Growth Mindset and Evil In the Guise of Good by Charlie Martin

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Growth Mindset and Evil In the Guise of Good by Charlie Martin

I think it’s more of an effect than a cause, but academic education’s terminology gives me a pain in the brain. You know what I mean. So I admit I wish I could come up with a better way to talk about this, but we’re going to have to go with it. It does have the one advantage that it is the common terminology.

I’m talking about growth mindset and its opposite, fixed mindset.

Growth mindset is simple. It simply means that you believe that applying effort and learning enables transforming ability. In other words, in order to learn, you have to believe learning is possible, and that learning thrives when you — and those around you — believe your abilities can grow.

Its opposite, fixed mindset, is the belief that you are genetically or culturally limited—that your abilities are static and unchangeable.

The original idea and the research supporting it were reported in a book, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success[1] by Carol Dweck, a book I recommend very highly to anyone who is either teaching someone a new subject or anyone who is learning a new subject.

Early in the book, Dweck proposes four statements:

  1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
  2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are. 
  3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
  4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

She suggests that if you agree more with statements 1 and 2, that’s a fixed mindset; 3 and 4 indicate a growth mindset.

Now, this has a problem for anyone who has paid much attention to the whole debate on intelligence over the last decades, going back at least to The Bell Curve[2] by Hernstein and Murray, a book that has been widely — and wildly — misinterpreted, which is probably a topic for a whole other article, but it does propose there is a quality of general intelligence that they denote that is fixed and invariable.

The Bell Curve was instantly controversial because they suggested that this correlated with race and economic class.

Clearly, to the extent that you believe Herrnstein and Murray, that leads to a fixed mindset, although there are a lot of issues with that conclusion that don’t necessarily follow.

Dweck makes the whole argument more difficult because she clearly equates having learned new skills and gained knowledge with “intelligence,” which — whatever you call it — is clearly not what Herrnstein and Murray identified as .

This confusion is hardly limited to The Bell Curve vs Mindset. Oddly, for all the objections to The Bell Curve that were raised, the education establishment adopted the conclusion they spuriously ascribed to The Bell Curve — that non-white kids were constitutionally unable to learn like white kids.

This toxic assumption led to a whole host of pernicious effects. It’s the assumption underlying most affirmative action programs — that somehow some people needed extra privileges to make up for their inherent or imposed disabilities.

And there we come back around to growth mindset. If teachers, administrators, and educators start with the assumption that certain kids simply don’t have the capability to learn and achieve, that is a fixed-mindset assumption. And one of the things Dweck learned in her research is that a fixed mindset assumption on the part of teachers was just as harmful as if a student believed they weren’t capable of learning a topic.

Basically, students respond to the teachers’ expectations. If the teacher’s expectations were low, the students would succeed in meeting the teachers’ expectations.

If the teachers’ expectations were high, the students would succeed in meeting those higher expectations.

A recent blog post by Joanne Jacobs, “How ‘anti-racist’ ideology hurt the students it was supposed to help,” talks about this problem. It’s a discussion of a new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, by Steven F. Wilson.

Wilson was the founder of the Ascend charter schools in Brooklyn, where [this link and others to New York Times are to archives pages since the articles are behind the New York Times paywall.]

5,500 students, 84 percent of them living in poverty and nearly all children of color [emphasis mine], who were reading “The Tempest” and Auden and studying African masks and the Dutch masters by fifth grade.

But by demanding high standards, Wilson was accused of the crime of “white supremacist rhetoric”—and fired.

In schools where students were saved from “white supremacist rhetoric” and given “anti-racist” curricula, scores — surprise! — plummeted.

At one school that went anti-racist, “the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the math section of the SAT plummeted from 41 percent in 2017 to 4 percent in 2024,” [Wilson] says.

In theory, the SAT is supposed to measure critical reading, writing, and mathematics skills, but the scores correlate highly with IQ as measured by standard IQ tests, and thus are a measure of .

So maybe Dweck’s observation that a growth mindset includes believing that it is possible to increase “intelligence” is not as far off the mark as I suggested earlier.

Or, maybe “anti-racist” curricula actually reduce intelligence.

I think the real point is that anything that encourages a fixed mindset — whether it’s based in race or class or just damn stubbornness — is damaging.

