Genetics play a role in human intelligence, perhaps not as big of a role as most people think. Research indicates that culture, social class, and education also impact intelligence.
Change how smart you are by working hard
My strategies would work for any student. My sons’ educational outcome reflects their academic skills in combination with our educational choices. They are not geniuses; they had to apply themselves to obtain good results. Like many kids, they struggled in certain areas and excelled in others. My older son was tested for the gifted program when he was seven years old. The teacher requested the test based on his academic skills. Results showed that he was gifted for mathematics, but not for English (this is my son who won the college composition award when he was 15, taught Biology discussion classes at the university for two years (age 15 to 17), went to Harvard, then to Stanford.
He was learning two languages at the same time. Do you think that the vocabulary of seven-year-old bilingual students will be the same as a monolingual student? In reality, if testing vocabulary acquisition is a way to identify gifted students, many children will be deprived of the opportunity to exploit their potential. Reliance on a single test, excludes students from different ethnic backgrounds.
I believe that our academic choices, supplementing their education, and providing them with the right tools to develop their skills augmented their intelligence.
Some scientists believe that intelligence can be enhanced. Dr. Rex Jung, a neuroscientist and brain-imaging researcher at the University of New Mexico, believes that environment is a huge contributor to intelligence.
By age 15, both of my sons were attending college on full scholarship for Engineering and Neuroscience respectively. My 19 year old graduated as an electrical engineer and designs communication systems for the Department of Defense. My 21 year old son just finished his Neuroscience post-baccalaureate program at Harvard and is starting his neuroscience and artificial intelligence PhD program at Stanford. Right out of homeschool, they joined this program for highly motivated students. Thousands of applicants applied and only a 100 or so got accepted. This is a program where 15 years old students are enrolled in college full-time. Yes, most of these students were gifted from schools all over Broward and Palm Beach County.
From working with gifted students at a public school, it was clear that they could organize their thoughts and easily absorb information in an efficient way. The dopamine receptors, in the human brain, filter important and non- essential information. Genesis has less of theses receptors, enabling them to process a larger array of new information. “An intelligent person’s brain is more efficient since it has more tissues in certain areas to process information”, says Dr. Richard Hair from UC Irvine School of Medicine.
During elementary and middle school years, these students rarely study for tests. Suddenly, they are taking AP and college classes and find themselves struggling to keep up. My sons were not like those children. They had to study for tests, learned organizational skills, and even required me to supplement their education when they were in the school system. We cannot generalize; however, from my experience, gifted students who did not learn studying, organizational, or management skills struggle when taking harder classes.
Although a person’s intelligence is influenced by generic factors, those genes are just a starting point and proper tools are necessary to fully develop their ability. Family support, persistence, nutrition, motivation and dedication play a bigger role into long lasting academic success. Just as gifted students may not progress due to a lack of tools to develop their skills, a regular student can become a top student if given activities of varying complexity and catered to his or her individual needs and personal interests.
Studying is a skill that most students learn as early as elementary school. Many gifted students struggle with college classes because they realize that they cannot just skim through the book before a test and do well. These challenging classes require students to have developed studying skill.
I found that the students who were successful in my sons’ program, where the ones who had good studying habits and used those skills to meet academic demands.
In addition, gifted students depend on the competency of professors, so the way the material is delivered matters. While a regular student has the habit to study from the book anyway, so professor’s ability is not a factor.
If you children are gifted, provide them with higher degree of academic challenge early on and teach them good studying habits.
