Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: have Barbara Kerr on the podcast today, a distinguished professor
Speaker 1: of the University of Kansas and author of the book
Speaker 1: Smart Girls in the twenty first Century, Understanding Talented Girls
Speaker 1: and Women, co authored with Robin McKay. Barbara, it's so
Speaker 1: awesome to be able to talk to you today. I'm
Speaker 1: really glad to talk to you. It's not often that
Speaker 1: I get to talk about my book with the author
Speaker 1: one of my favorite books. I'll seve it. You made
Speaker 1: me blush. Oh gosh, I was wondering why did you
Speaker 1: write this book. I mean, there's a long history of
Speaker 1: this book, right this is the second edition, so goodness,
Speaker 1: it's not even the second edition. It's actually a completely
Speaker 1: new book. There were three editions of the first book,
Speaker 1: and it was just kept in print for twenty years,
Speaker 1: and so you know, with revisions. But this is entirely new,
Speaker 1: every single word. But you want to know the history, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it started with my being selected to be a
Speaker 1: kid going to a special school for get to kids
Speaker 1: during the Sputnet era. We were told that we were
Speaker 1: the leaders of tomorrow. In fact, our teacher told us
Speaker 1: that the Russians and Chinese were training their children to
Speaker 1: take over the free world and it was our job
Speaker 1: to stop them. Yeah, but that was the only other pressure,
Speaker 1: no crusher at all. I feel like, did you personally
Speaker 1: like conceptualize yourself as a gifted child. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: people that always told me I was smart. I read
Speaker 1: very early, and I uh, I loved science from the
Speaker 1: time I was a little bitty. My dad was an
Speaker 1: engineer who was had the opportunity to work with the
Speaker 1: Atomic Energy Commission, and so my dad came home every
Speaker 1: day and talked about his work with me when I
Speaker 1: was this little thing. You know, he would talk about
Speaker 1: atoms and talk about stars. My first science project he
Speaker 1: helped me with when I was like seven, was the
Speaker 1: evolution of a star. And so, yeah, I had some
Speaker 1: notion that I was smart because people had said so
Speaker 1: more people said I was weird than said I was smart. Basically,
Speaker 1: I was a very weird little girl. Yeah, and as
Speaker 1: we know, that's a characteristic of creativity. Well, yeah, being different.
Speaker 1: But you know, you know what it's like when you're little.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's coming in your future. All you
Speaker 1: know is that you're different. And it was years later
Speaker 1: that I learned that that was a good thing. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: so I'm in this Spotnet class right and they and
Speaker 1: I was very lucky, you know, especially after I read
Speaker 1: your book about what it was like to want to
Speaker 1: be able to get to class, not to be able
Speaker 1: to do well. I'm your evil twin. I got to
Speaker 1: be in the class. And we had we had French.
Speaker 1: We learned to speak French fluently, which has been great
Speaker 1: for me, but they told us it was because that
Speaker 1: was the language of civilization. And we learned speed reading
Speaker 1: because President Kennedy was a speed read and I'm telling
Speaker 1: you that's kind of andy. No matter what people tell
Speaker 1: you about speed reading and how it doesn't work and
Speaker 1: so on, it sure worked for me. And then we
Speaker 1: had very advanced algebra and advanced sciences. It was a
Speaker 1: superb education. We did four hours of homework a night.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember crying because I couldn't get through
Speaker 1: all my homework and I was so tired, So that
Speaker 1: part of it was really difficult. But being able to
Speaker 1: be stimulated like that and never be bored was pretty wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine I have to imagine. Yeah, you know, how
Speaker 1: did these early experiences influence your consceptulations of what it
Speaker 1: means to be smart? Well? I think that that they
Speaker 1: influenced me first too, in the early part of my career,
Speaker 1: to maybe take IQ intelligence testing too seriously. When I
Speaker 1: wrote the first Smart Girls, I pretty much defined gifted
Speaker 1: as you know hi IQ like everybody else did in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty That's how I've been identified by Stanford
Speaker 1: Benet Test. I'm glad to give me the risk of
Speaker 1: a bond because of the spatial visual stuff. But as
Speaker 1: my career continued, I began seeing many examples of people
Speaker 1: who were achieving extraordinary things without having been labeled as gifted,
Speaker 1: and I began to wonder what was going on. I
Speaker 1: also noticed that the most marginalized people were the ones
Speaker 1: that I found the most interesting, whereas the gifted kids
Speaker 1: were usually the popular kids. You know, in high school.
Speaker 1: I liked the weird ones. You a great you know,
Speaker 1: relate to what you just said that you have a
Speaker 1: great quote in your book. We believe there are smartles
Speaker 1: in every classroom whose capacity and desire to learn are
Speaker 1: overlooked and go unnoticed simply because they don't fit their
Speaker 1: society's image and their particular school's definition of giftedness. I
Speaker 1: thought we could talk about some of your own personal
Speaker 1: conceptualizations of what it means to be a smart girl.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be a smart girl? It's
Speaker 1: something that's beyond just high IQ. Is that great? It? Yes?
Speaker 1: I really believe though, that being smart does involve being
Speaker 1: able to catch on quickly, make sense of things, and
Speaker 1: to know what to do about it. Okay, However, there
Speaker 1: are so many combinations of abilities that go overlooked. The
Speaker 1: huge emphasis in the schools is on verbal and mathematical ability,
Speaker 1: where there are plenty of kids who catch on make
Speaker 1: sense of things and know what to do about music,
Speaker 1: and who catch on makes sense to things and know
Speaker 1: what to do with spatial visual sorts of things, and
Speaker 1: they can easily be overlooked. That's some of these abilities.
