The Genius in All of Us

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A Conversation with Twyla Tharp

THE MAKINGS OF GENIUS/Twyla Tharp 

The elevator rises and I'm in it and there's nothing I can do about that now. The extraordinary choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp is waiting at the top in her Upper West Side penthouse home/studio, and has carved out some time to record a broadcast-caliber conversation. BUT . . . my sound guy is not standing next to me. I have no idea where he is. I'm wondering what's worse: equipment that breaks when you most need it or equipment that simply doesn't show up? There's a whiff of humiliation in the air...

Oh well. It's too late to hit the alarm and try to escape between floors. Here's Twyla herself answering her door, and she couldn't be more gracious about the mishap. "Come in, have a cup of coffee. We'll just talk." 

We've got forty-five minutes. She's preparing for her third major Broadway show, "Come Fly Away" featuring the vocals of Frank Sinatra (previews begin March 1 at the Marquis Theatre), and promoting her exceptional third book, The Collaborative Habit. And brother, when she talks about collaboration, she knows what she's talking about. Past works include: The Catherine Wheel with David Byrne; Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus with Milos Forman; Movin' Out with Billy Joel; Cutting Up with Mikhail Baryshnikov; and Nightspot with Elvis Costello.

At the last moment, I initiate a less-than-broadcastable-quality recording with my iPhone. We begin at the beginning...

Twyla Tharp

DS: Do you have an early memory of your physical coordination? 

TT: Pretty early on, because my mother started me on this extracurricular education that she developed for me, and it included early training like ballet training and tap training by the time I was four years old. But it would be hard for me to say that I can remember the idea of coordination as a small child. What I do remember is visualization of the sound of music, seeing bodies in movement in relation to how music sounded, because my mother practiced at the keyboard a lot and I also went to her lessons.  As a two year old, three year old I remember seeing things in movement.

DS: Was your mother as ambitious as you are?

TT: My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching. She also had a strong sense of theater. My father built an indoor movie house basically because my mother loved the music--she loved the Astaire musicals and she wanted to see those things projected. And then they decided, 'Well, let's put this all up bigger -- let's do a drive-in theater.' And they left Indiana and went to southern California. I'm being a bit glib, but yes, my mother was very ambitious.

DS: I've read a lot about you and I wonder if you think it's fair to say that your mother transferred some of her artistic ambitions to her kids once she had a family. She originally had higher artistic ambitions for herself but then transferred those ambitions to her kids.

TT: Absolutely -- starting with this educational program [she set up].

DS: This is one of the themes that I've seen emerge in the world of high achievement. You look, for example, at Mozart, or at Yo-Yo Ma, and you see very ambitious parents who then transfer their ambition to their kids at very early ages.

TT: Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background. Some very early pieces were recently found, amazing harmony, just unbelievable. I made little dances [when I was young], but they were not being performed by orchestras with me sitting at the keyboard with my feet not touching the ground.

DS: You weren't being taken around to the kings and queens of Europe--

TT: No, I didn't make those early tours and get those queen's kisses.

DS: Of course, there are sacrifices you didn't have to make a result of that. Maybe it's nice so not grow up as a prodigy in the public's eyes as Mozart did. The glare of the public eye--

TT: It's very tough when a reputation is established that young. Mozart also had a very tough time politically, mostly because he put his foot in his mouth, but that goes with the territory. But he never really got the opportunity to maximize his gift. He had to scramble too much to get anything done. It wasn't like he was in a court position like Haydn; Haydn totally maxed out his gift completely because of his sponsorship. Mozart didn't.

Schubert was an even bigger tragedy. Schubert had arguably the same melodic gift as Mozart, but even less support. He didn't have the early exposure, never got to travel anywhere, and yet generated and amassed a body of work that grew and developed and is very profound.

DS: So do you see the same certain sort of thing in your contemporaries? You are blessed to be friends with so many ambitious and very talented people. Do you think that by and large people have what they need in our society to succeed if they have the ambition?

