chievement. But the number of books in the house had no effect on that achievement. Eight-year-old kids who were encouraged to be curious tended to like science and take more challenging science courses in high school.
Overall, parents who encouraged inquisitiveness, independence, and effort, and who valued learning for its own sake, had kids with higher levels of intrinsic motivation and achievement. Further, the effects of these practices lingered as the kids grew older. “So what you are doing at age nine not only has an immediate impact but also a follow-up impact over time,” Adele notes.
The findings echo those of other experts. In study after study, external rewards like money or status tend to lower people’s enjoyment of an activity, even if they previously liked doing it. So in order to set kids up for genuine success in life, they need to be intrinsically motivated—that is, to see learning and taking on new challenges as its own reward. “Teaching the desire to learn,” the Gottfrieds wrote in 2008, “may be as important as teaching academic skills.”
“Why are we hung up on IQ tests?”
The idea that success depends on qualities other than intelligence has gone mainstream in recent years. Psychologist Angela Duckworth popularized the concept of grit—sticking to a goal despite obstacles—along with research about its predictive qualities for success. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has spent years documenting the impact of a “growth mindset,” wherein people value hard work and dedication over innate ability. Still, these concepts are in many ways pushing against history. “The whole century of research, when you see giftedness, it’s intelligence. And we said, you know, giftedness can come in many forms,” Allen says with impatience. “Why are we hung up on IQ tests?”
The blame rests, at least partially, on Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman, who developed the test used for measuring intelligence known as the Stanford-Binet. In 1922, he and his researchers plucked children out of California schools based on teacher recommendations. Those who scored above a certain threshold on an IQ test were deemed gifted and enrolled in Terman’s pioneering longitudinal study.
Scholars have been arguing for decades about what lessons we should draw from the lives of the “Termites.” But one of its clear legacies is the quantification of ability. For the past century, an IQ above 130 has generally been accepted as a standard marker for intellectual giftedness.
Over the past two decades, most educators and institutions have adopted the expansion of that definition—but few seem willing to jettison its core. In a 2011 study, two Florida State University professors found all 50 states have “moved beyond” IQ tests as a sole standard for identifying gifted or high-ability kids. According to the authors, many states now look at multiple criteria when assessing giftedness, either through averaging several categories (ability, leadership, and creativity, for example) or selecting kids who stand out on one or more of them.
However, a majority of states still require intelligence and achievement testing. And the authors found only three states listing motivation as a category in its definition of giftedness. Grit may be the darling of the TED Talk crowd, but the system still places major emphasis on test scores.
René Islas of the National Association of Gifted Children says it is difficult, if not impossible, to know how many school districts may be using motivation as part of giftedness identification, since so many states also allow local districts to formulate their own criteria.
Islas is quick to point out that identification is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gifted education. He tells parents to focus less on the label than on the services they think their children need. But he does agree that the system can overlook deserving kids. A 2015 study analyzing data from one state found that kids who were poor, black, Latino, or English-language learners were two and a half times less likely to be identified as gifted even when they score