Speaker 1: What are some abilities to get overlooked? Well? Case of
Speaker 1: creativity is what continues to amaze me because I've work
Speaker 1: now every Friday with a group of ten to twelve
Speaker 1: young people who've been selected by a technique we've developed
Speaker 1: called Profilely, where we identify sixteen year old young people
Speaker 1: who match the characteristics of eminent people have different domains
Speaker 1: when they were sixteen years old. You can't look for
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old creative kid by comparing them to
Speaker 1: an adult or to adult. You've got to you've got
Speaker 1: to look for what was you know, what we're great
Speaker 1: writers doing at sixteen, and believe me, they weren't writing novels.
Speaker 1: They were getting in trouble for their humor and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Adult passion can rarely match the passion of a child.
Speaker 1: That's right. So it makes no sense to me to
Speaker 1: stry to find creative young people with the current techniques.
Speaker 1: The biggest problem we have is that although not all
Speaker 1: creative people fit this profile, we know that first of all,
Speaker 1: creative people are open to experience, and that many are
Speaker 1: lower in conscientiousness and for females, lower in agreeability or agreeableness. Now,
Speaker 1: what that means is that they don't match teachers' conceptions
Speaker 1: of what a gifted kid are if you're a kid
Speaker 1: who's mind is always wandering and you know you have
Speaker 1: this bit bit imagination, but you also are a little
Speaker 1: prickly or a little unusual, or you're not the typically
Speaker 1: the child that most teachers typically like, which is the extroverted,
Speaker 1: conscientious industries child. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And the conscientious you know, what do you do with
Speaker 1: like the introverted? The introverted child, you know, often a
Speaker 1: lot of their their talents and abilities just won't be
Speaker 1: seen at all. Right, so right, how in the world
Speaker 1: do you what what kind of system can you put
Speaker 1: in place so they don't fall between the cracks. Well,
Speaker 1: in the part of the book where I talk about
Speaker 1: finding smart girls, right, I talk about looking around the
Speaker 1: classroom and not just looking for this smiling girl with
Speaker 1: her hand up. Yeah she's probably smart too, But you
Speaker 1: need to look for the tangle haired girl in the
Speaker 1: back who's doodling in the margins of her notebook. You
Speaker 1: need to look for the girl who's hiding a book
Speaker 1: in her notebook and reading it secretly. And those are
Speaker 1: often the girls that are overlooked. Also, girls who are
Speaker 1: not attractive are overlooked. Yeah. Ever since Urman made the
Speaker 1: statement that gifted girls were taller, stronger and taller, stronger
Speaker 1: and healthier than average girls, people have assumed that gifted
Speaker 1: girls are always you know, you know, beautiful, healthy, tall, strong,
Speaker 1: and that's just really not the case. In fact, being
Speaker 1: an unattractive girl gives a girl an opportunity and opportunities
Speaker 1: spend some time alone, whereas the very attractive, extroverted girl
Speaker 1: is more likely to be absorbed into girls peer culture.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, which is poison, basically very interesting. I mean
Speaker 1: you you you kind of know, you're not kind of
Speaker 1: you do? You integrate lots of different fields, you integrate.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've done a lot of work. You've done
Speaker 1: work in gender studies, right, it's as well as intelligence
Speaker 1: and creativity. And you're I mean, you're basically the modern
Speaker 1: day Hollingsworth. Right. Well, in my first laboratory, which was
Speaker 1: at the University of Nebraska, my last day there, my
Speaker 1: lab staff and my graduate students and I went to
Speaker 1: lead a Hollingworth's grave and drank champagne. You are the
Speaker 1: modern day She really does mean a lot to me.
Speaker 1: She really is a model in many ways, She's a
Speaker 1: model because she was a great scientist, a great research
Speaker 1: and yet she also her science was infused with compassion
Speaker 1: and love for the kids. And that is so evident
Speaker 1: from your work as well. You know, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to just just think critically for a second
Speaker 1: about about the opposite of smart girls. I mean, does
Speaker 1: that that means that means there are not smart girls? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're you're, you're just you're just saying that's the truth.
Speaker 1: And you know, we you know, we should try as
Speaker 1: hard as possible to to cast a wide net. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that every every single person is of
Speaker 1: equal smartness, right right. In fact, cast a white net
Speaker 1: is the exact phrase that I've used. We have to
Speaker 1: cast white nets. Some people would say it's controversial, right, No,
Speaker 1: I imagine individual differences being controversial. I mean, no, not
Speaker 1: everybody is smart, and not everybody is tall. You know,
Speaker 1: whenever the principal says to be all of our child
Speaker 1: group gift that I say, are they all tall? You know,
Speaker 1: it's just we can't deny that there are individual differences.
Speaker 1: But we shouldn't just be looking at one curve of
Speaker 1: just intelligence scores. We also agree that intelligence develops in
Speaker 1: a way that has more flexibility than height timings of
Speaker 1: yeast timing. Yeah, so I really believe that that intelligence
Speaker 1: and creativity, emotional intelligence, that these characteristics that are so
Speaker 1: valuable in humans, that are distributed across the normal curve.
Speaker 1: I really do believe though, that from pre natal times,
Speaker 1: that heredity and environment are in a constant dance with
Speaker 1: one another, right, And that's certainly what the science suggests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems it seems that there's more and more evidence
Speaker 1: that even though we really need to respect the impact
Speaker 1: of our genes, we have to recomment. We have to
Speaker 1: understand that the environment can either encourage or crush these
Speaker 1: traits that we that are so very important to human society. Well,
Speaker 1: since you brought that up, I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: what are some of you you have talked in your
Speaker 1: book about some of the barriers that Smarco's face to
Speaker 1: being able to express that all sorts of things, from
Speaker 1: stereotype threat to all sorts of things. I don't want to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, say it. I want you to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about something Little Girls and the Princess industrial Complex,
Speaker 1: because you go all the way through to adolescence to adulthood,
Speaker 1: it's really great. Yeah, way to elderly years. And for
Speaker 1: little girls, what's holding them back, I think is the
Speaker 1: fact that parents go along with girls gender role rigidity.
