|
|
The Punch Line:
In
the early 1900's, one
teacher, László Rátz, at the Lutheran
High School in Budapest, and one physics department chairman at the University
of Rome were responsible for a substantial
fraction of the leading physicists, and one leading mathematician
of the 20th century! The physicists were Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, Edward
Teller, Enrico Fermi, Bruno Rossi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Emilio Segre, and others. The mathematician
was Paul Erdos. These geniuses, although undoubtly
innately highly intelligent, must have been inspired to genius
by the two pedagogical geniuses who must have somehow illuminated
the teenage lives of these boys.
Background:
Because
of its crucial importance to our lives, much attention has been
given to the subject of genius. Psychologists in the early 20th
century thought they had struck the mother lode with IQ testing.
Louis M. Terman labeled as "genius, or near-genius"
any child who scored at or above 140 on his 1916 Stanford Binet
revision of the Binet Simon Test. He thought that genius would
well up among the 1526 gifted California schoolchildren (the "Termites")
identified in his 1921 screening of 250,000 California schoolchildren.
But it didn't happen. Although the Termites did well in life and
were moderately productive, none of them became the "paradigm-shifters"
that the world associates with genius. To add insult to injury,
two of those California schoolchildren, William Shockley and Luis
Alvarez, grew up to be Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and they
didn't quite make the cut in 1921!
It was noted that the "Termites"
seemed to be too well-adjusted and family-oriented to make the
sacrifices necessary to produce workd os genius. Or perhaps they
weren't willing to be stubborn mavericks.
Later studies have revealed that once
the iQ exceeds about 120, there isn't much correlation between
genius and IQ except, perhaps, in extremely mentally demanding
fields, such as physics and mathematics. Grady Towers discusses
this in depth in his essay, "The
Broken Promise". To quote Grady quoting Dr. Lewis
M. Terman,
"Finally, in the 39th Yearbook of
the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84,
Terman made a most astonishing statement. 'Our conclusion is that
for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes,
excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement
in the early adult years.' A little farther on he says, 'The data
reviewed indicate that, above the IQ level of 140, adult success
is largely determined by such factors as social adjustment, emotional
stability, and drive to accomplishment.In other word, an extremely
high IQ conveys no practical advantages at all.
"For a man who had devoted most of his
life to the study of gifted people, this was a painful admission
for him to make."
Correlations between IQ and success run between
0.20, in a given profession, to 0.30 to 0.50, taking into account
different occupations. To quote Grady quoting E. E. Ghiselli,
"In fact, E.E. Ghiselli says, 'The
correlation between IQ and job success in a given occupation is
only about .20; this should be compared with the correlation of
.50 typically found between IQ and occupational attainment --
taking into account different occupations.'
"In short, after job training or formal
education, IQs become relatively ineffective predictors of success."
So what can we do with this? Plenty! A
high IQ is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for genius.
But this gives us an exciting lead to a missing element in the
equation: an inspiring dominie in the critical teenage years.
I had noticed this with the mathematical prodigies in the Johns
Hopkins SMPY (Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) program.
Many of them drop away during their teenage years when crises
such as the switch to adult expectations of productivity, and
gender and conformity issues reach critical stages. Shepherding
adolescents past this Scylla and Charybdis might do great things
for their adult lives. It also fits Ellen Winner's and David Feldman's
description of the need for coaching and special training at this
point in life if a music, chess, or athletic prodigy is to make
it into the front ranks. It might be exciting to try an experiment
to see whether genius can be coached and cultivated in hyperbright
adolescents. (I have always been of the opinion that geniuses
shouldn't have to starve in garrets to deliver their gifts to
a belatedly grateful world.)
I feel it should also be stressed that
genius is certainly not required of the hyperbright. Any significant
enhancement of productivity over what might be had without special
coaching would make the cap well worth the game. Someone certainly
doesn't have to become a genius to be worthy of society's special
attention.
As mentioned
above, four of the leading physicists of the "golden age"
of modern physics during the latter 20's and early 30's, Leo Szilard
(1898 - 1964), Eugene Wigner (1902 - ?), John von Neumann (1903
- 1957), and Edward Teller (1908 - ?), and one of the 20th century's
leading mathematicians, Paul Erdos (1913 - 1996) came from the
Lutheran
High School
in Budapest. There were the "products" of an inspiring
high school science teacher named "László Rátz".
I also happen to know that the Italian contingent of leading early-20th-century
physicists, including Enrico Fermi, Bruno Rossi, Bruno Pontecorvo,
Emilio Segre, and others, came from the Physics Department of
the University of Rome, which was also headed by an outstanding
pedagogue (who was an Italian Senator). This is extraordinary
news, with extraordinary implications. Apparently, about half
of the leading physicists of the "new physics" came
from these two creches. It's possible, particularly with respect
to the Lutheran High School, to estimate an upper bound upon the
IQs of these geniuses. The fact that this was a high school suggests
that students were not drawn from all over, but lived in the neighborhood.
In the years from 1912 (when Szilard presumably began high school)
to 1926 (when Edward Teller presumably would have graduated from
high school.), they would have had to have been bussed, to have
walked to school, or to have taken the streetcar. So we're probably
talking about a modest-sized neighborhood. Budapest in those years
would have been one of the glitzy poles in the former Austrio-Hungarian
Empire, so there might have been an enriched group of people living
in the neighborhood. Presumably, the boys who attended the school
were Lutherans. So how many students might László
Rátz have taught in a ten-year period? I'm going to guess
that it wouldn't have exceeded ~2,000. If the number became larger
than that, he might no longer have time to give individual attention.
His classes would probably have drawn the brighter students in
the high school. What kinds of IQs might they have had? The Terman
Study (with a somewhat-enriched population) revealed children
with ratio-IQs above 170 (deviation IQs above 156.6) with a frequency
of about 1 in 3,000, or about half again as many as expected.
The study found children with ratio IQs of180 (deviation IQs above
162.6) with a frequency of about 1 in 10,000. (With a deviation
IQ of 162.6, one would normally have expected to have found a
frequency of occurrence of only about 1 in 22,000 rather than
1 in 10,000.) John von Neumann and Edward Teller might have fallen
into this category. However, for Wigner and Szilard, the odds
would seem to favor ratio IQs in the 160's or 170's, corresponding
to deviation IQs of 150+ to 157+. It seems unlikely that the smartest
boys in Budapest would have been found in Mr. Rátz' class
in the Lutheran High School between 1912 and 1931. And yet, two
of these boys were among the world's leading theoretical physicists
later in the century, and Paul Erdos became one of the century's
most productive mathematicians. This squares with the idea that,
given a high entry-level IQ, personality, drive, and enthusiasm
then become the determinants of relatively
great productivity. This is the idea of range restriction at work:
if everyone is more or less equally intelligent, small differences
in IQ aren't going to matter as much as major differences in diligence
and originality.
Bottom
Line: Inspired
teaching of the hyperbright in the watershed high school and college
years can spell the difference between a world-class genius and
an also-ran. IQ is only one variable in achieving professional
greatness. An inspiring teacher or mentor can be extremely important.
So this approach (inspired secondary
and tertiary-level teaching) might play a key role in boosting
the "creative" outputs of our most productive individuals!