Mensa - Intelligence - Nature/Nurture

[SingingInTheRainstorm]

I've got a couple of questions, the first is, if you've passed the Mensa stuff, is there any point to paying the yearly subscription fee? Do we have any Mensa bods on here?

Also is intelligence nature or nurture. Both my DC have their Dads features, his hair, his lack of interest anything academic, his lack of interest reading. There's little that says they're my children, apart from a certificate for 16 months of morning sickness.

On holiday a few years back I had my books out giving them interesting facts. DD & DS were giggling, I asked what was funny, they said why do you have to be so boring.

When I was there age I read for enjoyment, still do, loved learning stuff, my parents weren't that academic so it was all off my own back, my other siblings weren't pushed like I wasn't, they scraped through school.

My latest trick is to read a book in front of them, to see if they see me reading and think, oh I'll grab a book. It's early days but all I've got so far is, what you reading for?

Do you think kids are either intelligent and interested, or they just want to mess about. I was reiterating interesting facts about where we were, history etc. They're at an age to appreciate it if they wanted too.

Both are average in ability, DS is in a lower set for maths. DD is middle sets for both maths & English. I cruised along in the top set with little effort, but never talk about it. I know it's silly but I was hoping they'd inherit something from me that was good.

*IQ tests certain things, and we've chosen to name those things "intelligence"

The word "intelligence" has been around for a lot longer than IQ tests. IQ tests were invented to measure it but are unsuitable for the job.

The thing about IQ tests is that they quantify how good you are at IQ tests. And they are geared towards logic, reasoning and deduction. And if you take enough, you can "learn" how to pass them with flying colours.

What they don't measure is potential. Almost anyone can excel at something if they have the drive and passion to fuel it (obviously there are exceptions to that before anyone accuses me of ableism!).

Nor do they measure other skills, which is why we have savants like Stephen Wiltshire. I actually find the term savant uncomfortable as it basically states that these people have subnormal IQs but amazing skills elsewhere. Can we not just celebrate the skills we do have?

I think that's why I am sometimes depressed around this subject - as a child I was told I would succeed because I was clever and now I'm told I haven't (yet) because of my health. Instead of praising my skills as a child, I got praised for my potential to be successful because that's what everyone expected of me. Because of this I praise my DS' efforts and what he works hard to achieve, not his cleverness. And I tell him that he needs to find something he loves and is good at to do for a job when he's older, not what pays the most or has the most prestige.

In the basic form in which we are using the concept, more intelligent means a higher measured IQ score on a standardised test. That's hardly contentious.

You're right, but not in the way you think you are. It's hardly contentious because most serious commentators agreed decades ago that IQ is a broadly useless, culturally-specific, narrow, self-perpetuating definition of intelligence.