Speaker 1: All kids who are little are gender role nazis, I
Speaker 1: mean all of them, boys and girls. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we have to encourage every girl to be
Speaker 1: a princess. Some girls don't want to wear princess clothes,
Speaker 1: and for some that glitter phase is a passing phase.
Speaker 1: But when mothers get wrapped up in it themselves and
Speaker 1: vicariously live out their prom queen dreams through their daughters,
Speaker 1: that's that's an awful thing, because princess is not a career,
Speaker 1: and and a princesses is somebody who has to be
Speaker 1: rescued and take yourself. Okay, there's a fear, So I
Speaker 1: think it starts with that. And then in the adolescent years.
Speaker 1: In the adolescent ears, you have the very early sexualization
Speaker 1: of girls. Would you know, did you see that part
Speaker 1: where I talked about how much earlier puberty comes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as strong implications, tremendous implication. Ye, for the education,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, remember what jicksent Mahi found in his
Speaker 1: study of all the creative creative people. He studied that
Speaker 1: the later the onset of of romance and sexual behavior,
Speaker 1: the later the onset of that kind of engagement, the
Speaker 1: more likely a person was to become creatively accomplished, so
Speaker 1: that delaying sexual activity is critical to later accomplishment. Oh,
Speaker 1: that explains my accomplishments. Then you look at you, Hey,
Speaker 1: look at me. I was such a herd. He's so long,
Speaker 1: you know, to get a boyfriend. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing bad. I'm not doing bad, but I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, uh, you know, priorities, pies. You know, we're
Speaker 1: both doing great now. And that's what people don't understand
Speaker 1: is that we don't rush into romantic relationships. Well, allow
Speaker 1: time for our own dreams to thrive, you know, before
Speaker 1: we become a culture of two. Absolutely. Can you explain
Speaker 1: the beehive metaphor? Ai? Yes, Well, oh my gosh, my
Speaker 1: publisher made me change drone to inseminator or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They didn't like that word. But I'll say
Speaker 1: why I used the beehive metaphor, and that is that
Speaker 1: the beive is a great image for understanding all the
Speaker 1: types of giftedness and girls. I think we can use
Speaker 1: it with gifted kids in general, but I like it
Speaker 1: as a metaphor for girls because the worker these are
Speaker 1: your basic high IQ kids, your terminent type of kids.
Speaker 1: They're the people who are real smart, and they generally
Speaker 1: are conscientious, and they usually have some social skills just
Speaker 1: like term and found and they go on to become
Speaker 1: our experts, our professionals, you know, our lawyers, our doctors,
Speaker 1: all the people who keep society going by doing expert work.
Speaker 1: And that's the majority of our kids. But then there's
Speaker 1: that very special uh part of the highs that I
Speaker 1: call the honey bees in hide. Those are the ones
Speaker 1: that stay in high and nurture the the next generation
Speaker 1: and uh there, And so the hunt bees are those
Speaker 1: girls with emotional intelligence. They usually combine high. So the
Speaker 1: high IQ that used to be thought of as being
Speaker 1: the only thing now has, you know, is challenged by
Speaker 1: the fact that emotional intelligence does seem to overlap intelligence.
Speaker 1: But that be the same thing. So those girls is
Speaker 1: the ones who have extraordinary skills for understanding their own
Speaker 1: feelings and those of others, and for managing their own
Speaker 1: emotions and those of others. That's the honey bees. And
Speaker 1: then that player of my favorite is the drones, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the publisher made me change it to fertilizer or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I like drones because that was
Speaker 1: the word for female high creatives and I liked it
Speaker 1: because treatently gifted women tend to be pretty androgynous, have
Speaker 1: a lot of what are traditional masculine characteristics, and creative
Speaker 1: men have a lot of traditionally feminine characteristics. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying them in masculinity is real. I'm saying their social roles,
Speaker 1: and we tend to see that, so I don't having
Speaker 1: a problem calling them drones or dronets. But the creative
Speaker 1: ones are when you add too intelligence. Now you add
Speaker 1: some specific intellectual abilities that you write about much better
Speaker 1: than our be able to write about, because whether we
Speaker 1: talk about that additional capacity for divergent thinking, but that's
Speaker 1: in addition to the sort of base ability. But then
Speaker 1: there's also creative literature. People have openness to experience it.
Speaker 1: The more I delve into it, and I read everything
Speaker 1: the column, the young rise the more I delve into it,
Speaker 1: and I'm beginning to really believe that openness to experience
Speaker 1: is really describing a very different mode of perception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you very different? Do you think like an
Speaker 1: altered state of consciousness? Yeah, I think that people when
Speaker 1: we look at the correlations of openess to experience and absorption,
Speaker 1: and we've got when six hundred cases now that I'll
Speaker 1: be hoping to publish soon where we're looking at the
Speaker 1: incredible correlation of various facets of goodness to experience with absorption.
Speaker 1: In fact, absorption which is the capacity to alter consciousness deliberately,
Speaker 1: it's took to the type of attentional deployment. When when
Speaker 1: we look at that, it's really, uh, it's really amazing
Speaker 1: how different the perception and the way of thinking. The
Speaker 1: start of thinking is that people are who are high
Speaker 1: in an absorption. What you've talked about mind wandering seems
Speaker 1: to be very ristic of people of high absorption. And
Speaker 1: I also really have become attached to Colin Deyong's work
Speaker 1: that shows that you can be a little too open
Speaker 1: new experiences. You can help them. Oh man, what reason?