The “anti-racist” approach, like so much of the “progressive” project, has or purports to have good intentions. But it appears these good intentions have paved the road to illiteracy and a permanent underclass it wanted to help.

[1] Dweck, Carol S.. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (p. 12). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[2] Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York, NY: Free Press.

78 thoughts on “Growth Mindset and Evil In the Guise of Good by Charlie Martin”

      1. Well, for whatever reason every place where Charlie Martin mentions what, in context, appears to be G (I thought the abbreviation for general intelligence would be GI but a quick search showed me that it’s G), it got transformed into <img width=”10″ height=”30″> tags. (Let’s see if WordPress mangles this: that’s supposed to be an HTML img tag spelled out in the comment, but with the “src” attribute deliberately left out just in case WordPress mangles it).

        Definitely some weirdness somewhere along the line, but I actually suspect it to have something to do with the program that Charlie used to write the essay. Maybe he used a different font for G and the software auto-converted it to an image, without telling him, when he exported it to HTML? That’s my best theory so far, as it would explain the behavior: his software created img tags, he didn’t notice and just sent you the HTML without the images that the img tags were pointing to, and that’s why you didn’t see any embedded images because there weren’t any images in what you received.

        But whatever, this is just my professional “let’s debug this weird issue” mode kicking in. It’s not actually important enough to spend any of your time on.

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        1. Well, look at that: WP did not mangle that comment; the spelled-out img tag came out exactly as I had intended it to come out.

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        2. “this is just my professional “let’s debug this weird issue” mode kicking in.“

          –

          😉Even when I was working I learned a long time ago – “Not my product? Unless I have to figure out what went wrong? Or want to report it? Ignore it.” Now that I’m retired? Double down. I ignore when WP gets weird. Do I sometimes go “hmmmmm?” Yes. Still ignore.

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        1. It’s probably the math mode that caused the software to do something weird, possibly involving LaTeX. (For anyone who thinks I typed that wrong, nope; I typed that precisely as I intended to.)

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    2. I just get a blank box, both in Pale Moon and Firefox. I thought it might be a letter in a font I don’t have. Yeah, comes up as a “Page not found” in ATH.

      Sounds like WPDE (rolling the dice on moderation-gulag).

      “Moderation in all things, including moderation.” – L. Long

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  3. “Stupidity is contagious — kids get it from stupid teachers.” :-(

    If the ‘anti-racist’ curriculum actually worked, and the kids subjected to it became successful, independent members of society, they wouldn’t need the ‘anti-racists’ any more.

    Keeping the ‘people of color’ (which is different from ‘colored people’ — how?) suppressed and dependent keeps the ‘anti-racists’ perpetually in power over them. Funny how that works, innit?

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    1. Democrats and RINOs still need ignorant slaves of all colors on their plantations.

      Actually educating people leads to them questioning authority. Can’t have no uppity peons demanding real results from their “betters”. That’s why the whole education system has become subverted and enshititified.

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    2. This quote will never stop applying to the “anti-racists” and other people like that.

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  4. Way back when… I expressed a concept to my boss to get across what I was doing for staff called “training” or in HR speak, “development”. I explained we sent people to college classes, specialty courses etc. and paid for such and that was education. Then we had in house workshops and classes that taught new skills or reenforced skills and knowledge for staff which was training. The last part was taking someone who had some education and training and guiding while having them put all that together and improve accomplishing their job/assignment and that was development. Bottom line was more output or success from staff.

    In the academic world anything you could get away with in the classroom was automatically ok and of value. Passing a ‘test’ was all the proof you needed and real world application was not considered. The idea there is a student plays the game and gets the magic paper called a diploma.

    The key part in all of the above and what the outcome is from the individual involved. If they have a drive to accomplish – they will push and ‘make’ themselves do a well as they can. They will also learn and/or strive beyond the requirements. Some are gifted with skill and abilities which make higher levels possible and some fight to just stay ahead while there always is a segment that just want to coast or not even try. Think SEAL training – The ones that get through the process and join the teams are the ones that are/were mentally the toughest. Sure, physical elements come into play but the big strong guy doesn’t make it and the lightweight little guy who just would not quit is the one still standing – there is something there.