TT: That's kind of an unfair question because I don't have the familiarity. Certainly there have to be people who are the equivalent of Schubert -- unrecognized, massive talents who for whatever reason can't get the kind of support that comes from political behavior. In the not-for-profit world, you have to know how to work a room, who knows whom, all that kind of stuff--very political. I've had some unbelievable strokes of luck, but we also work very hard. The legend is -- and it's true -- my first NEA grant, came to me in '69 or so. We had been working with no income for essentially four years and someone suggested we fill out this application, and I said, 'Look, my dance is my application.' I got my first grant from the Endowment with that application. Because I was not interested in the politics. I was interested in doing the work.

DS: Did you learn the politics?

TT: I certainly did learn the politics when I had a company to support for 14 years. 

DS: Are you at a stage in your career now where you don't need to worry as much?

TT: I need to worry as much. I always need to worry about politics. We all need to be sensitive and think about consequences. The artist doesn't really think about consequences -- he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, "Hmm, that could have worked better like this." But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark.

DS: So how do you compartamentalize those things? How do you separate them?

TT: They're hard to keep separate -- what you want to do and how you're going to get it done. They do dovetail. I'm right now on the cusp of working on a third Broadway show (actually it's more than three, but in the traditional sense it's my third). And at the same time, I'm looking at the reality of my 50th anniversary which is in 2015.  And I'm saying, "Ok, this is what I'd like to do. I have this piece; I have this commission; we should bring back these pieces, do this book and these videos, and we have an archive which we need to develop and expand. Then there's the teaching projects, which are very important to us -- early materials that I made to become a better dancer, and ask, "What is dance?" I want to get that out into university curriculums and high school curriculums. One of the pieces recently went up to sixth graders in the Bronx; they were fantastic with it.

Some of this can be funded; some of it can't. And to me, it's not a question of priorities, of what's more important. It's kind of like, "You gotta get it all done -- let's go!" Some of it I can push along without much funding and some of it requires massive funding. One has to put together the structure to acquire that. 

So when you ask if everybody has equal opportunity, I have a track record. Partially it is built on a time when I had no opportunity-- those first five years, when the only opportunity was, you put on your shoes, you went outside and rehearse before there were too many football players in the park and you tried to put on a show. And you remember some of that as the best years of your life -- but everybody else reminds you that you are so wrong. (Laughs). But you try to keep in mind the sense of invention and the sense of freedom--which is very real: you don't pay any bills, you just put your shoes on and you get out there and do it.  You babysit, do stenography, in case all else fails. And I was a Kelly temp.

DS: Let's talk about those early years, because one of the themes of my book is that people are not going to be highly successful unless they learn how to respond to failure. 

TT: Yes. 

DWS: A lot of people will experience that sting of failure--

TT: It's not nice -- 

DS: And they will do anything never to feel that feeling again. I've certainly felt that. 

TT: Have you? Can we talk about that? What was the worst disaster of your life?

DS: That was going to be my question for you.

TT: You go first. 

DS: The worst? Well, let's see...I have had book ideas rejected after investing months and months time. But probably the most stinging was an editorship that I really wanted many years ago that I thought would validate who I was as a young journalist. And I didn't get it. I was so upset. I remember the anguish. Luckily, my then girlfriend, now wife, nursed me through that. I'm also just one of those personalities that just doesn't give up. I will bounce back. You hit me hard and I will bounce back.

TT: There you go, that's the only answer there is. Ultimately there is no such thing as failure.  There are lessons learned in different ways. 

DS: How can you teach the people who don't understand that? It's not an easy lesson to learn.

TT: I don't know that it can be taught in advance. I'm afraid it's a little like, "That stove is hot -- don't touch it."

DS: Can you talk about the lean years, when it was really difficult, facing challenges that seemed insurmountable?