Speaker 1: Oh no, god, they're not like you. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know when to say, you know, when you say okay,
Speaker 1: like this is just nuts. They don't. I mean people
Speaker 1: in say ninety percent heal that we meet. They believe anything.
Speaker 1: They believe in UFOs. They you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: UFOs are coming. They believe in you know, numeralogy. They're
Speaker 1: into astrology because they're so vulnerable to anything that promises
Speaker 1: to kind of take them into an altered state. Right, right,
Speaker 1: you can be too open to experience. And there's a
Speaker 1: sweet spot, we think right around the ninety fifth percentile.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds really high, but think about it.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, we're you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the difference from scare deviations between ninety fifth and ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and ninety nine seems to be a problem for a
Speaker 1: lot of people with ninety fifth. Wow, you need to
Speaker 1: get a lot done. Yeah, no, I definitely hear you.
Speaker 1: I you know, I wish there are more non self
Speaker 1: report measures of openness to experience because a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff, you know, there's a ceiling. I'm sure, Well
Speaker 1: there's that. Oh I wish I had it ready in hand.
Speaker 1: But there has been a new parental a parental behavioral
Speaker 1: observation that's being developed right now that observes the behaviors
Speaker 1: associated with openness to experience as well as the other
Speaker 1: neo five factors. That's kind of exciting. It's about time
Speaker 1: that we went there. That's cool. Please send your link
Speaker 1: to that. Well, you know, there was that one of
Speaker 1: their categories, the queens, the royal bees, and that I
Speaker 1: have to account to the fact that there are people
Speaker 1: who are extremely high in absorption, very very bright, very
Speaker 1: very creative, who become great leaders. But they also tend
Speaker 1: to be mystics profits people who are more than creative.
Speaker 1: They are they have a sense of interconnectedness with others
Speaker 1: in a way. They look like what Maslow was calling
Speaker 1: self actualized people. And the females that are like that,
Speaker 1: like Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt and a number of you know,
Speaker 1: religious mystics, and and people who are great spiritual leaders.
Speaker 1: They don't look like your basic gifted girl, right. They
Speaker 1: look different. Yeah, I know that's very interesting. Do you
Speaker 1: think that they're still they should still be recognized as
Speaker 1: as you know, give them in the Optimal to you
Speaker 1: talk about optimal development in your book. I really love
Speaker 1: love that phrase. Yeah, optimal. Yeah, I think they need
Speaker 1: to be found it. So often the kids who have
Speaker 1: these extraordinary abilities will be seen as so odd that
Speaker 1: they might be misdiagnosed as being you know, autistic or schizophrenic,
Speaker 1: because you know, like Bernadette of Lords, they have visions
Speaker 1: when they're little, and when you're little, you don't have
Speaker 1: much of a way of understanding the difference between an
Speaker 1: altered state and reality, or the difference between dream and
Speaker 1: mind wandering. You don't have that ability. So these kids
Speaker 1: can really struggle with their visions. You can see, I'm
Speaker 1: really influenced at the time I spent with Native American people, right,
Speaker 1: because those are the skills and valued by Native American
Speaker 1: people with the use of some substances as help sometimes. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, you's see way I said, our society's clumsy
Speaker 1: way of attaining altered states is through the use of
Speaker 1: mind altered and substances. Absolutely. So you have this CLEOS
Speaker 1: Center where you are the director of Project CLEOS, and
Speaker 1: I thought that you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: you know, it stands for Counseling Laboratory for the Exploration
Speaker 1: of Optimal States. Yes, I wonder if you talk a
Speaker 1: little about how you select people for this program and
Speaker 1: what are some of the things you do to help
Speaker 1: support them in their optimal development. Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: I should tell you is that even though we do
Speaker 1: use an identification procedure, we also take walk ons. I
Speaker 1: believe with all my heart in taking walk ons, because
Speaker 1: if a parent tells me their adolescent is creative, or
Speaker 1: an adolescent comes to me and says, you know, I
Speaker 1: really want to be a writer, and I didn't get
Speaker 1: into your program, but I really like to come, believe me,
Speaker 1: I get them in there. Yeah, so that's great. Oh man,
Speaker 1: we've got to have walk ons. I could go on
Speaker 1: a whole riff about how gifted education should be like
Speaker 1: an athletic team where you can walk on if you didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, get identified. But anyhow, clecos as I said before,
Speaker 1: we profile creative students. We send out five profiles as
Speaker 1: well as a general profile of creative people. What are
Speaker 1: the profiles? The profiles are arts, design, architecture, and it's
Speaker 1: spatial visual what people like that like at sixteen, and
Speaker 1: then they're yes, there's a verbal what writers looked like
Speaker 1: at sixteen, and then there's We found our factory analysis
Speaker 1: and our cluster analysis showed that interestingly, musicians don't tend
Speaker 1: to cluster with the artists. They tend to be more
Speaker 1: similar in personality interests and values. To other performers and
Speaker 1: to even to debaters, they're more similar to people who
Speaker 1: do other sorts of work in front of people, expressing
Speaker 1: in front of people. The other categories are emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: interpersonal creativity we call it, and then we have a
Speaker 1: scholarly inventive category for makers, you know, for young people
Speaker 1: who from an early age we're putting things together a
Speaker 1: little different from the two D spatial visualizing that we
Speaker 1: found that people who are likely to become creative engineers
Speaker 1: are somewhat different from people who well, actually quite different
Speaker 1: from people who become fine artists. So we need to
Speaker 1: make that distinction. What about creative engineers versus non creative
Speaker 1: engineers are what do they look like as a difference. Well,
Speaker 1: non creative engineers are worker bees, they're experts. They're people
Speaker 1: who are really good at figuring out whether a particular
Speaker 1: material can be used in a particular way because of
Speaker 1: its properties, and so they are the experts that help
Speaker 1: us make the things that we make. But the creative
Speaker 1: engineers the person who designs a new product or process
Speaker 1: that's never been seen before. Yeah, that's not too easy
Speaker 1: to do, is it. They're basically the inventors, inventors and Scott.