    With all that blather – I am in the camp that says internal mindset and drive are the key elements to accomplishment.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You can be anything you want to be—given sufficient time.

      In my case, the only way I would ever be an excellent basketball player (for example) would be an investment of time that exceeded my physical peak by a long margin.

      So yes, internal mindset is a huge component. However, you have to take natural inclinations into account. I started out college in engineering (all that science fiction, heh.) After a year and a half, I determined that I could indeed get an engineering degree.

      Problem is, I would have hated working in that field. (Though if I’d known then what I know now, I might have worked on getting into architecture, and not the big stuff. The small things, like homes that are actually livable.)

      On the other hand, my nearest brother, not as “smart” as me (which is ridiculous; none of my siblings are low on the intelligence curve) is the one who is a rocket scientist. Because he had the drive and the mindset to accomplish that.

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      1. B.Durbin I think you have hit the nail on the head. I could have spent all my youth trying to get good enough at basketball and even should I have been extremely good I would have been highly unlikely to have even played on an NCAA division III team let alone the pros. Why? Because I’m 5’6″ and any passable 6′ plus player can easily confound me. Similarly, if I had chosen to be a physicist/astronomer I likely would have been passable, but unlikely to have been exceptional, There is something about a Feynman or such that I likely do not possess. I knew many young ladies who loved modern dance and were quite good at it. A couple were too tall (5’10”). Another young lady was exceptionally talented. She was 5’3″ and of almost the right weight, except she was rather zaftig and so NOT the shape most dance groups desired (that being slim small and willowy and easily lifted.

        There seem to be innate talents that express either from our ancestry or from early experience (or a combination thereof) which enhance or constrain certain paths. Yes barring severe mental limitations most paths are open to most people. For example I had a coworker who was an excellent programmer. However, she had little stubborness or endurance. This meant that getting the code to work via the debugging steps was very difficult and emotionally fraught for her as she did not experience failure well, and honestly as a programmer you HAVE to know your code will initially fail at some point. She went back to school and became a nurse (and later a physicians assistant/Nurse practitioner) and was far happier.

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        1. I hear this!

          I got through Forestry because I was too stubborn to quit. Loved being outdoors, and working outdoors. Best profession for me? Not really.

          In the ’70s, never considered programming. Not until at least order of 2nd level. I could (maybe) working at it perform at the lower level programming languages. But I excelled at putting everything together, coding it, making it work, tracking down all the failures, and conquering them.

          It’s like I needed that fill in time (plus it allowed me to bypass all the *BS to get into the upper level computer science classes) to even look at computer programming.

          (*) 3.0 overall GPA + 3.5 Math GPA.

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      2. OT – for B. Durbin (and anyone else interested

        https://www.facebook.com/reel/1388542835519592Council short on camp Melakawa.

        Problem with Melakawa is there isn’t a camp kitchen. Units bring in the food to eat (cook/clean, etc.) and camping equipment; tent sites only.

        The other consideration is there is only one USFS road in and out off of Hwy 126. This means:

        Unit must have enough seats available for all in the unit onsite all week.

        Vehicles are parked facing outward (quick exit)

        Vehicle keys must be on an adult at all times. The fire drill protocol is, after all are assembled, to have the keys held up.

        Closed toed shoes required, except at water front, and must be handy.

        In an emergency if the only road out is blocked, then the route out is to hike out to Scott Lake to hwy 242.

        Haven’t had to initiate emergency protocol, yet. But Melakawa was scorched, and some out buildings lost to a fire a few years ago. After both BSA and the Church camps were done for the season. Fire came in from 242 and Scott Lake.

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        1. We have a physically-limited adult, so we probably won’t be picking that camp. (She gets around, but it’s slow, and hiking any appreciable distance is off the table.)

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          1. Yes. Definitely something to check before choosing Melakawa.

            Would not surprise me if there are evacuation plans in place for this.

            Do know a few units had youth with limited physical abilities. But the Unit, as a whole were trained in assisting parent scouter in evacuating the youth in question.

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  5. I’ve always believed that nearly everyone is plenty smart enough for the normal course, that most people are smarter (or capable of being smarter) than they believe they are or perhaps have been told they are, and that most people have no idea what they’re truly capable of. Some it might take longer than others to learn a new thing (and in some cases, possibly longer than it would be worth in objective terms). Some might have to remember not to let frustration or other emotions overwhelm their attempt to learn.