TT: Well we created our own challenges, so whatever we came out learning, that was the reward.  There was no failure. And if I thought one of our new pieces sucked, we'd never perform them again. We'd do it once, and that was it, it was over. I did it for this reason, it didn't work, ok, so let's try this and get on with it. Some pieces are bridge pieces, from Point A to Point B, and some pieces are the soma -- they're the point. Both are equally valid, unless you want to stay at the point all the time, which is just one dot. And you do see people who are locked and frozen in an area where they're very, very accomplished, but there's not a whole lot of growth. Well, that to me is not what it's about.

DS: So you've got failure built into your process, basically, and you are your own best critic--

TT: -- Absolutely--

DS: -- and you are judging the success or failure hopefully before opening night?

TT: One doesn't like public humiliation. On the other hand, nobody can really second-guess an audience. All you can do is believe that there's a validity in what you're doing, that there's an honesty in what you're doing, and that you're curious/excited to see how people will respond to it. That's it.

DS: One of the descriptions I saw of your career was saying that you were avant-garde early on and became more mainstream, which I immediately assumed that you would reject as a characterization. How do you respond to that? Is there some truth to the notion that your ideas were more radical early on and that you developed them for a larger audience later on?

TT: I think the distinction between avant-garde and mainstream is way too facile. When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.  And my most avant-garde piece is one I actually want to reconstruct for the 50th.  It's called "Re-Moves," and it was done at the Judson Church in 1965.  It's a rectangular sanctuary area uptown, with a clerestory stained glass windows in it and chairs along three sides. The audience comes in through the side, with a curtain. The first piece was done in the front area, on the periphery of the area.  For the second part, we moved back under the overhang so that half of it happened behind the curtain, which you couldn't see and the other half you could.  Then through the curtains came this huge plywood box that essentially choked the center of the space. And the third part was us working around the perimeter of that box, so you only saw one third of the action.  The fourth part was inside the box and it was us rehearsing the next piece; so you heard us working, you saw nothing, and there you go.  It was called "Re-Moves," for obvious reasons -- a sort of metaphor.  The thinking was that work exists in its future.  Of course, we did not take curtain calls -- we assumed the audience would have left long ago. Fine by us! 

DS: Do you think of your work and your ideas at this current stage in your career as having limited or larger appeal? 

TT: I don't. Producers do. Those that assume they know what the public wants do. I don't allow myself that assumption.

DS: So you don't allow yourself to worry about that?

TT: It depends on how many bills I have to pay.

DS: You've written about your collaboration with Elvis Costello. One of the ways I think of his work is that he's using his celebrity and his charisma and his vitality as an artist--

TT:  -- And don't forget his charm, his charm is devastating.

DS: I don't know him in person, but I'll take your word for it.

TT: He's fantastic. I love him.

DS: He's using all of his skills to bring certain types of music that might normally have a smaller audience and help it find a larger audience. Is that something you also do?

TT: Not so much. Elvis has a big capacity as host. He's a good emcee. I'm not that. If I'm doing a project, if it's for school kids, you want them to understand.  If it's for the Joffrey Ballet Company, you want that audience to understand it. If it's a project involved with scientific research then you have that mission to accomplish. But it's not me taking another area and trying to present it through myself as a conduit. It's just my working in different places.

DS: But you are thinking about the audience, obviously, whether they're young, old, educated--

TT: Yeah, and ultimately I'm always going to be a romantic in the sense that I want to something for everyone. Good luck!  Especially in such a diversified world.

DS: Do you feel responsible for your work to be properly understood?

TT: No. I'm fascinated by structure myself, and I think others are--people want to know how something is made.  That's very different than just looking at the entity and having the impact of the entity, which is the artist's experience in what they can give to people. How I made it is information in the middle which you can take and think, "that's interesting." I always try to present my accounting of the interior workings of the thing in such a way that you can take it and use it for yourself.  But the work itself has to be clear--I'm not going to be center-stage telling you what it's about.  When the curtain goes up, everything has got to be accountable.

DS: Since time is a finite resource, would it be fair to say that made sacrifices of time away from the creative part and toward the explanation part?