Speaker 1: That's why, in addition to Clius, I co founded the
Speaker 1: Maker Space here in Lawrence because we realized that these
Speaker 1: kids are so underserved, and I'm talking about adolescents and
Speaker 1: young adults are so underserved. The ones who have inventive ideas,
Speaker 1: they've had so little opportunity in high school to design
Speaker 1: their ideas and to learn about how you take an
Speaker 1: idea from vision to commercialization. So we're working really hard
Speaker 1: to help to help people to do that at the Makerspace.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. And you incorporate this idea of the Steam
Speaker 1: movement into this, right, I mean the honor of being
Speaker 1: on a panel if you remember at APA a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. Yeah, yeah, very much. So. The Steam
Speaker 1: movement is is it really overlaps with the maker movement
Speaker 1: because most inventors today, Most inventors have to combine an
Speaker 1: artistic sensibility, or at least an artistic sense of an
Speaker 1: elegant solution with scientific abilities. Did you know that when
Speaker 1: I interviewed Steve Bosniak for my Inventor study that he
Speaker 1: told me he would never have been able to invent
Speaker 1: the Apple computer if his parents hadn't fought for him
Speaker 1: to be able to take an electronics course. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting. Yeah. He said that he was in
Speaker 1: the math gifted program and when he was working on
Speaker 1: circuits or as he called them, breadboards, trying to get
Speaker 1: as many circuits as possible on to as small space
Speaker 1: as possible. But he realized that he needed to learn
Speaker 1: how solder, you know, he needed to really know how
Speaker 1: electricity works and work with his hands. But when he asked,
Speaker 1: the school said he couldn't take electronics because that was
Speaker 1: a shop course and that was for the lesser able kids,
Speaker 1: for the non gifted. In other words. Wo yeah. So
Speaker 1: his parents raised a ruckets about that and really supported him,
Speaker 1: and I think they went all the way up to
Speaker 1: the Board of Education and got special permission for him
Speaker 1: to be dual enrolled in the gifted program and the
Speaker 1: voke edburg that's of reverse reverse gifted. Yeah. Fighting, you know,
Speaker 1: usually parents don't fight the other way. Yeah, well sometimes
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, it's going to be an event. You've
Speaker 1: got to know how to make stuff. You have to
Speaker 1: know how materials help materials work. You need to know
Speaker 1: how electricity works. And it's not enough just to know
Speaker 1: the theory. You've got to get your hands in there
Speaker 1: and you can get a few electric shocks. Actually you
Speaker 1: need to know how to do that. And for girl
Speaker 1: inventors cktor smrtils. One of the things we find with
Speaker 1: our highly creative girl inventors is that they've had fewer
Speaker 1: opportunities than the boys have to mess around with materials
Speaker 1: to construct things, to design things with their hands, because
Speaker 1: girls toys tend to be predesigned. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: get to use your imagination, but also don't get to
Speaker 1: use your hands as much. That's very interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: you're raising a lot of issues that I haven't considered fully,
Speaker 1: So this is really helpful. Oh good. What does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a girl in the new millennium? You
Speaker 1: talk You asked that question in the book and then
Speaker 1: answer it. Well, it's so different. We mentioned I talked
Speaker 1: to you earlier about the fact that puberty comes so
Speaker 1: much sooner for millennial girls and that that's a trap.
Speaker 1: But there are other issues too. Both parents are working
Speaker 1: for vast majority of bright girls, and generally when mom
Speaker 1: is working, it falls to the oldest girl or all
Speaker 1: the girls to pick up the domestic chores, particularly in
Speaker 1: families that are below the median income where they can't
Speaker 1: afford the extra house. You know, sure lawyers, female lawyers,
Speaker 1: and physicians can afford women to clean their house, but
Speaker 1: what does the house cleaner do for childcare? She has
Speaker 1: her older siblings taking care of the younger siblings. Now
Speaker 1: that's really cutting into smart girls time to read, time
Speaker 1: to develop. So for girls, teenage girls and even girls
Speaker 1: younger than teens bear a disproportionate amount of the household
Speaker 1: chores in these times in which both mom and dad
Speaker 1: have to work, and sometimes they work multiple jobs. The parents,
Speaker 1: so the kids are doing laundry, childcare, fixing meals. One
Speaker 1: little girl, I know her native of her parents gets
Speaker 1: home till after midnight, so after school. From the time
Speaker 1: she was ten, she's had to take care of her
Speaker 1: little sister who is an infant, and now her little
Speaker 1: sister is seven, but she still makes all the meals,
Speaker 1: make sure she does her homework. Can you imagine how
Speaker 1: that's cutting into her time? Of course, of course, so
Speaker 1: that premature adult responsibilities is difficult for Leno girls. Yeh
Speaker 1: can see that. You might think that for the upper
Speaker 1: middle class and upper class girls that it's different and
Speaker 1: it is in that it's not chores that are keeping
Speaker 1: them busy. It's an endless round of social activities. Girls
Speaker 1: are overscheduled more so than bokeets and different things, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: my gosh. Yeah. The most common things we see girls
Speaker 1: being overscheduled in such things as cheerleading. We know where
Speaker 1: they end up. They end up making thirteen dollars an
Speaker 1: hour at the post for a professional team. You know,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a cheerleader in college, but they
Speaker 1: didn't pay much. I didn't get fit anything, I see.
