Reteach

What do you take away from this story?

The IQ Test story:

A famous American psychologist oversaw a remarkable experiment. He and his team gave all the students in a school an IQ test shortly before the end of the school year.

They then chose ten students and told each of their teachers, ‘These ten children are going to be in your class. We know from their tests that technically they are what we call mentally gifted.

You are going to see that all of them are going to be at the top of the class the next school year. You only have to promise never to tell that to the class because it might be harmful to them.’ And so the teachers promised not to say anything.

The fact is that none of those on the list was mentally gifted and the experiment simply amounted to choosing ten names at random and giving them to the teachers.

A year later the psychologists returned to the school. They tested all the children. All the ‘mentally gifted’ had increased their IQ by at least ten points. Some rose thirty-six points.

The psychologists interviewed the teachers and asked, ‘What did you think of these children?’ The teachers quickly used adjectives like ‘intelligent,’ ‘dynamic,’ ‘lively,’ ‘interested,’ and so forth.

What might have happened with these children if their teachers had not thought of them as mentally gifted in the classroom? It was the teachers who developed all the potential of these students.”