TT: No. I find quite a number of hours in the day and I can't make dance 42 hours a day.  I am fairly concise when I work and I work quickly because I think work is done better in a high gear than done our in a gear when everyone's exhausted. Get focused, do it! I can work productively on new material if I'm being supported; that is to say, if I have a staff and I'm not getting phone calls and e-mails, all that. I just get myself together for an hour and a half, or two, on a good day, and start to work on what's going to happen. I can work a straight four hours and then I've done a day's worth. I don't break for lunch, I never have.  And then I've done a day's worth.  That's not to say I'm washed out or anything, I always insist on maintaining a reserve for the next day, to get started in the next day for myself as well as for everybody in the room. It's foolish to blow it out on your first week of rehearsal when you've got four more to go. 

Then my contemplation is to go back in an analytical way and think about it, and often I don't understand what I've done until afterward when I look at it. When I do a lecture on a new piece before the premiere it's with a certain kind of tenderness, but after I've seen it twenty times I can say, "Oh, ok, that's what you were doing there, and that's what that is, and that's where that comes in." 

DS: What about looking back at your past work? 

TT: I always look back one dance. I refuse to look at the old pieces very much. You're always starting over again from square zero. Now with this new burden of looking at decades of work and seeing the focus at different points, I also look at it as a historian. What's in here that I can use? What's in here that informs me? That's quite interesting for me. 

DS: Well, thank you, I appreciate your time.  

TT: We still have eight minutes, keep talking!  I look forward to reading your books. What are you working on now?

DS: Whenever I finish a book, I'm always interested in moving in a new direction. Right now that means that I'm exploring memoir and also a few historical fictional narratives. Most of my work is in collaboration with one particular agent and one particular editor. The goal is to come up with something the three of us can get excited about.

TT: And these interviews that you're doing are about--

DS: This project is called "Makings of Genius."

TT: You'll be rethinking that title.

DS: Well, "genius" is shorthand for "high-achievement."

TT: I think you should go there. "High-achiever" means a little more.

______________

THE MAKINGS OF GENIUS is an ongoing series of conversations about the source of ambition and the process of becoming an extraordinary achiever, extending from my new book, The Genius in All of Us. My previous conversation was with the great improvisational pianist Keith Jarrett. 

Early Reviews and such

Book is trickling into stores now, ahead of March 9 pub. 

Early reviews for The Genius in All of Us

"Engrossing...revives faith in not just practice and determination but also parenting and lifestyle." 

- BOOKLIST (starred review)

"Empowering...myth-busting ...entertaining." 

- KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Interesting and informative...very well done." 

- BOOKFETISH.COM 

• More advance praise here. 

• Video introduction here.

• A Q&A with me here.

• My BigThink Interview.

Questions and Answers about THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US

[This Q&A was put together by my publisher. I think it's helpful in introducing some of the basic ideas from the book].

Question: Your book is called The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong. That’s a big claim. Everything and how so?

David Shenk: It is a bold statement, and it reflects how poorly the public has been served when it comes to understanding the relationship between biology and ability. The clichés we’ve been taught about genetic blueprints, IQ, and "giftedness" all come out of crude, early-20th century guesswork. The reality is so much more interesting and complex. Genes do have a powerful influence on everything we do, but they respond to their environments in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve now learned a lot more about the developmental mechanisms that enable people to get really good at stuff. Intelligence and talent turn out to be about process, not about whether you were born with certain "gifts."

Question: In The Genius in All of Us you state that the concept of nature versus nurture is over. Scientists, cognitive psychologists, and geneticists are moving towards an idea of ‘interactionism.' What does this mean? If the battle of genes versus environment is over, who has won? Which is more important?

