Antalya’s ’high IQ school’ a dumb idea?
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Oluşturulma Tarihi: Haziran 18, 2009 00:00
We salute the southern city of Antalya for its new initiative to open a primary school for gifted students, specifically those with IQs over 130. As a small newspaper with an outsized percentage of our own "brainiacs," many of us have benefited from the special treatment such status bestows. We can only endorse this expansion of educational opportunity as reported in our "South" section yesterday by reporter Betül Çal. We do so, however, with some hesitation.
For as much as we and others sporting such honor badges would like to believe, any direct correlation between high IQ and success is pretty much a myth. Current research and advanced pedagogy has established this authoritatively.
Seminal work on this appeared first in 1975 in the form of Howard Gardner’s "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences." This was one of the first academic works to explore why IQ was a poor measure of cognitive ability.
It was 20 years later that Daniel Goleman published "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ." This work carried forward the importance of emotional factors in outcomes in school and work.
And late last year, American journalist Malcolm Gladwell hit the bestseller lists with "Outliers: The Story of Success," a book widely debated and now widely translated. It explores many little considered factors in educational success, including cultural legacy and the randomness of opportunity, such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ attendance of the only high school in the United States that allowed students unlimited access to play on a supercomputer back in 1968. Sure Gates was smart, but he also had 10,000 hours of exposure to computer programming before he graduated. This was something unavailable to virtually any other promising student in America at the time.
Turkish society and its educational infrastructure are all but obsessed with tests. Competition for prized seats in universities, awarded by an ostensibly objective exam, have created a tutor and cram school ("dersane" in Turkish) economy that is four times larger than the budget of the Ministry of Education. Some elite primary and middle schools charge tuition rates that rival those of Harvard or Stanford.
Such a system confuses anxious parents, it risks robbing young minds of critical thinking skills, and it reinforces assumptions about the value of rote learning that are outdated by at least a century.
We have no doubt about the good intentions of educators in Antalya to nurture the "leaders of the future." But leadership is nurtured by many forces. A model that further legitimizes a national system of private and public education that poorly allocates resources using the narrowest of criteria against an expansive array of needs is a danger. It’s a danger to which we urge heed.
Seminal work on this appeared first in 1975 in the form of Howard Gardner’s "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences." This was one of the first academic works to explore why IQ was a poor measure of cognitive ability.
It was 20 years later that Daniel Goleman published "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ." This work carried forward the importance of emotional factors in outcomes in school and work.
And late last year, American journalist Malcolm Gladwell hit the bestseller lists with "Outliers: The Story of Success," a book widely debated and now widely translated. It explores many little considered factors in educational success, including cultural legacy and the randomness of opportunity, such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ attendance of the only high school in the United States that allowed students unlimited access to play on a supercomputer back in 1968. Sure Gates was smart, but he also had 10,000 hours of exposure to computer programming before he graduated. This was something unavailable to virtually any other promising student in America at the time.
Turkish society and its educational infrastructure are all but obsessed with tests. Competition for prized seats in universities, awarded by an ostensibly objective exam, have created a tutor and cram school ("dersane" in Turkish) economy that is four times larger than the budget of the Ministry of Education. Some elite primary and middle schools charge tuition rates that rival those of Harvard or Stanford.
Such a system confuses anxious parents, it risks robbing young minds of critical thinking skills, and it reinforces assumptions about the value of rote learning that are outdated by at least a century.
We have no doubt about the good intentions of educators in Antalya to nurture the "leaders of the future." But leadership is nurtured by many forces. A model that further legitimizes a national system of private and public education that poorly allocates resources using the narrowest of criteria against an expansive array of needs is a danger. It’s a danger to which we urge heed.