    In my experience most people can reason surprisingly well if they have time and can keep calm.

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  7. I can’t find a cite right now, but scores on the SAT verbal test strongly correlate to the sheer number of books a kid has read in his/her life. This only applies to SAT verbal, not math, and not necessarily to the ACT verbal.

    Caveat: this stat refers to relatively difficult books (Shakespeare, the Bible, NYT best-sellers, most SF, etc). Popcorn like The Babysitters Club and formula romance count as one “book” per series.

    It may be that “the number of books you read” correlates to “general intelligence” more than to boredom or escapism or nearsightedness or doggedness or love of the smell of paper. But I don’t think the data shows that, at least not yet.

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    1. Parents who encourage reading also tend to speak a lot to their kids, using a fairly large vocabulary. So the kids get both a working knowledge of different words, but also a solid words-in-context foundation. That really helps kids start strong and keep going.

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      1. Absolutely true. I use my full vocabulary when I talk to my kids (oldest two are 7 and 5 now) and they often interrupt me with “Dad, what’s (word)?” Or I’ll ask “Hey, do you know what (word) is?” and they’ll say no. So far they haven’t needed to ask me the same word twice, which means they’re learning them. Oh, and after I explain the word, I repeat the sentence the word was in and then move on with the conversation, which results in immediate use of their new knowledge.

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      1. I wish there was a way to survey the families that are on Dolly Parton’s book list. Do the parents read more once they start getting the books for their children? Do they talk about the book more, and everyone build vocabulary? Or do the parents remain at initial baseline as the children grow in vocabulary? Or does all this happen at too young an age for results to appear (short term vs. long term?)

        I come from a family of readers. Sib preferred not to read, but had the large vocabulary from osmosis. Now Sib reads, but still prefers visual media (manga, movies, some games) and craft skills (building furniture, house repairs) to spending hours in a book-book. Red 2.0 would rather read than do other things, and prefers to read in print. Sib-in-Law doesn’t read much for pleasure, but that has to do with time available as much as personal preference.

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  8. There might very well be a hard cap on potential that depends on IQ*, but there’s no point worrying about it until we’ve maxed out education. There’s plenty to improve before we run into any innate barriers that may or may not exist.

    *At the population level, using the metrics these studies measure, subject the usual limits of testing and correlation.

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  9. There is case after case where someone took inner city school(s) and expected much from the children and got it. Which results were universally ignonred by the “intelligensia”. I suspect you would still get a bell curve because peole. But the individuals in the curve would be more varigated than they are now and that curve would be shifted higher. Substantially higher. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC

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    1. Remember that the teacher whose story was the basis for Stand and Deliver was eventually fired by the school district. Those cases are the very last thing the educational establishment wants highlighted.

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      1. It’s not just high expectations. It’s also the teacher being willing to put in high effort, and being able to maintain mental ingenuity enough to explain the same concept in different ways, in order to make sure that all students learn the concepts.

        And it also is asking the students to put in mental effort to learn, and practice effort to master the work.

        Obviously some students will have problems at home, or problems with their own mental or physical starting points, or a weakness in their educational history.

        So the teacher has to find some way to help, and the student also has to be willing to try.

        The whole situation requires faith and trust, because neither side knows how big the problem of learning is, or how easy or hard it will eventually become.

        And it’s the teacher’s job to create the opportunity for the student to trust and try.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I halfway remembered there was some extra stuff going on, poking enough to clarify what schools he worked at when got PBS documentaries claims of him being forced out, so went digging….

        He wasn’t fired. He took a year off to finish his doctorate with the idea he’d take over from the principle that had done so much to enable their award-winning math program, and thus could keep the whole system going, and he didn’t get the job- got a kinda BS job, it sounds like, no details though- so he left.

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  10. “I think it’s more of an effect than a cause, but academic education’s terminology gives me a pain in the brain.”

    It’s supposed to. The bafflegab changes about every five years, because it is a circumlocution. A lie, to put it less delicately.

    As it happens my current work-in-progress concerns the schools, and the question asked is “if mighty spirits of legend arrived in Canada and were faced with sending their children to public school, what would their reaction be?”