David Shenk: They both won, because they're both vitally important. But the new science shows us that they do not act separately. Declaring that a person gets X-percent of his/her intelligence from genes and Y-percent from the environment is like saying that X-percent of Shakespeare's greatness can be found in his verbs, and Y-percent in his adjectives. There is no nature vs. nurture, or nature plus nurture; instead, it's nature interacting with nurture, which is often expressed by scientists as "GxE" (genes interacting with intelligence). This is what "interactionism" refers to. A vanguard of geneticists, neuroscientists, and psychologists have stepped forward in recent years to articulate the importance of the dynamic interaction between genes and the environment.

Question: You describe genes and environment as a sound board. How so?

David Shenk: In the past, we’ve been taught that each distinct gene contains a certain dossier of information, which in turn determines a certain trait; if you have the blue-eyed gene, you get blue eyes. Period.

It turns out, though, that the information contained inside genes is only part of the story; another critical part is how often genes get "expressed," or turned on, by other genes and by outside forces. It’s therefore helpful to think of your genome as a giant mixing board with thousands of knobs and switches. Genes are always getting turned on/off/up/down by hormones, nutrients, etc. People actually affect their own genome’s behavior with their actions.

Question: How do these new findings affect the concept of the "The Bell Curve"--that we live in an increasingly stratified world where the "cognitive elite," those with the best genes, are more and more isolated from the cognitive/genetic underclass? Is that idea now completely obsolete?

David Shenk: Yes, it is obsolete. The idea that there is a genetic super-class that has a corner on high-IQ genes is nonsense. This comes out of a profound misunderstanding of how genes work and how intelligence works, and also from a misreading of so-called "heritability" studies. I am not saying that genes don’t affect intelligence. Genes affect everything. But by and large I think the evidence shows that people with low intelligence are missing out on key developmental advantages.

Question: Lewis Terman invented the IQ test at Stanford University in 1916. He declared it the ideal tool to determine a person’s native intelligence. Are IQ tests accurate? What are the benefits and fallout of the IQ test?

David Shenk: IQ tests accurately rank academic achievement. That’s quite different from identifying innate intelligence, which doesn’t really exist. Tufts intelligence expert Robert Sternberg explains that "intelligence represents a set of competencies in development." In other words, intelligence isn’t fixed. Intelligence isn’t general. Intelligence is not a thing. Instead, intelligence is a dynamic, diffuse, and ongoing process.

The IQ test has valid uses. It can help teachers and principals understand how well students are doing and what they’re missing. But the widespread belief that it defines what each of us are capable of (and limited to) is disabling for individuals and society. People simply cannot reach their full potential if they honestly believe that they are so severely restricted.

Question: How do we go about finding the genius in all of us? What steps we can take to unlock latent talent?

David Shenk: Find the thing you love to do, and work and work and work at it. Don't be discouraged by failure; realize that high achievers thrive on failure as a motivating mechanism and as instruction guide on how to get better.

____________________

Genius -- the vook!

The good folks at Doubleday have just released this brief video introduction of my new book, which is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Indiebound, and will be arriving in stores in the next week or so.

PRAISE FOR THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US:

"Engrossing...revives faith in not just practice and determination but also parenting and lifestyle." 

-- BOOKLIST (*starred review*)

"Empowering...myth-busting...highly readable...entertaining." 

-- KIRKUS REVIEWS 

"The Genius in All of Us is an inspiring and liberating book. It's a powerful antidote to the genetic determinism rampant in the Age of the Genome, and an instructive guide, grounded in science, to living a more enriching life."  

--STEVEN JOHNSON, author of The Invention of Air, Ghost Map, Everything Bad is Good for You, Mind Wide Open, Emergence, and Interface Culture

"A great book. David Shenk handily dispels the myth that one must be born a genius. From consistently whacking the ball out of the park to composing ethereal piano sonatas, Shenk convincingly makes the case for the potential genius that lies in all of us. While our genes may provide a nice runway, only hard work and unwavering focus can allow true genius to take flight."  

-- RUDOLPH E. TANZI, PH.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital

"David Shenk sweeps aside decades of misconceptions about genetics -- and shows that by overstating the importance of genes, we've understated the potential of ourselves. The Genius in All of Us is a persuasive and inspiring book that will make you think anew about your own life and our shared future." 

