What Is Intelligence – and Can We Spot It?

In this interview with Andrea Hilbert in Psychology Today, Scott Barry Kaufman recalls that when he was in ninth grade, a substitute teacher in his special-education class pulled him aside and asked, “Why are you here?” Kaufman had been in special ed from the start – as a baby, he had ear infections and developed central auditory processing disorder, fell behind other kids, and was pigeonholed as learning disabled. Gradually, he outgrew his disability, and the substitute’s question flipped a switch. Kaufman is now a professor of cognitive science at NYU. “How many people are falling into the cracks of the system?” he asks. “What are people really capable of? My scientific journey has been to understand that.” That’s why he wrote Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined – The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and The Many Paths to Greatness (Basic Books, 2013).

“Intelligence is the dynamic interplay of abilities, engagement, and the pursuit of personal goals,” says Kaufman. “We all have things that capture our attention, and we ignore the things we’re not interested in. Skills are strengthened through projects that are personally meaningful, so you can’t really understand what someone is capable of achieving intellectually unless you know their goals and give them a long period of time to actually engage… A lot of students get very dejected by the end of high school, thinking their life is over when it hasn’t even started.” 

Kaufman is not a fan of a “general” and “honors” curriculum in high school. “In a system that sorts people as gifted and ungifted, we’re sending a message that you either have it or you don’t,” he says. “We’re not promoting hard work and discipline. I believe in teaching a general set of skills that you can apply no matter what your dream is, no matter what you want to do in life. Schools that are project-based do that and make all their students feel that they’re making a valuable contribution.” 

What about competition? “People would benefit if we compared ourselves only to our past selves and our future selves,” says Kaufman. “That’s the healthiest way of achieving your goals: Staying focused on what you need to do to get there.” 

“Ungifted and Talented” – An Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman by Andrea Hilbert in Psychology Today, August 2013 (Vol. 46, #4, p. 10), 

From the Marshall Memo #492