    Typically for me, I’m treating this seriously and not-seriously at the same time. I’m also following some research rabbit holes that lead me to some interesting places.

    We have Cerridwen the Goddess of Wisdom, patroness of bards and minstrels. Her (adopted) children are 200 nanotech combat spiders brought to life by her husband Bruce, who is a guy who makes most of his living busking in Hamilton. He’s a street bum, essentially. But also a guitarist and poet so gifted that Cerridwen claimed him on the spot. The spiders all gained sentience because Bruce told her a joke about a frog.

    Hilarity ensues, as one might envision. When they go to high school the Goddess is not impressed.

    What’s interesting to me is that these characters look at what the education system actually -is- and what it actually -does-. If you go back to the birth of modern public education as currently understood, you find Otto Von Bismark in re-unification Germany ~1870s. TL/DR, Bismark changed the schools from being instruments of the church, to instruments of the State. The schools were for strengthening Germany by churning out trained, useful citizens to work in all the new and shiny enterprises.

    Fast forward to now, this educational model is used all over the world to strengthen nations everywhere.

    Please note that it does not strengthen or cultivate THE STUDENTS at all, except by accident or in the case of teaching them skills useful to the State.

    The school is a mill. The students are trees. They get run through the mill and come out as useful lumber on the other side, to build up the great edifice of the nation. The straight trees are valuable and get all the attention. The bowed trees get chucked in the firewood bin. (Being a bowed tree myself, I did not find that helpful in my life.)

    This is where you get the bureaucracy coming up with concepts like “growth mindset and its opposite, fixed mindset.” They’re GREASING THE MILL. Oiling the bearings, as it were.

    Maybe not deliberately, maybe not maliciously, but they’re trying to improve the efficiency of the educational process. The aim is to push out more units and better units at less cost within the political realities of the system. But they can’t say that, so they say “growth mindset” instead, and we are all supposed to nod and say “ah yes, growth is good, we should have that.”

    It’s a sales job.

    Now, to be fair as long as the nation operates properly and supports the citizens who live in it, promoting commerce, health and the general welfare as nations are meant to do, this is not a bad thing. But when the nation becomes corrupt and exists to -fleece- the citizens, then the schools become part of the fleecing.

    Leading us to The Bell Curve, the measurement of IQ and “intelligence” as it is referred to in the educational establishment. To an educator, “intelligence” is anything that makes their life easier. IQ tests select for abilities that make students perform better in the education system. This is how they sort the straight trunks from the bent ones.

    One would expect the graduates of a well regulated education system to be “smarter,” if only because of the sorting hat that spends resources on the valuable ones and discards the worthless ones.

    It helps to understand the nature of the system you’re looking at when trying to understand the verbiage and bafflegab they use. It’s a lumber mill. They’re grading the inputs and outputs for usefulness.

    This may seem a touch cynical in our modern current year of 2025, (and where is my flying car, by the way?) but if you go back and read what good ol’ Otto had to say, he laid this all out very explicitly. It’s a factory. Little kids are raw materials, big kids are products.

    I don’t see that as a good thing. My characters are going to be a bit savage with the school system. >:D

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    1. The other side of that was the kinder-garten movement, which is still running in Germany in some places.

      The ideal being to give kids lots of time in nature, to play, as well as to learn educational stuff, to sing, to do dances and exercises, to play kid games, and so on.

      The Montessori stuff by Sr. Maria Montessori was somewhat related, and there are tons of other models too.

      And the US “little red schoolhouse” model with the various readers/primers predates the German schooling model.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I suspect that we could usefully go back to teaching kids letters by using wax tablets (which we now know, go back to Sumer, and were used throughout Greek, Roman, and medieval times!), and personal chalk writing boards that could be held in the hand.

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        1. Slate was the word I was groping for.

          In the hedge schools in Ireland, people notoriously practiced letters on wood boards with charcoal, or by scratching in the dirt, or by chalking or charcoaling the back of a shovel or spade.

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            1. Yes, and this is why I don’t have much faith in IQ measurements. They’re not measuring intelligence, they’re measuring the speed the test taker has at specific tasks. That’s not the same thing.

