>Perhaps your time in Gifted Programs trained you in skills that help you do
>well on intelligence tests? I'm a bit skeptical of psychometric testing in
>general, though if it gives you a self-esteem boost and gets you educating
>yourself, and that's what you like, then it worked!
I don't think they trained me for dick. I think the tests were a joke and
the testers jokers. I think the whole idea of testing for intelligence is
a farce. What I know is that at 11 I was not sophisticated enough to
realize this, but I don't feel so bad because many older and supposedly
wiser people are still convinced. They told me I was smart and I believed
it. If they had told me I was a pyromaniac I would have started lighting
fires.
I agree that at the time it was a ego-boost and that was a benifit. What
disgusts me is that it was a "you are better than them", "you are elite",
"you are special" kind of boost. How many people had to get fucked with
being labeled "average" so that I could get a gold star?
I was a TV watching pavlovian doofus and somebody told me "you're smart,
you have potential". How many people with more promise get even that
reinforcement? If I was female would they have considered me talented? If
I had been black would they have been surprised I failed the 6th grade? I
doubt it...my parents had to threaten to sue the damn school as it was.
Not that I'm sorry. I'll take what I'm given and then some. But it
frustrates me to tears the way this endless qualification/testing
institution is used to convince people where they stand in realtive
worthlessness.
Reed
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------