in middle school do you think just looking at this report by the way these are the recommendations of this kid we have a whole bunch of things including counseling medication social interventions behavioral management is there anything in this evaluation that would have allowed you to predict this kid I want you to think about that for a second in recent years a number of very thoughtful educators clinicians psychologists and parents have identified the unique needs and learning styles of a particular classification of students called the twice exceptional student so I want to tell you today about this twice exceptional these twice exceptional students well you find is that twice exceptional students simultaneously have exemplary strengths as well as extraordinary challenges so you may see the child could have difficulty with written expression high anxiety could become easily frustrated difficulty with social interactions uneven academic performance while also having a rich vocabulary being resourceful being curious imaginative creative having a special talent or interest all in a single package now it's estimated there are about 300,000 of these kids in this country but I think that's a gross underestimate for a number of reasons for one I don't think we fully realized that a lot of these challenges can be strengths in the right context but I also think we have a really narrow notion of strengths to begin with so I think in order to really find out how many these kids are form through the cracks and really get the best out of these students I think we need to take an account of four see model so when you take it into account capacity competence commitment and creativity importantly they're not all the same thing you often you do sometimes see them all in the same package but I think it's really important to differentiate them from each other so first of all what is the difference between capacity and competence well here's a chart of so called of one of our biggest metrics of potential IQ the IQ test most of you heard of the IQ test it's supposed to forecast your ability to achieve academically on actual competent tests of standardized achievement and what you see here is yeah it's true IQ does correlate with standardized achievement I'm not saying that IQ is a useless measure of human of potential and academics but what you see here is that about 50% of individuals are underperforming based on their predicted measure of potential and often recognized 50 percent are over-performing based on their predicted measure of human potential that often is not made nearly as much we need to leave much more room in our models in school for children to surprise us something is clearly not complete here in our understanding of human intelligence but if we just stop there there's obviously more to getting out of seeing possibility and children than just their academic performance they're kept their capacity or even their competence we also have commitments you see kids in special education have so many commitments so much values they have so many values and passions for special interest areas for things that they're for making the world a better place I think something is deeply fought with an education system where if a child comes to you and says look I'd really like resources to end violence or end bullying or to develop my musical talents etc etc that we say hold on we have to measure your IQ or measure your see look at your standardized test to see whether you're not each score above a certain threshold in order to make the world a better place I think something is deeply followed with a system where we don't just immediately say great how can we help you get there and in addition to commitment I also see creativity as extraordinarily important you find the creativity often comes the most unexpected packages so you see that you see these kids right here these happy engaged group of kids well these are kids on the autism spectrum now according to a lot of popular notions of autism they're not they're not capable of deep social interactions and bonding but what do you find when you actually work with kids in autism spectrum is that they they are they crave connection they deeply crave connection and my colleague Matt Lerner has been designing these improv exercises that puts them in this kind of situation where they can be funny with each other where they can really bond with each other neat fun ways and finds the instead of the social awkwardness that you the that a lot of people a lot of what may be referred as neurotypical people would call social awkwardness among people in the autism spectrum actually it's completely reframed as social creativity in this context and they are genuinely creative in this context I don't know about you but I would much rather be socially creative than socially awkward and least have that framing so I really do believe we need a new theory of human intelligence one that is more holistic and takes to account a child's passions personal goals as well as their ability level because the more that we engage and are motivated to achieve the more that increases our actual ability and the more the ability achieves it's then becomes an upward spiral more than our engagement is greater as well and the most important once it's connected to a personal passion or a dream then we can start to realize real possible possibility we have now I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that I this is deeply personal for me when I was a child I was diagnosed with a learning disability called central auditory processing disorder and made it very difficult for me to process information in real-time and I was held back in third grade as a result a lot of the kids and teachers thought I was they took my slowness as an indicator of being stupid and I was kept in special education until ninth grade when a teacher took me aside and she said you know I see you I see your frustration why