              Worse, it varies day to day, and at different times of day, I assume with metabolism. Some days you’re speedier than others, obviously. Are you dumber some days? As in, has your inherent intelligence changed? Or is it just the speed of your performance?

              There’s also the distinction “poor because you’re poor” vs “poor because you’re stupid” which seems a lot of academics don’t understand. They also seem to have forgotten nutrition plays a big part in intelligence.

              Bad diet and no exercise makes people stupid, there’s no question. But again, is it -intelligence- that changed or physical condition? Because they perk right up when they get the proper food and run around a bit. They become smart. (Undergrad in Anthropology before it became pure Marxism, useful at times but not for making money. ~:D

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          2. We practiced on slate with weirdly a slate stick. You scratched the slate. Very visible while dust on it. then you washed it and it was gone except for faint scratch marks. Repeat.
            By the time I was ten these were being replaced by plastic “slates” and markers.

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      2. I suspect that any learning method that requires the students to manually form letters and numbers, eventually moving on to writing short essay questions, and more complex math problems will form ingrained habits and intellectual pathways in the brain which will allow them to maximize their IQ potential. When you go straight to typing stuff on a computer or calculator those pathways never form for those not intellectually gifted.

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        1. I’ve read several studies that seem to show that when students take notes by hand, especially in cursive, the material is “loaded” into several parts of the memory, and retention is greater than printing alone. Either way, students remember more than if they type the notes (take dictation that passes from ears through hands to screen, in some cases).

          I took and take notes by hand, in cursive. Taking dictation by typing means I don’t recall what I heard, and don’t process it as well. YMMV.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Weirdly, in my research, I have to take notes by hand, and research from paper. It could be possible because this is the familiar, trained method I learned as a teen. Or, it could be the thingy in the brainy.

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          2. For me, the difference is if I’m transcribing, or taking notes.

            Transcription? Whoosh.

            Taking notes, that is, rephrase in a way that uses the fewest words to get the most meaning?

            That sticks, probably because I think about it long enough to form connections.

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            1. Same.

              Doesn’t matter if I’m typing or handwriting. Difference with former, it is more likely to be actually legible. I tend to zone out when I’m taking notes with handwriting resulting in illegible notes.

              One of the reasons that when I have to take specific meeting notes, the meeting is first outlined into sections. Even if the sections end up being out of order. At least the notes make sense!

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  11. If the “anti-racist” curricula and its advocates have good intentions even tangentially associated with them, then I’m Queen Victoria and a kumquat. Concurrently.

    An interesting remark in a podcast I heard this A.M. from a Boer whose online handle is the Conscious Caracal, re S. Africa’s race-quota laws and affirmative action systems (thanks to the always-been-openly-commie ANC): they demand N of the favored demographic, and here we have N loyal Party members who happen to meet the demographic quota! Let’s see you hire them—and now you’re infiltrated by the Party. The Party doesn’t give a [REDACTED WORD OD YOUR CHOICE] about the minorities themselves. “Minority representation” there is just a useful tool for ensuring PARTY representation. And I wonder if that’s not the basis of it everywhere else (including the US of A) as well?

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  12. Without saying anything that will get me in trouble with Day Job:

    Learning takes work, more for some than for others. Motivation also helps, as does having the right sort of wiring for certain subjects, but it is still work. Right now, there are a goodly number of younger people who have picked up that school is where you produce the desired-by-teacher answer (don’t sweat how, just find the fastest way), and turn it in to check off the boxes. Once you check off all the boxes, you’ve learned the subject and can go back to “fun stuff,” whatever that might be. Not all of them, thanks be, but a sizable minority.

    Which is why teachers go gray.

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  13. The aggregate -ethical- framework of a society is vastly more important than its aggregate intelligence.

    Virtue makes bitch of ability.

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  14. The brain is a muscle. A baby is born with very weak muscles. If those muscles are never exercised, or when they cease being exercised, they become weak again. There are, of course, some unfortunates born with the mental equivalent of myasthenia gravis or a similar condition.

    Now, isn’t that explanation rather simpler – are dozens of journal articles and several books really needed?

