Ashton Jordan Professor Padgett English 1102 10 March 2013 The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1 To be a Nobel Prize

winner, apparently, you have to be smart enough to get into a college at least as good as Notre Dame or the University of Illinois. Thats all.(Chapter 3) When Gladwell writes The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1 he gives the reader the mindset that if you do not attend an Ivy League college that your chances of being successful, or making a difference in society are not as high. All though this is not entirely incorrect due to the fact that many employers look at the top schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Cornell when choosing future employees. There are many examples in history where children that seem odd or different during their childhood become huge successes in society. Stephen Hawking, a renowned theoretical physicist did not know how to read or write until he was seven years old but is now known as the smartest man in the world. Oddly, out of the past 25 Nobel Prize winners only three were graduates of prestigious universities such as Harvard, and MIT. Gladwell expresses that all though a high IQ is necessary to an extant, but once it is over 130 the impact it makes on you being successful is slim. Lewis Terman, a Stanford psychology professor conducted one of the most famous psychology experiments when he went to several hundred elementary and high schools to find future geniuses. Before Terman conducted his analysis he asked every teacher who his or her most gifted students were and refused to experiment on

anyone other than the so-called prodigies. He had over 40 test subjects during the course of his experiment. During the course of his experiment, which lasted about two years, he gave the children several IQ tests, and creativity tests. The creativity tests were designed to see how they worked out problems in their head, and how they analyze literature in a broad perspective. I believe that this is not a true way to test an adolescents intelligence. At that early of an age a childs brain has not even developed a fourth of its capacity. For children early in their childhood the test that would maximize great results would be the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. This test does not involve and reading or writing but still analyzes a childs cognative ability. The test includes picture concepts, matrix analysis, and word reasoning. To give an adolescent a mathematical or literature test at that early on does not give you a precise result. Through out my childhood I always dreamed of going to a prestigious university such as Harvard, and Lehigh college. I believe when a child has dreams, and a positive environment surrounding them any child can go to any college they want. A strong mindset is crucial when going to school. Studies show that children with no supportive parents or positive environment are 82% likely not to even finish the tenth grade. (Gardner-Webb) Going through school I always had a strong parental involvement when it came to my grades. With my parents being very strict with grades it pushed me to be the best student I could be. As well as following my dreams, I always wanted to make my parents proud. The problem with most children in the era is the fact that they do not have a strong support system. During Termans experiment he also analyzed the childs support system, and how involved each childs parents were with their education. He

realized that the more a parent is involved in a childs academics the harder a child will strive to please both the parent and there self. The result of his experiment showed that none of his geniuses made great strives in society. All though they were pretty wealthy, his hypothesis was incorrect when he stated that there would be huge strives in medicine, art, government, education, and many Nobel Prize Winners. There were two students at an elementary school in California that his field agents studied but decided that their IQ was not to their standards so they did not choose to make further tests on them. These two students ended up winning the Nobel Prize.

Autobiography

Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Trouble with Geniuses: Part 1." Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and, 2008. 69-91. Print.

Brown, Robert, Dr. "School of Psychology and Counseling." Gardner-Webb Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2013. <http://fusebox.gardner-webb.edu/academicsfork/departments-and-schools/school-of-psychology-and-counseling/index.html>.