Speaker 1: I was so bad they made me the school mascot instead. Oh,
Speaker 1: they run around in the heat outfit. What was your mascot?
Speaker 1: It was a Scottie dog. Okay, that's perfect, And I
Speaker 1: wish I could see that pictures. Hey, I'm too clumsy,
Speaker 1: even though I'll show you someday. You're too clumsy to
Speaker 1: be a what I was too clumsy to be a cheerleader.
Speaker 1: I got hit by a car when I was fourteen
Speaker 1: years old. And I'm laying there in the in the
Speaker 1: in the post op. You know, all my bones are broken,
Speaker 1: my back is sprayed, and I mean, you know, two
Speaker 1: broken wrist, two broken ankles. You know what The first
Speaker 1: thing is I said to my parents when I came
Speaker 1: back to consciousness, I said, does this mean I can
Speaker 1: drop out of cheerleader's claw? Yeah, that's how much I
Speaker 1: hated it. But not all girls hated Some girls like it,
Speaker 1: and if they like it's super. But but the trouble
Speaker 1: is is that gifted girls who are in upper middle
Speaker 1: class families, suburban families are are really peer pressured and
Speaker 1: mom pressured and even dad pressured into these activities that
Speaker 1: have no career path whatsoever, and and and that's one
Speaker 1: of them. But they're also the peer group, you know,
Speaker 1: insists that they play a number of sports that don't
Speaker 1: have a particular future for them or where there's very
Speaker 1: few scholarships. So they're getting tracked into no future at
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities. And most adolescent gifted girls are smart girls
Speaker 1: are incredibly overscheduled. And the ones that resist that get
Speaker 1: get a lot of flack about that because being pretty
Speaker 1: unpopular is still really really important if you're smart. Yeah, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: these are really important considerations. Yeah, you talk, I mean,
Speaker 1: you take you you tackle lists at various angles all
Speaker 1: throughout the development. You say, you know, there are some
Speaker 1: specific issues and adolescence with identity development. Is that right? Yes?
Speaker 1: I think you know, we all know a lot about
Speaker 1: stereotype threat now, and I think it's very very powerful research.
Speaker 1: And we need to understand that the stereotype threat, I mean,
Speaker 1: my listeners might not know what it is. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: stereotype threat is, uh, what happens when you are about
Speaker 1: to engage in a task and you're reminded in even
Speaker 1: the most subtle way that you're a member of a
Speaker 1: particular group. For instance, it's been found that even writing
Speaker 1: your name and your gender before taking a mathematics test,
Speaker 1: being reminded that you're a girl can make you underachieved
Speaker 1: compared to boys, because girls aren't supposed to be as
Speaker 1: good at math, although of course they are. They close
Speaker 1: the gap entirely being reminded of you of your group.
Speaker 1: African American kids who are about to take almost any
Speaker 1: kind of intelligence test, who are reminded that even the
Speaker 1: most subtle ways of their status as an African American
Speaker 1: whill underperform. So stereotype threat is very powerful. But we
Speaker 1: also have to understand that stereotype threat can also be
Speaker 1: undone and unlearned. That's right, So that in my book,
Speaker 1: I talk about how important it is to say to girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's people who will say that girls can't do this
Speaker 1: as well as boys, But actually that's wrong. That research
Speaker 1: is you know, the research show that girls can do
Speaker 1: it as good as boys, and I know that you can,
Speaker 1: so that we can undo that really quickly and intensely
Speaker 1: if we are very deliberate about it. So yeah, very
Speaker 1: type threat is major. Yeah, because you talk about minority
Speaker 1: smart goals. Right. Oh, how does privilege play a role
Speaker 1: in in everything you're talking about? Well, as you know,
Speaker 1: I have old chapter on privilege because privileged gender and
Speaker 1: talent are intertwined. I mean by privilege, could you unpack it? Well,
Speaker 1: privilege is any special is any special head start that
Speaker 1: you get by being in a status that's more favored
Speaker 1: by your society. Now, there's many different kinds of privilege.
Speaker 1: The one we've heard about most lately is white privilege,
Speaker 1: and that's probably the most sillient privilege there is in
Speaker 1: American society at least. And there's masculine privilege or male privilege.
Speaker 1: There's heatero s privilege, there's pretty privilege, in other words, attractiveness, beautiful,
Speaker 1: pretty people from the get go, have a head start
Speaker 1: in life. I also brought up ones that we often
Speaker 1: don't think about, like geographical privilege. It matters where you're
Speaker 1: born and raised, It matters where you live right now
Speaker 1: in the United States, it matters where you live in
Speaker 1: the world, So geographic. So there's all these forms of privilege, right,
Speaker 1: and there's all these forms of powerlessness, and they interact
Speaker 1: with gender, and they interact with talent. The lower you
Speaker 1: are in privilege, the more distant you are from the
Speaker 1: center of power in your society, the farther you will
Speaker 1: have to travel to get to that center. Right you
Speaker 1: you called distance to privilege. You've created a scale, is
Speaker 1: that right? A distance to privilege scales. That was a
Speaker 1: scale that that where it's people are allowed to self report,
Speaker 1: so they report how distant they feel on all of
Speaker 1: these things. And it's worded like this. With regard to attractiveness,
Speaker 1: on this ladder, we show them a little ladder how
Speaker 1: how how close are you to the bottom of society
Speaker 1: or society's most desirable ideal form of attractiveness versus up
Speaker 1: at the top society's ideal version. We have the same
Speaker 1: with race, gender, religion, geography. You know, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And what we find is that what really matters with
Speaker 1: regard to privilege is one's own subjective perception of it.