are you still here and she inspired me I realized I had no good answer that question and she inspired me to see what I was possibly what was it was i capable of could my capability exceed my capacity that everyone was telling me and so I took myself out of special education I signed up for lots of classes I joined the school orchestra I joined the choir by my senior year most of my friends were in gifted education and I wanted to be in gifted education I went to the school psychologist I said you know I would love to my senior year being gifted education and he he said well you you look gifted you know that's good good start you get your guy told him I'm getting straight A's I'm getting straight A's and all my class he said that sounds gifted as well but I have to see if you're actually gifted I need a look at your IQ score when you're age 11 so he pulled out my test my score at age 11 which turned out that my measured IQ at age 11 I've never revealed this in a talk was borderline mentally intellectually impaired and he said he took out a bell-curve and he said to look up here on the right these are the kids who are in your gifted class these are all your friends basically you know to the left here about in the center is about average and he moved to the left of the bell curve and said this is you I'm sorry you don't qualify for gifted education I was so upset and shy at that moment and I just remember thinking to myself gosh at what point can my as my achievement allowed to trump my potential when I'm actually doing it at what point can that Trump what was measured as my potential I knew at that moment that I wanted to do something to change the system and I applied at Carnegie Mellon University and put in a personal statement I said look I really want to change our metrics of human potential and and I think far too many people are falling between the cracks in terms of our standard models and they rejected me to Carnegie Mellon they said sorry your SAT scores are not high enough to redefine intelligence again again I was rejected because they were looking at my city scores potential over what I was trying to show them right in front of their face so I looked at the different departments at Carnegie Mellon to see which ones don't look at SAT scores and I found the Opera Department I went in the following week did not tell the Opera Department I was already rejected by their University and I said hi I just loved opera and I'd like to audition and I sang stars from lame as Rob sang my heart out and they accepted me on a partial scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University for my singing ability apparently the department's don't talk to each other very much I was just rejected once I got to car you melon I I should say it's a lovely department no disrespect by endured a full semester of dance classes and ballet and acting classes I'm a terrible actor singing class is not a bad not a terrible singer and and I went in second semester of freshman year to the psychology department at Carnegie Mellon my heart beating so fast trying to pretend that hadn't planning this my whole life and I walked in to the department and the Secretary was there eating a bologna sandwich and I said hey I just took a course in psychology I loved it do you think maybe I could be a minor in psychology it's called foot in the door technique you start small and work up and she's like whatever like no one's ever been this excited to be a minor in psychology a car you know I think she's like just sign this paper I remember as I was skipping back to my door in my tights because I just come from dance class that day I was remember thinking to myself with this paper in my hand my gosh this is all came down to in life was finding a way to sign the paper to get to that space where there was high expectations for everyone where everyone just saw a different aspect of me and there was no question she all she wanted to do was finish her bologna sandwich she didn't ask to say well I'm sorry let me see what are your SAT scores or sit down and let me have you taken IQ tests no I was there I had figured a strategy through my commitment and creativity to get there and once I was there it didn't matter anymore what my potential was so following semester I went back to the same secretary I think somehow she was still eating the same bull and you sandwich I don't know how that's possible but I said look I would like to be a major in psychology I took another course and it was just even better than the first this is the part who knew this department would have such a good psychology department and she said I'm just saying these two pieces of paper you could have whatever you want so I changed my major to psychology and then working my way up I graduated Phi Beta Kappa straight A's Carnegie Mellon got accepted to Yale University for a ph.d program oh thank you thank you in 2009 I actually did graduate from Yale with a PhD and my dissertation was a new theory of human intelligence so now I've seen through personal experience as well as lots and lots of research just how many kids really are falling between the cracks I think that if we're ever going to get the best out of students we need to really understand this coexistence of ability and disability not treat them as opposites not have gifted education here and special education here instead of this false dichotomy in our school system that we only have these two binary characters these two binary categories I think in order to really see the true possibilities in all students we need to have a theory of intelligence that is holistic and really takes into account appreciates the whole person thank you so much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 133,121

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Education, Creativity, Education reform, Intelligence, Psychology, Social Science

Id: ih5caeD06ms

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2017