Speaker 1: The ones who flourish usually have a parent or an
Speaker 1: aunt or an uncle or somebody close to them who's
Speaker 1: encouraging and enabling them, Because if you grow up with
Speaker 1: no support system for your unusual gift, and it's not
Speaker 1: recognized in school, and your family doesn't recognize it or
Speaker 1: they don't care about it, it may just die out.
Speaker 2: On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I had a
Speaker 2: chat with the psychologist Ellen Winner about prodigies and gifted children.
Speaker 2: This was a very meaningful chat for me, considering that
Speaker 2: Ellen's book Gifted Children inspired me so much in college
Speaker 2: that I credit it as one of the major reasons
Speaker 2: why I became a psychologist in the first place and
Speaker 2: decide to study what I do. In this episode, we
Speaker 2: discuss Ellen's views on IQ and giftedness, the role of
Speaker 2: parents in talent development, and how the needs of gifted
Speaker 2: children can best be met. We also discuss a bunch
Speaker 2: of myths, such as the notion that gifted children are
Speaker 2: gifted in all subject areas or the idea that they
Speaker 2: are all social misfits. Ellen argues for the importance of
Speaker 2: artistic giftedness and offers a nuanced understanding of the nature
Speaker 2: and nurture that causes the quote rage to master you
Speaker 2: see in child prodigies and Gifted Children. So with great enthusiasm,
Speaker 2: I bring you Ellen Winner, Ellen Winner, Wow, thanks for
Speaker 2: being on the Psychology Podcast today with me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Scott.
Speaker 2: What a personally meaningful situation. This is your book Gifted Children,
Speaker 2: Realities and Myths in College is what is one of
Speaker 2: the two big books that influenced me. Three I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say three books that influenced me to go into this
Speaker 2: field in the first place, your book, Howard Gardner's book
Speaker 2: Frames of Mind, and Robert Sternberg's book Successful Intelligence. So
Speaker 2: those three books, that's why I'm in this field. That's
Speaker 2: why I do what I do. That's great, So thank
Speaker 2: you for writing the book and for all the amazing
Speaker 2: research that you've done over the years. How did you
Speaker 2: get interested in studying gifted children in the first place?
Speaker 1: Children are gifted children?
Speaker 2: Gifted children? Oh maybe did you start off? Did you
Speaker 2: start studying all children?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I started off. I'm trained as a developmental psychologist, Okay,
Speaker 1: and that came about because I got before I went
Speaker 1: to graduate school, I started working at Project zero. Do
Speaker 1: you know what Project zero is?
Speaker 2: I sure do.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: In college, I was a big fan, a big fan of.
Speaker 1: The at Project zero, we do research on young children
Speaker 1: and adults. But I was working with young children, doing
Speaker 1: studies of their understanding of the arts and their ability
Speaker 1: to make things in the arts. But I wasn't studying
Speaker 1: gifted children. But that's what got me interested. That's what
Speaker 1: made me decide to go to doctor. Did you get
Speaker 1: my doctorate and developmental psychology rather than clinical psychology, which
Speaker 1: I was first going to do. And then and the
Speaker 1: more I did research on children in the arts and
Speaker 1: how they develop, I realized that they were huge variations
Speaker 1: and some children were extremely talented. And that's what got
Speaker 1: me interested in studying children who were very gifted in
Speaker 1: the arts. But then in the book I wrote Gifted
Speaker 1: Children Missing Realities, I expanded it to cover giftedness in
Speaker 1: other areas as well. Music, that's art, of course, visual art, reading, mathematics.
Speaker 2: Did you were you an artist yourself?
Speaker 1: Yes? I did start out as a child doing a
Speaker 1: lot of art and I planned to go to art school,
Speaker 1: but my parents said, go to college first, or regular college,
Speaker 1: and then you can go to art school. I obeyed them.
Speaker 1: I went to college and studied English literature, but then
Speaker 1: I applied to art school, and I did go to
Speaker 1: the Museum of Fine Arts school after college in Boston,
Speaker 1: but after one year of it, I decided that this
Speaker 1: was not for me, because to be an artist is
Speaker 1: very isolating and very stressful, because it's very hard to
Speaker 1: actually make it in the arts, and so I decided
Speaker 1: instead to be a psychologist of the arts.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, it's wonderful. Thank God to the field of psychology.
