A Measure of Intelligence, page 13
Times like these are when the claim that nature is stronger than nurture creeps up on me. Francis Galton, the British scientist and founder of modern statistics, coined the phrase “nature and nurture” in an 1875 essay about twins. The essay describes a series of anecdotal mix-ups by parents and teachers he interviewed, lighthearted confusion that anticipated the shenanigans later immortalized in movies like The Parent Trap and Double Trouble. These cases of mistaken identities and misplaced punishments proved to Galton the persistence of the traits we are born with. His sample size is far too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. Nonetheless, Galton positioned nature and nurture as two separate forces, and this is generally how we still think about them today. The phrase “nature and nurture” caught on, but it eventually evolved to “nature versus nurture,” to capture the supposed conflict between what we are born with and the environment we are born into.
“Nature is far stronger than nurture,” Galton wrote. Based on his anecdotal evidence, Galton concluded that nurture is unable to affect a person’s natural potential. It can do nothing “beyond giving instruction and professional training.” For Galton, nurture refers to a person’s upbringing, the circumstances into which people are born. He never asks how one’s nurture might be changed to improve intelligence. For him, the question is not important because nature overrules nurture. But now, nurture implies a much more fluid state of assisted emergence. It is the act of caring for each other. We nurture plants to bloom and nurture the infirm to health. The outcome of this nurturing is unwieldy, impacted by conditions that cannot be predicted or statistically accounted for.
Nurture is also the realm of the maternal. I nurtured Louisa when she was inside me and every day since, hoping to ensure her happiness and the richest human experience possible. To downplay the process of nurture is to diminish our broader charge as humans to tend to one another, even though I cannot be sure how the ways I have nurtured Louisa have made any measurable difference.
But when we struggle with homework, I question whether my attempts to help Louisa learn are just a symptom of a stubbornness I can’t abandon—a delusional belief that I can help Louisa overcome her genetic limitations through hard work. It is helpful for me to try to remember how hard assignments like this are for her. They involve a coordination of cognitive processes that most of us never have to think about because we can summon them almost automatically. Writing out a response to reading assignments requires Louisa to sync up various tasks that each have their own challenges. She must remember what she read. She must understand the prompt, including the meaning of words like infer, and keep it fresh in her head while she recalls what she read. But the assignment is not asking for direct recall. It demands decision-making skills and reasoning to find a plausible answer. Once she plans an answer in her mind, she must embark on perhaps the most complex coordination of tasks yet—the physical act of writing. This involves fine motor skills, the effort she must undertake to hold a pencil correctly, not to mention the extra considerations of spelling, capitalization, and putting spaces between words. She must focus, or at least make the effort to refocus after being distracted by the sound of the washing machine finishing its cycle or the snowplow as it charges by outside. As her mind attends to the coordination of grammar and fine-motor skills, she has to remember her answer, what she is trying to communicate in the first place. She tries to squish a few more words into a centimeter of space at the end of a line. She gets frustrated. I get frustrated. She forgets what she was trying to write. We take some deep breaths and start again. Breaking down all the tedious steps reminds me that learning is an astonishing process, and Louisa’s hard work in particular is something to be celebrated as a feat of human determination. Galton was convinced that we cannot overcome our nature. But parsing nature from nurture ignores the wonder of learning, however it gets done.
For most of the twentieth century, psychologists followed Galton’s lead and believed that education had little impact on improving IQ. Instead, they saw IQ scores as indicative of whether a child deserved an education. A good education could help children with an intelligent nature, usually those of the privileged social class, reach their innate potential. But for those with lower IQs, it was a complete waste of time. English psychologist Cyril Burt likened intellectual capacity to a standardized measurement. “It is impossible for a pint jug to hold more than a pint of milk,” he wrote in 1911. “It is equally impossible for a child’s educational attainments to rise higher than his educational capacity permits.” To Lewis Terman, the psychologist who developed Binet’s early work into the pervasive Stanford-Binet IQ test, the special classes for “backward children” in the public schools were really just a futile experiment in whether it was possible to improve intelligence. “No other pupils in our public schools are taught in such small groups or by such able teachers,” Terman declared in 1922. “Rarely do the IQs of children given these special advantages show significant improvement. Generally speaking, once feeble-minded, always feeble-minded.”
As a great admirer of Galton, Terman posed his own questions about the origins of intelligence. “Is the place of so-called lower classes in the social and industrial scale the result of their inferior native endowment, or is their apparent inferiority merely a result of the inferior home and school training?” After giving IQ tests to about 500 schoolchildren, Terman concluded that children who performed better did so because they had genetically inherited stronger intellectual abilities.
