The background to this post is here. So anyway, today I finally got around to taking my little girl for the IQ test.
I didn't tell her that she would be going for a test. I just told her that I was taking her somewhere to play some games. When she asked me what kind of games, I just told her, "Oh, puzzles. Many different kinds of puzzles. They're really fun!".
At the clinic, the psychologist had a brief discussion with me and my wife, and then asked us to leave our daughter behind and come back in 90 minutes. We went off to do some shopping. When we came back, my daughter had completed her IQ test and happily announced to us that the puzzles were really fun and she had enjoyed herself.
We asked the psychologist how my daughter had done. The psychologist said that she couldn't give a definitive answer yet - she had to do some analysis and compute the scores first. However, the rough estimate was that my daughter was well above average on an overall basis, and probably in the gifted range for verbal reasoning, but perhaps not in the gifted range for other areas.
I know the technical term for this. It's "asynchronous development". Human intelligence isn't a single attribute - instead there are about eight different types of human intelligences. For example, a person may be gifted in logic; but average in interpersonal intelligence; and poor in his linguistic intelligence.
Asynchronous development is the term to describe people who are unevenly gifted. The psychologist's comments indicate that my daughter is linguistically gifted - her natural ability to communicate, analyse, reason and express herself by using language is very high - but that she isn't gifted in all other areas.
I guess she takes after her daddy. I know that as a child, I learned to speak, read and write well at an unusually early age (those were my first steps towards becoming, at different times in my life, a top law student; a published poet; a nationally prominent blogger; a litigation lawyer and a writer for the SAF). But at the same time, I also know that I was never smart in the way that my big brother is EQ-smart with people; nor in the way that my other brother is smart with visual images and artistic ideas.
Anyway, it will take some time for the full report on my daughter's IQ to be produced (because the clinic is temporarily closing down for the Christmas and New Year holidays).
I like to think that everyone has a special talent in something, and that the only big difference is that some of us have discovered our gifts, and the rest of us have not. Of course, as a parent, I am particularly interested in helping my own children fulfill their potential.
4 comments:
When a daughter of mine was in primary five or six more than ten years back, in a neighbourhood school, I was asked if my daughter be permitted to go for Mensa Test, by the School.
In turn, I asked my daughter if she liked to take the test, she told me there was no need for it. I was happy on hearing her answer. As her grandfather was a humble uneducated man all his life and her father was only lower secondary educated with much of his father's ascetic gene in him. Me was also glad that her mother also declined the offer.
My daughter is a MBA graduate and mother of a school going child and she has remain simple and humble. This comment to show that school or MOE did play their role actively in the education of our offsprings.
Me believes MOE and the schools are having much concern for the education of our children.
Doesn't matter what type of intelligence, most important is the right intelligence:
1. to earn lots of money when working or doing business.
2. to make people work good and hard for you when you are the boss.
3. to survive and even thrive on dirty politics in the office.
4. as a politician, to lead a strong party and win 98% of seats at elections.
So depending on the situation, if can achieve above, then it is the right type of intelligence.
Mr Wang, I think you have #1 but not sure about the rest.
Mr Wang, don't focus too much on IQ or EQ. It is no guarantee for sucess in life. There will always be up's and down's in life;what is important for your child is to train her on AQ.
http://www.peaklearning.com/
Personally I feel the problem with MOE today is that there is too much focus on academic results. Yes, there is also emphasis on ECA and community works etc. But how many teachers show their students what is meant by failure?
I have met some scholars in my life. Yes, they are successful in their careers but I doubt how they will take their personal failure?
We were always told by Government, Good is not enough, we should excel and be the best!
But the real test is how you bounce back from failure.
Actually the multiple intelligence view is a minority view in the psychometric literature. Most psychologists in this field believe there are really only one or two kinds of intelligence(s) because of the high correlation between abilities in different areas among most people and the lack of empirical evidence for said theory of multiple intelligences.
Your daughter being gifted in verbal ability might simply be because your similar talents influenced her development, but that's just a guess.
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