to get me into the gifted program (for the non-Americans, that's the only way to be reasonably sure of getting a good education from the public/government schools),
Just gotta be a you-know-what and correct you on that note. Partly because this is what I'm devoting my life to and what not. Partly because all this thread is so far is everyone just nodding their heads in agreement, "Yup, IQ means very little, uh huh." and that's not fun.
The gifted program is not a better education system. It completely depends on what school system you're in. The one I was in, we actually had class in a bathroom. That's right, a large, handicapped bathroom with 8-10 kids and a teacher, chairs, and books in our laps.
The gifted program, on the other hand, is very good for gifted people. Point I'm trying to make is... Many people associate High IQ with giftedness, and that's the experience you went through. That's simply not true. Gifted does not mean smart. Gifted includes traits such as higher intelligence but also asynchonous development and hypersensitivity. So the person who always got an A in all your classes is not gifted, but just smart. Or just studied. The gifted child was probably the one who was incredibly mature at some times, immature at other times, got awful grades, but did perfect at standardized tests. Including the IQ test.
Unfortunately, many students who are not gifted get into the gifted program. Some gifted programs are actually made for smart kids, some for gifted kids, but few can handle both. But most people think...
"High IQ = Put them in a different classroom"
OR
"High IQ = Will never get along with peers, so we must FORCE them to get along with peers"
When really, high IQ has nothing to do with anything except with what Quantum said... IQ tests measure how good you are at IQ tests. They will not tell you whether you are like the girl at a near-by college who was in the Joint Enrollment program (go to college early) and went crazy, or whether you're like me and realise you never actually had friends until you were 16 and went on a college campus.
But an EQ test can't tell you that, either. A positive-negative scale can't tell you that. A 3D chart can't tell you that. I can't tell you that, your parents can't tell you that. Chances are you can't tell yourself that until you poke your toes into that water and have someone holding your hand to see if you can make it.
And, just so you know, I'm highly gifted and a member of Mensa. But I still can't get into the college of my choice. SAT 1480, GPA 3.4 no weighting 'cause my school system doesn't allow it, cannot get into the school I want.
And I've noticed something... it's the people with the low IQ who think IQs are important. And they generally lie about their IQs to make their arguement more acceptable: "Well, joe, I think we should kill everyone with a n IQ below 120." "Uh, but Bob... isn't your IQ-" "Shut up, Joe!"
But the people who actually have high IQs tend to be the ones who are on our side of things. |