Speaker 1: Like it's just dumb to say to somebody you're not
Speaker 1: you don't like privilege because you were born in this way,
Speaker 1: or you know you don't you know you have bloody money,
Speaker 1: any or or other like privilege because you know I
Speaker 1: was brought up Again, it doesn't matter with the objective
Speaker 1: facts are what really matters in determining a bright girl's
Speaker 1: identity and her beliefs in what she's able to do.
Speaker 1: What matters is how far she feels from privilege. Let's
Speaker 1: your self perception of privilege. That's very interesting. So you
Speaker 1: could technically be not in a position or be in
Speaker 1: a position of privilege, but not think you are right.
Speaker 1: You could be, for instance, you could be a white
Speaker 1: a white upper class girl. If you perceive yourself as
Speaker 1: being fat and ugly, then you will believe that a
Speaker 1: lot of opportunities are closed to you that actually aren't,
Speaker 1: or if you are are you are a girl from
Speaker 1: a family that makes fifty thousand a year that's above
Speaker 1: the media income, but you were growing up in Scottsdale
Speaker 1: or Beverly Hills. You're surrounded by people who make millions,
Speaker 1: then you're actually not poor before you're going to feel
Speaker 1: poor by social comparison. So that's why that perception is
Speaker 1: so important. The more we feel we lack privilege, the
Speaker 1: more distant we feel from privilege, the less we believe
Speaker 1: that we can achieve, and the less we believe that
Speaker 1: we can accomplish unless somebody gives us social capital. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the other side of it. That's what we need
Speaker 1: to do for girls who lack privileges. Provide the social capital,
Speaker 1: in other words, the networking, the relationships, as well as
Speaker 1: the material resources that they need to get to where
Speaker 1: they're going to be. So privilege, talent, and gender all
Speaker 1: work together to predict right. Can I thrown another thing
Speaker 1: into the mix, into another variable? Yeah? Sure, passion? Well
Speaker 1: you know I have a whole chapter on that too.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to set you up. Yeah, thank you out
Speaker 1: like you that's also important inaction, right, like you've got.
Speaker 1: I believe it's absolutely it's the fire. If if gender
Speaker 1: and talent and privilege are essentially what are setting the
Speaker 1: course of the missile, then it's the passion that lights
Speaker 1: the fire. Now, I looked at lots of different ways
Speaker 1: of looking at passion, and I settled upon a classic one,
Speaker 1: and that was Paul Torrance's idea of falling in love
Speaker 1: with an idea. I wanted that because I wanted it
Speaker 1: to be clear that this is not passion that's merely
Speaker 1: high energy. You can be a driven, high energy person
Speaker 1: and not really have a passion at all. It's having
Speaker 1: fallen in love with an idea that gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of purpose and meaning. Yes, And did you notice
Speaker 1: that I also talk about how that enables women to
Speaker 1: leap frog right over privilege of lack of privilege, that
Speaker 1: it makes them fearless, it makes them seek out the
Speaker 1: social capital, it makes them jump over the barriers, you know.
Speaker 1: And in my first Smart Girls, where I had to,
Speaker 1: you know, I read the biography's eminent women, and back
Speaker 1: then there were hardly any. And that's how old I am.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I noticed is that when I
Speaker 1: was talking about people like Marie Cure and Simonda Bovoire
Speaker 1: and Margaret Mean, they didn't seem to notice sexism. They
Speaker 1: didn't seem to notice that people were trying to stop them.
Speaker 1: When people did try to discriminate against them. They just
Speaker 1: kind of looked at them like what It just absolutely
Speaker 1: ignored discrimination and sexism. And that's what a passion will
Speaker 1: do for you. People want to try to discriminate you
Speaker 1: against you, and you just go, well, no, you're not
Speaker 1: going to stop me, right. I mean, you've criticized grit
Speaker 1: and you talk about it a a little bit the book
Speaker 1: What's difference between grit and because Angel Duckworth, who studies grit,
Speaker 1: defines grit as passion and perseverance for long term goals,
Speaker 1: but which I think is great. But here's the problem
Speaker 1: with how grit has been interpreted. It has been interpreted
Speaker 1: as simply being similar to industrious disaccountanciousness, right, and how
Speaker 1: it's measured in the grit scale, there's not much passion
Speaker 1: in the grit scale. Yeah, It's like it's such a
Speaker 1: problem because we find that creative people are selectively gritty.
Speaker 1: They will show a lot of passion and perseverance in
Speaker 1: their music, for instance, and blow off everything else. And
Speaker 1: when we look at eminent people, you'll see that none
Speaker 1: of them have grit and persevere except in their domain.
Speaker 1: Usually because if you have GrITT and perseverance, it nearly
Speaker 1: almost everything that you do. Then you're so perfectionistic that
Speaker 1: you don't really do anything really well. And the reason
Speaker 1: that I take on grit so much love Angelo, by
Speaker 1: the way, but I take on the concept, and that
Speaker 1: is because grit conscientiousness are gendered ideas. You see, men
Speaker 1: are gritty, but females so, you know, men are supposed
Speaker 1: to be tough and gritty and to persevere no matter what.
Speaker 1: But females are supposed to be conscientious in all things,
Speaker 1: to have neat handwriting, to finish every task on time,
Speaker 1: to be you know, to be punctual. And they get
Speaker 1: reinforced for that. Well that looks like that looks like
Speaker 1: they have a passion, but actually they're just scared to
Speaker 1: death of not pleasing somebody else. And so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like duty. Yeah, it's like a duty is. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: beautifulness and it might even look like passion if the
Speaker 1: kid is may have high energy level and be driven.