The issue for Terman was which comes first. Are successful people just naturally more intelligent? Or do IQ tests only ensure the success of a specific type of person? Would those who score poorly on an IQ test do better if their potential was nurtured? According to him, the intellectually privileged were “the nation’s finest asset” and should be treated as such by giving these children every possible advantage. In Terman’s logic, the alignment of the gifted and the professional classes showed that democracy was working. If all people were given equal opportunities, then they would find their natural place in society according to their intellectual capacity. This natural alignment of success and intelligence was proven, according to Terman, by the demographics of IQ scores. Fifty percent of gifted children, Terman reported, belonged to the professional classes. According to him, this was a sure sign that privilege was a natural and just outcome of high intelligence.
Terman’s assessment offered a blow to the lofty ideals of the American dream. “Even the most extreme advocates of ‘free will,’” he wrote, “do not believe that the feeble-minded could successfully will to become intelligent, the tone-deaf to become musical, or the psychopathic to become stable.” I once associated the early twentieth century with the renewal of American promises, like everyone is created equal, we all deserve a fair shot, success is an outcome of hard work. But this social and economic optimism was matched by an undercurrent of genetic determinism in the logic of IQ testing in ways that the country rarely acknowledges.
By insisting on a genetic cause for intelligence, Terman reaffirmed the hierarchy that IQ tests buttressed since Goddard’s work on Ellis Island and in public schools. White males have the highest IQ scores, and since we supposedly live in a meritocracy, they are the ones who achieve the most. The logic is tautological, creating a self-affirming spiral. IQ tests are normed for white, middle-class test-takers. They do the best on the test, which purports to measure innate ability. Therefore, white, middle-class test-takers are inherently more intelligent than non-white, socially underprivileged test-takers, and deserving of the most advantages.
This is the crux of the “nature versus nurture” debate among psychologists, whether IQ tests measure something as fixed and genetically transmissible as height and eye color or something that can be shaped by different socioeconomic environments and opportunities. Is success determined by environmental conditions or genetic inheritance? It involves debating what IQ actually measures—some innate and unchanging ability or the effects of a person’s environment. For parents, teachers, social workers, and really anyone who believes in the potential of children, there is a lot at stake in this debate. Is it possible to improve a child’s potential for success and happiness? Or are any efforts to do so overshadowed by the dominant forces of nature?
Louisa’s teachers emphasize her gains and describe the progress that she has made. But the story of Louisa’s place in a classroom looks very different on her report card. Here it seems like Louisa is barely holding on. When assessing her ability to “spell correctly in written work” or “understand and use appropriate grade-level vocabulary,” Louisa’s scores are well below her peers. I try to greet the tinge of disappointment with a reality check. It is easy to forget how hard Louisa has worked to write her letters, to come close to navigating the arbitrariness of English spelling, to focus attention long enough to remember the word she is writing. But looking at the assessments and standardized tests alone, it is hard not to worry that her place among her peers is constantly under threat.
In a parent-teacher conference, not long after that first snow of the year, Louisa’s occupational therapist complained about her lack of attention. “I can’t get her to face the front of the classroom,” she told me. “She can’t sit still for long periods of time.” Louisa’s lack of attention is treated like something to be cured. The therapist writes her IEP goals in this way: “Louisa struggles to remain focused in the sensory rich environment of a general education classroom.” But this is not a goal. Terman’s statement, once feeble-minded, always feeble-minded, rings in my ears, and I read the therapist’s comment as a warning. Louisa doesn’t belong in this classroom, is what I believe this is telling me. She is taking time and resources away from other children. If she doesn’t shape up, this experience is going to be taken away from her. I don’t deny Louisa’s lack of interest in paying attention to many tasks. But focusing on deficit sets up certain assumptions about her peers—as if all the other eight-year-olds in her class have razor-sharp focus for hours of the day. It is the demands we place on children to sit still that might be questioned or modified, rather than the kids themselves. In other words, perhaps the problem lies in her environment, rather than with her nature. Besides medication, there seems to be no effective therapy to increase attention, or at least none that the occupational therapist has offered besides constantly harping on Louisa to pay attention. In other words, there is no way to make Louisa change who she is, even though that might make the therapist’s job much easier.
I used to believe that I could improve Louisa’s intelligence, or at least I thought that trying to was my responsibility. I thought that the best way to prove that the conclusions of those like Terman were wrong was to show the world how smart Louisa really is and how well she could function. I now realize that this was at the heart of the pride I felt when the school psychologist told me that Louisa’s IQ is high for a child with Down syndrome. It felt as if we had overcome something and that doing and buying everything I could to boost Louisa’s “brain power” had paid off.
But I have learned, more through experience than research, that the best way to stick it to Terman is to reject the modern premise of IQ testing and bell curves entirely and work toward a world in which those with intellectual differences are not disadvantaged and all of us aren’t working so hard to be normal. The answer to Terman’s entrenched determinism is not to shape Louisa into a test-taker on par with her peers. This would only affirm the power of the IQ tests to control and define who she is.
The best way I can nurture Louisa, I realized, is to try to work against a regime of intelligence that gives her no space to be herself.