Speaker 2: You did. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions about
Speaker 2: these kinds of kids, and I just really wanted to
Speaker 2: dispel some of the biggest misconceptions and then talk about
Speaker 2: what actually is true about them. I think that a
Speaker 2: lot of people in their desire, like when they write
Speaker 2: popular books that like talent is overrated, those kinds of
Speaker 2: books which are very very popular. I think there's this
Speaker 2: kind of they feel like there's this need to make
Speaker 2: everyone else f feel good about themselves by kind of
Speaker 2: sweeping under the rug the role of talent. It's sort
Speaker 2: of like, well, you know their parents pushed them, or
Speaker 2: you know they got they had all the opportunities in
Speaker 2: the world. You know, anyone could do it if they
Speaker 2: had those opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. And I just
Speaker 2: feel like that's not at the level of nuance that
Speaker 2: I that I like to swim in. So to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about what you actually what the data
Speaker 2: actually shows, and what you see with your own eyes
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I think this idea that talent doesn't matter
Speaker 1: got popularized by ANDREWS. Erickson, who wrote about all you
Speaker 1: need is ten thousand hours of deliberate practice, which means
Speaker 1: hard work to become an expert. He didn't actually say
Speaker 1: to become a genius, but we're child prodigies, and gifted
Speaker 1: children in the arts are not necessarily geniuses. And then
Speaker 1: people started saying, these children who are prodigies in the arts,
Speaker 1: they just had ten thousand hours of deliber practice because
Speaker 1: they started at a very young age and they worked
Speaker 1: really hard and it mounts up, and their parents were
Speaker 1: actually probably pushing them too. So if you actually look
Speaker 1: at young children who are gifted in the arts or
Speaker 1: in any area, actually who are if you want to
Speaker 1: call them child prodigies, those are the ones that are
Speaker 1: extremely gifted. If you look at any of those at
Speaker 1: a young age, you will see that they are not
Speaker 1: normal kids. They are not typical kids at all. They
Speaker 1: obviously have some kind of innate ability in the area
Speaker 1: in which they are working so hard, and they drive themselves.
Speaker 1: They have what I call a rage to master. They
Speaker 1: all they want to do is work in their area
Speaker 1: of expertise. So, yes, they got they get a lot
Speaker 1: of deliberate practice. But no child is going to do
Speaker 1: that unless they already have a strong ability and therefore
Speaker 1: love of working in this particular domain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. You know, you look at
Speaker 2: you just look at like even sports stars like Kobe Bryant,
Speaker 2: who I went to middle school in high school with,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, you see, they had this
Speaker 2: rage to master, and you know it takes you know,
Speaker 2: practice matters, but not everyone gets the same bang for
Speaker 2: their buck out of the same training regimen that you
Speaker 2: have to know how to practice.
Speaker 1: Right, So I really, I really discount that claim. I
Speaker 1: think it's completely wrong, and I've written a lot about
Speaker 1: how that's a myth that really should be dispelled. I
Speaker 1: think it also comes out of a desire not to
Speaker 1: be elitist. Everybody can get there. Yeah it sounds nice,
Speaker 1: but it just is not true.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, as you've probably been following a
Speaker 2: lot of gifted programs are being cut in the name
Speaker 2: of equity right now, Have you seen that? Have you
Speaker 2: seen that or and what are your thoughts in that situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really unfortunate because children who are gifted,
Speaker 1: the more gifted they are, the more difficulty they have
Speaker 1: in the regular classroom because they are way above their
Speaker 1: age peers and they can't find anybody else like themselves.
Speaker 1: So parents have a real problem because schools are meant
Speaker 1: for the typical child. Our schools are not designed to
Speaker 1: take care of the extremes at either end. So one
Speaker 1: thing parents sometimes do is grades skip their children. But
Speaker 1: that used to be more popular earlier, and now it's
Speaker 1: frowned upon because people think that the child who's grade
Speaker 1: skipped will have social problems. Another most often what schools
Speaker 1: do is they provide a pull out Gifted and Talented
Speaker 1: program where kids get pulled out of the regular classroom
Speaker 1: maybe once a week, and they are with other kids
Speaker 1: that are identified as gifted in whatever area. All different
Speaker 1: areas may participate, and they work on projects that probably
Speaker 1: all kids could benefit from, and then they go right
Speaker 1: back to the regular classroom where if they're like five
Speaker 1: years ahead in math, they're still doing boring math. Another
Speaker 1: possibility is in individual education programs that get worked out
Speaker 1: for each child, and I think that has a lot
Speaker 1: of promise. Ideally, it would be great if we could
Speaker 1: have I mean, in high school, we have advanced classes
Speaker 1: in different areas and kids can select into them AP
Speaker 1: classes for instance. I think it would be fine to
Speaker 1: have advanced classes even in elementary school, but you know,
Speaker 1: let children self select into them, because you're going to
Speaker 1: be you can be sure that kids who don't feel
Speaker 1: very competent at math or reading or writing are not
Speaker 1: going to self select into a class that makes huge
Speaker 1: demands on them. So I think that I'm not in
Speaker 1: favor of testing kids to see if they get in,
Speaker 1: because I think that creates stress. Let themself select. If
Speaker 1: they can't handle the work, they have to get canceled out,
Speaker 1: counseled out. I didn't say cancel counseled out.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. In your experience, how much are over involved parents
Speaker 2: involved gifted?