Speaker 1: So I see, I think you could be driven. I
Speaker 1: have high energy, be just plugging away with all your might,
Speaker 1: but not really have an idea that you're in love
Speaker 1: with except pleasing your tiger mother. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: That's a good point to something really important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. Yeah, so I think I'm all for grit,
Speaker 1: but only select grit. In fact, I teach my creative
Speaker 1: kids very clearly that I say, Look, if anybody ever
Speaker 1: tells you that anything that's worth doing is worth doing well,
Speaker 1: anybody who says that is lying, because if you attempt
Speaker 1: to do everything well, you will never be able to
Speaker 1: put the energy that you need to put into your
Speaker 1: creative idea. I have to got to let some stuff go.
Speaker 1: You got to disappoint some people. Yeah, it's good to
Speaker 1: fail a little bit. Girls have got to learn disappoint
Speaker 1: other people. They've got to learn to let people down.
Speaker 1: They've got to learn how to be late. They've got
Speaker 1: to learn how to I've got to learn that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hell yes, Because because females are trying to be everything
Speaker 1: to everybody, are never ever going to accomplish anything. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. I think that that's that applies to
Speaker 1: both smart boys and smart girls, and as well as
Speaker 1: un smart boys and unsmart girls. Well, Scott, I just
Speaker 1: think you're real wealth socialized. I think you've been real
Speaker 1: well socialized. I think a lot of times, a lot
Speaker 1: of times when boys are sloppy, are late, are rambunctious.
Speaker 1: They're just being boys, right, But when girls are careless
Speaker 1: and late and sloppy with things and only devote themselves
Speaker 1: to their writing or their music, and they're considered to
Speaker 1: be re really combating or going to war with the
Speaker 1: feminine gender role, and there's a lot of punishments for that. Ye,
Speaker 1: your group, it's really good, good stuff to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: Can you give some advice to parents and educators on
Speaker 1: how what are some early signs of giftedness of a
Speaker 1: smart of being a smart girl that they could work
Speaker 1: out for Well, a girl who catches on fast, makes
Speaker 1: sense of things and knows what to do about it.
Speaker 1: And that's why I said that if you're a you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a parent of a little girl and you
Speaker 1: guys have just moved to the United States and your
Speaker 1: little girl learned English in one year, she's gifted. I
Speaker 1: don't care what the iq T just say, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: So we, you know, we have to look for behaviors
Speaker 1: that show that they learn rapidly and well, and and
Speaker 1: particularly that they're learning rapidly and well in something they
Speaker 1: really really care about. These are skills as well, that
Speaker 1: can be learned and everyone to some more well, you know,
Speaker 1: the old idea that intelligence can be learned. I think
Speaker 1: it can be modified upwards. Bye bye. I think that
Speaker 1: you can increase your capacity to learn by continuing learning,
Speaker 1: by reading everything, dreamason and and by learning loss of
Speaker 1: languages and learning music and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I do think there's a range I think, and I
Speaker 1: think that things like working memory are pretty hard to
Speaker 1: change and might not even be worth anybody's time to
Speaker 1: dry probably more meaningful things, which which does take you
Speaker 1: to a point of your book that I like, you know,
Speaker 1: you ask, well, what is the goal of all this
Speaker 1: intense preparation that begins as early as elementary school? And
Speaker 1: you're you propose a new model of development in your book.
Speaker 1: What do you think, you know, once we identify smart girls,
Speaker 1: or we identify the you know, what should we do
Speaker 1: with that challenge the heck out of them for one purpose?
Speaker 1: For that purpose, I just think that that first we
Speaker 1: challenge them to learn the basic things that that that
Speaker 1: everybody needs in our society, of course, but then we
Speaker 1: need to take them way beyond being you know, being competent.
Speaker 1: I think that that to instill a love of reading
Speaker 1: and help them to learn to read above their level.
Speaker 1: I think that we need to. It's so obvious, isn't
Speaker 1: it that we need to let them learn at their
Speaker 1: own case and not hold them back and not insist
Speaker 1: that they stick around UH to help the other children.
Speaker 1: I think that we need to. So part of challenging
Speaker 1: them is UH is not putting them in charge of
Speaker 1: helping and collaborating with other kids, so they do all
Speaker 1: the work right. So that's that's very I think the
Speaker 1: first we have to challenge them after we find them.
Speaker 1: Then we challenge them, and gradually, as their interests developed,
Speaker 1: we begin to challenge them more in the specific domains
Speaker 1: that they're most interested in. I think we're turning out
Speaker 1: way too many generalists, and so many things that kids
Speaker 1: want to do today are going to require such an
Speaker 1: early start that if a girl has an early interest
Speaker 1: in mathematics, why shouldn't she be able to specialize while
Speaker 1: she's still in middle school. Everybody says, oh, just let
Speaker 1: her explore. What if she doesn't want to, It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, have will be just you know, good at everything.
Speaker 1: But except I think that it's okay to be stellar
Speaker 1: in a specific area and to be just you know,
Speaker 1: good at the others challenge. Yeah, that's a great message
Speaker 1: to end on. Thank you Barb for all the really
Speaker 1: important work you do for the smart and I'm smart
Speaker 1: men and women, boys and girls out there, and for
Speaker 1: talking to me today. And thank you Scott for opening
Speaker 1: up my mind with Unngifted and thanks for getting it
Speaker 1: published while I was still writing Smart Girls so I
Speaker 1: can read it. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this
Speaker 1: episode just as an informative and thought provoking as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or here past episodes, you can go to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast dot com.