School is where I feel the pressure between nature and nurture the most. But there are other places where I catch a glimpse of a world without such tension. Well into the winter, I sit in a metal fold-out chair in the waiting area of our local dance studio and watch Louisa’s ballet class. There are a few other parents reading, working on computers, looking at their phones. Dance bags, ballet shoes, and water bottles are scattered on an old area rug. Two young boys play with a set of giant plastic puzzle pieces in the corner. Their toy tower eventually crashes to the floor. A mother looks up from her computer screen and stares at them, concerned about the noise. The boys giggle and begin reconstructing the tower. The studio’s building is old and the heating pipes above my head clang forcefully. I strain to hear the music through the distractions and hope that Louisa can focus on the music, the ballet steps, her teacher’s instruction.
Louisa started dance classes when she was five. Always a music lover, the combination of self-expression and physical movement suits her. I watch as she stands at the front of the room, facing a large wall of mirrors and gripping the ballet barre with her left hand. The delicate piano music begins and her head and spine curve down as she watches her right foot point and flex in front of her. Her head moves back and forth from her foot to the sharpened toe of the teacher as she tries to imitate as best she can. Louisa raises her right arm to her side. Her fingers stiffen in an attempt to extend the line of her arm in a graceful ballet curve.
Louisa is about two beats behind the coordinated movements of the rest of the class, but that doesn’t really matter. Eventually the ballet barres are put away and students are taught short combinations of steps to dance across the floor. They start at the far side of the studio. Louisa does a waltz step, a piqué turn, a pas de bourree, a pas de chat. She pauses before each step, taking an extra second to consider which leg moves first, to decide how best to negotiate between accuracy and fun. She reaches the other end of the floor and turns toward the waiting area. I give her a thumbs-up and she performs the sequence again for me, this time ending with a deep and full-hearted curtsy.
I glance to my right and to my left. None of the other parents’ faces wear the same unbridled smile that is on mine. They are looking at their phones or trying to make sure their son isn’t making too much noise. I look down at my phone, too, because watching Louisa dance is like looking at the sun. Her radiance, simply that she participates in this class, fills my chest with such warmth and happiness I can barely stand it.
Known for its ethereal grace and physical demands, the intellectual efforts involved in dancing are less appreciated. Ballet is an exercise in short-term memory. Dancers must remember a combination of movement and absorb it in their bodies. Then there are all the parts of dance that demand mental coordination—balance, quick muscle movements, the anticipation of what movement comes next, pattern recognition, body and spatial awareness. In the midst of these challenges, Louisa’s ability to remember combinations of steps is remarkable. She seems completely in her element. Rather than sitting in a chair, movement seems to help her focus. This environment, this studio, is a place where she does her best learning.
The culture of dance, especially ballet, is known for its rigid perfectionism, elitism, and exclusivity. But as I watch Louisa, I think about all the ways she is nurtured in this class. Her teacher emphasizes expression over perfection. She reminds Louisa to point her feet, but most of the time they are soft and bent, which doesn’t really seem to bother anyone too much. She stands too close to the other dancers, often vying for a spot right next to the teacher. She is on the wrong foot. I suppose that many might see Louisa’s way of dancing as a failure. Her movement isn’t quite coordinated with the music. Her arms can’t find that sweet spot between tension and grace. But none of this matters. Louisa makes a space for herself in this class. There is room for her way of dancing, and her movements are an expression of unbridled joy. Her toes may not be pointed and her legs may not be straight but she dances in a way that connects movement to something deep inside her. This is why I’m smiling. I want others to see it too. I’m watching what is possible when we give up ambition, perfection, and potential to take care of those around us.
It is remarkable how little the terms of the nature versus nurture debate changed during the course of the twentieth century. There is now some consensus among psychologists that intelligence is dependent on environment to a meaningful degree, and that a distinction between genetically inherited intelligence and education is more muddled than Terman suggested. But the appeal of the heritability of intelligence persists and has supported some ugly conclusions. In the 1960s, Arthur Jensen, an educational psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that the US government needed to reconsider its design and funding of compensatory education programs aimed at closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged, mostly non-white children and their white, middle-class counterparts. Achievement, of course, was measured in IQ scores. Such programs were not meeting their goals, he claimed, and their failure was because IQ scores—and the innate intelligence they claimed to measure—were immutable.
He also asserted that the importance of intelligence and our definition of the term were determined by societal demands. But that did not make the skills we associate with intelligence—processing speed, short-term memory, reasoning—any less based on genetics. He suggested that if educators really wanted to narrow the achievement gap, they should focus on teaching specific skills rather than trying to increase intelligence. This was a deeply pragmatic approach to the purpose of education. Schools should learn a child’s IQ and then teach basic skills that a student will need to get a good job after graduation. A student’s opportunities, in other words, are determined by IQ because we live in a world that prioritizes the skills that it tests. Jensen’s approach to intelligence reinforced a kind of caste system, in which social mobility was only possible if an IQ score says so.