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  15. Being an old timing man in the 60’s my 7th or 8th grad general science class consisted of a small group of ag and shop screw offs (except me of course) that were not the elite in the school band (whose parents could afford an instrument) music class that was at the same time. Good teacher and a small class. Usually, actual class four time a week. Fridays we got to play with all the science demonstration toys in the stockroom. A powerful incentive for learning. Our teacher finished the general science text and got us a good way into the next upcoming general biology class.

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  17. Related, I note from my experience at four different schools back when I was a teacher, that the school that did by far the best at teaching students with special needs effectively was the tiny private school that did not bother with any sort of special accommodations.

    And it was not due to having a lower percentage of students with special needs, we had about the same percentage as the public schools. However, we had smaller classes, motivated teachers, and an administration that was in touch with everything going on in the school.

    I noticed in the math classes that I taught in particular that what was particularly successful was a combination of rigor and consistency. The regular routine we had really helped students focus on the material.

    Back to the main topic of the post, I was able to see that there were students who had an easier time at learning math, but nothing was out of reach to anyone who was willing to put in the effort to practice.

    While I would see a couple students each year who just sailed through and grasped new concepts with ease, I also saw plenty of application of the tortoise vs. the hare, where diligent practice would lead to consistent success while failure to keep up would be disastrous. Fortunately, the curriculum we were using was designed by a single clever intellect and naturally supported steady practice.

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    1. Your last paragraphs: this is what I see in everything, including writing. This is why I say talent exists, but it’s ultimately irrelevant. It’s…. how hungry you are and how much you apply yourself that matters more than ANYTHING else.
      Barring impairment, I’m not sure I believe in IQ.
      Impairment? Words do weird things in my husband’s mind. It’s just not how he thinks. He can write, and does — he was published in short stories before I was — but it takes him more effort. IF his words were a little more difficult….
      Conversely, I can’t process visual-spacial easily and if I’m trying to do something while sick and/or very tired I function at very low IQ level.
      Younger son remembers coming home while I was trying to assemble my new office chair upside down and sideways and going “HOW EVEN.” I’d been fighting it for two hours and it was like moving in a fog. He did it in five minutes.
      HOWEVER if I’m okay, I can do it easily. But never as easily as my husband or younger son.
      So, you know, if impairment comes in, yeah, there are hard limits. If not, I’m not sure.

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  18. I’m sorry, but I have an issue with this. This argument seems to be conflating “intelligence” and “knowledge.”

    I very much believe that our intelligence is fairly set in stone, but our knowledge is what we end up showing. There is no way I will ever raise my intelligence to that of an Einstein, Hawking, Newton, or Hoyt. But I can fairly easily reduce my ignorance across a broad variety of topics. Most tests don’t measure intelligence, they measure knowledge.

    Sticking me in the Kalihari Desert and asking me to find food and water without modern tools won’t demonstrate my intelligence, just my knowledge of survival skills. And I would struggle and most likely die. Whereas a member of the San would find it rather trivial to survive there. Likewise, sticking them into the middle of Buffalo, NY would as likely kill them, whereas I could thrive.

    Thomas Sowell talks about this in various books. One of the passages was something like given an illustration of a pile of bricks and asking how many bricks were there in the pile; wealthier white respondents merely counted the number of bricks shown on the face, but poorer black laborers also counted the number of unseen bricks that contributed to the pile. I can’t remember exactly how it went, or even which book that one was in. But the point was that our experiences and assumptions contributed to our scores on the tests, and didn’t actually test our ability to think.

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    1. Is intelligence a developable train, much like one can grow muscles through structured hard use, hard structured thinking improves the processor.

      As I observe my peers “retiring”, I see the reverse. They lose the daily challenge, and they get slow.

      I believe there is significant evidence for at least some development possible, through the lifetime, of “intelligence”.

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      1. I think it’s clear that intelligence is a developable trait — and just like musculature, everyone has a different maximum speed and strength. “Anything is possible if you try hard and keep at it” is an untruth; some things may be impossible, or at least not possible in any practical way, given one’s hardware. But the truth is that it’s always (virtually always) possible to improve your abilities in some way.