-- DANIEL H. PINK, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

"This book, both rigorous and accessible, is a close study of the idea of genius, an investigation of popular misconceptions about genetics, and an examination of the American virtue of self-determination.  It is written with assurance, insight, clarity, and wit." 

-- ANDREW SOLOMON, author of The Noonday Demon (National Book Award Winner, 2001)

"Old fashioned beliefs, a desire to simplify and the remarkable successes of molecular biology led to an undue emphasis on the role of genes in the development of human intelligence. Environmental determinism exists too, but biology and psychology have moved well beyond these extreme positions. The importance of David Shenk's book is that he has made accessible to a wide audience the advances in the understanding of how each person develops. I congratulate him." 

-- SIR PATRICK BATESON, FRS, Emeritus Professor of Ethology, Cambridge University; former Biological Secretary of the Royal Society (UK); and co-author, Design For A Life: How Behaviour Develops 

"David Shenk freshens and transforms a familiar subject to reveal all the interacting forces and factors that make us who we are. Development is a tricky business and Shenk understands this. By focusing his considerable writing talents on this terribly important topic, he has provided parents, policymakers, and educators with a book that will help them cut through the noise and make sense of every child's development." 

-- MARK. S. BLUMBERG, Ph.D., F. Wendell Miller Professor of Psychology, University of Iowa; editor-in-chief, Behavioral Neuroscience; and author, Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us about Development and Evolution

"In clear, forceful language, backed up by a boatload of science, David Shenk delivers a message that should be read by every parent, educator, and policy-maker who cares about the future of our children. The Genius in All of Us convincingly debunks the "genes are destiny" argument when it comes to human talent, and will force you to rethink everything from IQ tests and twins studies to child-rearing practices. Shenk's book turns Baby Mozart on his head, and will give pause--a hopeful, empowering pause--to parents who wish to nurture excellence in their children."     

-- STEPHEN S. HALL, author of Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience

Fortune Cookie Karma

On the day that mint first edition copies of Genius are arriving from the printer, here's what I found inside my fortune cookie:

  
 

The Myth of the Meritocracy

I strongly recommend this week's New York magazine cover story by Jennifer Senior about the foolishness of allowing intelligence tests to determine the educational fates of four year-old children. 

It's a very human story. But I especially enjoy how Senior brings the science to life. Here's my favorite moment:

I wrote to [University of Iowa psychologist David] Lohman and asked what percentage of 4-year-olds who scored 130 or above would do so again as 17-year-olds. He answered with a careful regression analysis: about 25 percent.

The implications of this number are pretty startling. They mean that three quarters of the seniors in a gifted program would no longer test into that program if asked to retake an IQ test on graduation day. So I wrote Lohman back: Was he certain about this?

"Yes," he replied. "Even people who consider themselves well versed in these matters are often surprised to discover how much movement/noise/instability there is even when correlations seem high."

School administrators, writes Senior, understand best of all that intelligence tests for young kids are "practically worthless as predictors of future intelligence....Rather than promoting a meritocracy, in other words, these tests instead retard one. They reflect the world as it's already stratified--and then perpetuate that same stratification."

Senior is friends with my brother Josh and was kind enough to mention my book a couple of times in passing in her piece. Actually, I was at first a little let down she didn't give the book more play. But after nursing my bruised ego for a few moments, I saw the huge silver lining: there's almost no scientific or journalistic overlap between my book and her well-researched story -- and yet, they resonate almost perfectly with one another. Virtually every piece of science and every quote in this piece gibes perfectly with the lessons from my research, the central lesson of which is nicely summed up by the University of Pittsburgh's Robert McCall: "Education and mental achievement builds on itself. It's cumulative."