Speaker 1: It really varies. Some parents who try to put their
Speaker 1: child on the public stage. If they're a music performer,
Speaker 1: for instance, parents some parents want them to perform at
Speaker 1: a very early age. Other parents don't do that, and
Speaker 1: I do think it's a mistake for parents to push
Speaker 1: too hard, because I think parents should encourage and enable,
Speaker 1: but not push too hard because it does create a
Speaker 1: problem because the child. Let's take a child who's performing
Speaker 1: on doing a solo performance in an orchestra, in front
Speaker 1: of the orchestra or just alone, that child is going
Speaker 1: to get a huge amount of adulation for what he
Speaker 1: or she is doing. And when they grow up, if
Speaker 1: they're going to continue to be considered exceptional, they're going
Speaker 1: to have to do something original and new in the
Speaker 1: way they perform, for instance, to be to be considered unusual.
Speaker 1: And because otherwise a lot of other say musicians, will
Speaker 1: have caught up with them even if they weren't prodigies
Speaker 1: as children. And I think this creates a real wound
Speaker 1: in the child that they were so special and now
Speaker 1: they're not special anymore. And that actually leads to the
Speaker 1: issue of whether child prodigies become great domain changing artists.
Speaker 1: You can ask that question of prodigies in any area,
Speaker 1: and that's something we could.
Speaker 2: Talk about if you want, well, you know I do, Okay,
Speaker 2: what is the stat what are the stats show? Are
Speaker 2: they are some demeans where the conversion is more likely.
Speaker 1: I don't actually have quantitative data on this. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that if you look at adults who are
Speaker 1: at the highest end of say mathematics or writing literature,
Speaker 1: or visual art or things that involve math like science,
Speaker 1: some of them were child prodigies, but majority of them
Speaker 1: were not. And so it's not necessary to be a
Speaker 1: child prodigy to be a really creative person in your domain.
Speaker 1: Most child prodigies end up being experts. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: a math prodigy might end up being a math professor,
Speaker 1: but not a mathematician making original discoveries. And there's really
Speaker 1: no reason why we should expect prodigies to become major
Speaker 1: creators because they are very few major creator They're not
Speaker 1: that many prodigies, but there are a lot more prodigies
Speaker 1: than there are major creators. So it's very hard to
Speaker 1: make the leap because a child prodigy is mastering a
Speaker 1: domain that's already been gift. This's been given to them,
Speaker 1: like classical music or mathematics. But to be a major creator,
Speaker 1: you have to invent something, and that's not the same
Speaker 1: skill as being a prodigy.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's a very good point. In investigating from
Speaker 2: my book and Gifted and when I investigated savants and
Speaker 2: prodigies and other high forms of talent that seem to
Speaker 2: appear out of nowhere. I try to really get to
Speaker 2: the bottom of it and really just understand where does
Speaker 2: giftedness come from?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: And it does seem like there's a lot of what
Speaker 2: I call implicit learning involved. There's a lot of soaking
Speaker 2: up of regularities and patterns. A lot of these demeans
Speaker 2: that you're referring to have have repeated regularities, and that
Speaker 2: we have an on pus learning system that evolved.
Speaker 1: I would I would agree with that. I mean performers
Speaker 1: in classical music or math, prodigies or drawing. Giftedness is
Speaker 1: all these children are operating in a well structured domain.
Speaker 1: And I can say that for drawing giftedness because kids
Speaker 1: who are prodigious and drawing, they're drawing super realistically. There
Speaker 1: are very few that that draw non representationally that we
Speaker 1: would consider prodigies. There are a few, but these are
Speaker 1: well structured domains. And so yes, I think these kids
Speaker 1: that do pick things up easily. In fact, I say
Speaker 1: they learn differently from their peers because they really teach themselves.
Speaker 1: They don't need to be explicitly taught very much. You know.
Speaker 1: I studied one child who learned to read at two,
Speaker 1: and the way he learned to read was he asked
Speaker 1: his mother to read him the same book every day
Speaker 1: for one week, pointing to the words as she read.