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    2. What is the evidence that intelligence is fairly set in stone? Because I’m starting to doubt that. I’m starting to think that it has a LOT more to do with character, and willingness to put in the hard work to learn, than raw set-in-stone traits. Some exceptions do exist — there are some people who, due to DNA issues or birth defects or brain damage from an accident or some other causes, will never be able to reach “normal” levels of intelligence — but there are even exceptions to those exceptions. I’m thinking of the woman I heard about who, despite her Down Syndrome, was able to not only live independently but also run a small business. Such people are exceptional, but I think they demonstrate how someone of exceptional character can overcome limitations to intelligence that we used to think were innate and therefore unchangeable. It’s a lot of hard work, but I think there’s growing evidence that it can be done if someone is willing to put in the hard work.

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      1. “What is the evidence that intelligence is fairly set in stone?”

        There isn’t any. It is a prejudice, not an observation. All the evidence points the other way.

        People sometimes recover the function of whole parts of their brain, Robin. A stroke kills Part A, which governs function A. Part B will take over and start doing that job.

        Let’s say the patient is stricken dumb by Broca’s aphasia, that’s a fairly common one. They can learn to talk again. It isn’t easy, and it takes a while, but other areas of the brain will literally change their cells and the patient will be able to talk again. Or walk, or play the violin, whatever.

        This is the remolding of permanent physical damage. Intelligence is a much more diffuse and difficult to measure concept. The notion that you can’t get better at things by working on them because your innate intelligence has a hard ceiling, this is ridiculous.

        You can also get dumber. That is certainly a thing as well.

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      2. Barring impairment, I don’t believe it’s set in stone. Back when we had only one kid and thought that would be it (considering it took us six years and was near fatal) and were looking into adopting, a pediatrician working with us told us the dirty little secret was any kid we adopted would be gifted. “Because by the time he hits KG he’ll have YOUR vocabulary, get tagged gifted, and that’s what will be expected of him. I’ve seen it hundreds of times in fifteen years.” Make of that what you will.

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    3. I definitely agree with you on the concept of knowledge, though, and on the fact that most tests, the IQ test included in my opinion, measure knowledge, not intelligence. Which easily explains why so many African countries produce such abysmal average results on IQ tests. It’s not because African people are inherently inferior in intelligence, it’s that their schools, by and large, are abysmal at teaching. Some exceptions do exist, but in the African country where I worked for one year, I heard multiple stories of schoolteachers not being paid, and classrooms lacking such basic equipment as paper and pencils, because the money that was supposed to go to the schools was being pocketed by a thief in the halls of government. That’s not the only country that happens in, it’s just the only one I have personal knowledge of.

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    5. Brittanica’s definition is mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.

      To me intelligence is the innate ability to apply knowledge, especially in ways that haven’t been taught to you yet. Essentially to think outside the box. Much of what I’ve seen described to here would seem to be adding to a knowledge base, not applying the knowledge to come to new conclusions.

      As an example; It takes a lot of intelligence to develop calculus. It takes less intelligence to be taught calculus and apply it correctly. It was developed in multiple places at different times.

      Same with the concept of zero. It was independently conceived in multiple places, which takes a high amount of intelligence. But just the knowledge that zero exists doesn’t mean it can be properly applied. Western Europe struggled with the concept until Fibonacci, using the Arab-Indian mathematicians before him, was able to explain it in such a way that it could be more easily applied.

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  19. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » IF YOU HANDICAP PEOPLE YOUR MOTIVES DON’T MATTER. YOU END UP WITH CRIPPLED PEOPLE: Growth Mindset an

  20. There are two things. Ignorance and stupidity. One is curable.

    Raised in a sheltered environment, when I went off to join the army, I had no idea about drugs. I did not realize many of my fellow travelers on the bus were enjoying a final dose. I was ignorant, not stupid.

    I learned.

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  21. Different people… different beings… different SPECIES learn differently.

    A fellow who had a team of (four-legged) oxen explained how he raised the team, and how he educated them… AND explained that the oxen could learn JUST AS MANY commands as a horse – BUT… the education of the horse and the education of the ox is different. As slow as horse might seem, horses are faster learners… and (more) tolerant of change. If you have three horses trained to pull, you can team ANY two of them if you like . If you have oxen… near ox is near ox is near ox and off ox is off ox is off ox… and they know their pulling buddy… no-one else will do.

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  23. Or, maybe “anti-racist” curricula actually reduce intelligence.

    Which could very well be what it was designed to do.

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