Intelligence is a process, not a fixed, gene-determined, thing. This process begins very early on, before we can even really see it, and we therefore often confuse these early, invisible stages with some sort of innate giftedness. Then we test kids and report the results as innate differences -- this one is gifted, this one is not. This one has extra promise; that one does not. We send the "gifted" ones to good schools with small class sizes, better-trained teachers, better infrastructure, better relationships with parents, and higher expectations. We send the apparently-unpromising kids to under-funded, teach-to-test schools with minimal expectations. 

And then we tell ourselves that we live in an educational meritocracy. Jennifer Senior's piece helps expose that fallacy.

Calling All Intellectuals: Be Public

From a short essay of mine that appears in this month's Brown Alumni Magazine:

More than ever, we need public intellectuals willing to bridge different worlds. As complexity threatens to overwhelm us, an increasingly distracted public needs to understand how genes really work, how markets can be both encouraged and reined in, how history teaches us about politics . . . . 

Whether we like it or not, we need more sound bites--and more creative metaphors and clever narratives. Intellectuals should spend as much time tuning their work for public consumption as they do composing for their own kind. 

To read the entire thing, click here. 

What is "Smart"?

I was honored to be part of a discussion panel at The Franklin Institute this past weekend to kick off this year's EduCon conference. The conference is an offshoot of the Science Leadership Academy, an amazing new Philadelphia public high school, and its visionary founder Chris Lehmann. The open-ended question posed to the panel was: "What is Smart?" Here are my slightly-edited opening remarks:

What is smart? This is a really exciting time to ask that question. For a century, we've been living under the oppressive yoke of innate-IQism, the idea championed by Francis Galton, Charles Spearman, and Lewis Terman, among others, that intelligence was something you were endowed with--whatever you got, you got.

This was not the attitude of Alfret Binet and Theodore Simon, who invented the IQ test in 1905 in order to identify French schoolchildren in need of most attention. The Binet-Simon test aimed to lift students up rather than assign them a permanent ranking. Binet said:

"[Some] assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism...With practice, training, and above all method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment, and literally to become more intelligent than we were before."

But when the IQ test was adapted by the Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman, Binet's approach was replaced by a very different idea. Terman and his successors proclaimed that intelligence was a pre-loaded thing, and they packaged IQ tests in such a way that it seemed to prove that notion. In the last twenty years, that message has been reinforced by the very misleading idea of "heritability," which come from twin studies and have been interpreted by many as saying that intelligence is 50-60 percent inherited and pre-ordained by our individual genetic codes. 

Now we know better, for two reasons.

First, we've learned a lot more about the relationship of biology to ability. The idea that genes contain instructions for a fixed intelligence doesn't wash anymore. Genes don't issue fixed instructions for anything. Rather, genes interact with their environments. The process is totally dynamic and "interactionist." McGill University's Michael Meaney expresses it this way: "There are no genetic factors that can be studied independently of the environment, and there are no environmental factors that function independently of the genome. [A trait] emerges only from the interaction of gene and environment."

So it's not just the brain that is "plastic." This is also happening on a cellular level throughout our bodies. We call this "genetic expression"--our genes are constantly being turned on and off constantly by our environment. 

This is kind of a mind-blower of an idea, and takes some getting used to, but the bottom line is that all complex traits in human beings are the result of a dynamic process--and we can and do influence that process with our culture, our parenting, our teaching, and our desires and actions as individuals.

That's the first point. 

Second, we now know from Betty Hart, Todd Risley, Robert Sternberg, Anders Ericsson, Carol Dweck, James Flynn, and many researchers that intelligence is, as Sternberg says, "a set of competencies in development."

In other words, intelligence is also a process. It is malleable. Getting kids to understand that malleability is vitally important. Carol Dweck's work powerfully reinforces that notion. Having the I-can-improve mindset rather than the some-people-are-just-gifted-and-others-aren't mindset is critical to achievement.

We need to talk about achievements and abilities as a matter of development rather than innate ability. That doesn't mean we pretend that we or our kids have total control over our lives--many influences come into play. But should imbue them with the wonder of what is possible.

Photo credit: Sarah Sutter