Speaker 1: And then he chose another book and they went through
Speaker 1: the same routine, and after that he had just cracked
Speaker 1: the code of reading. That's implicit learning. But if you
Speaker 1: take an ill structured domain like biology or you know,
Speaker 1: writing novels, you don't very You really don't find prodigies
Speaker 1: in these ill structured domains. It takes a long time.
Speaker 1: Or composing even composing music, it takes that comes later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just I wish we had we really could
Speaker 2: wrap our heads around more about the role of genetics
Speaker 2: in this stuff, because I don't think the heritability twin
Speaker 2: studies tell us much about the mechanism involved. It just
Speaker 2: tells us that there is a heritability efficient. But I
Speaker 2: want something deeper. I want to know the mechanism by
Speaker 2: which proteins that are coded can, somehow, through gene expression,
Speaker 2: cause such high levels of expertise which are not directly
Speaker 2: encoded in the genes. There's no genetic blueprint for some
Speaker 2: of these evolutionary novel things that that these don't mean
Speaker 2: that these producties are earning that were never that never
Speaker 2: operated on evolutionary timescale, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure that we could answer that question
Speaker 1: for the genetics of anything except perhaps a disease, right,
Speaker 1: but something very specific. I mean, do we know the
Speaker 1: mechanisms by which genetics affects intelligence? You know, the biochemical mechanisms.
Speaker 2: All we know is that that many, many interacting genes
Speaker 2: are involved.
Speaker 3: That's all we know exactly, right.
Speaker 1: But anybody that says there's no genetics involved in extremely
Speaker 1: gifted to kids is just fooling themselves because it has
Speaker 1: to be. There has to be an eight component. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not all of these children have first degree relatives
Speaker 1: who have that kind of talent, but they often do.
Speaker 1: One child that I'm studying right now is very gifted
Speaker 1: and drawing. Neither of his parents draw, but he has
Speaker 1: a grandfather who became an architect. And I spoke to
Speaker 1: the grandfather and he said he drew precociously realistically at
Speaker 1: a very early age.
Speaker 2: So that's something that stuck out for me when I
Speaker 2: read Deven Henry Feldman's book on prodigies. I'm sure that
Speaker 2: you and him are have talked before, Yes, yeah, and
Speaker 2: he's such a great guy as a human as well
Speaker 2: as a researcher. But in his book that really stuck
Speaker 2: out to me that a lot of these prodigies did
Speaker 2: have someone going back even far enough where you say, ah,
Speaker 2: the great great great great grandfather.
Speaker 1: Yes. And also to get to the non genetic part,
Speaker 1: the ones who Flora usually have a parent or an
Speaker 1: aunt or an uncle or somebody close to them who's
Speaker 1: encouraging and enabling them. Because if you grow up with
Speaker 1: no support system for your unusual gift and it's not
Speaker 1: recognized in school, and your family doesn't recognize it or
Speaker 1: they don't care about it, it may just die out.
Speaker 1: I remember in my son's school when he was growing up,
Speaker 1: there was a child prodigy. I thought in drawing he
Speaker 1: was just amazing. And I told his father that and
Speaker 1: he said, I'm not interested. He was an immigrant from Haiti,
Speaker 1: and the father said, I'm not interested in his drawing.
Speaker 1: I want to know how he doesn't math. I could
Speaker 1: understand his point. He wanted a son to grow up
Speaker 1: and earn a living. But I don't know what happened
Speaker 1: to that child, but I may it may well, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of child which may just stop gir awing,
Speaker 1: who may just stop drawing because it's not encouraged.
Speaker 2: That's a bit heartbreaking. Yeah, when anyone, whenever, anyone has
Speaker 2: a passion, at whatever age.
Speaker 1: Some people overcome their parent. Leonard Bernstein supposedly his parents
Speaker 1: wanted him. His father wanted him to go into some
Speaker 1: business that he wasn't in the slightest interested in, and
Speaker 1: he pursued. He just did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: But he's not your he's not your average adult who
Speaker 1: used to be a child prodigy. Though I'm sure he
Speaker 1: was a prodigy. You know, he's one of the select few.
Speaker 1: You have to have a certain personality to make the
Speaker 1: leap from prodigy to creator. You have to be very
Speaker 1: strong willed and really have a desire to shake things
Speaker 1: up and to do something new. And that's a kind
Speaker 1: of personality characteristic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an additional source of genetic variation that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have had that into the interacting mix, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well it's let's just think this through for a second.
Speaker 2: So are there is there a benefit to because you
Speaker 2: can kick off that rage to master process at any
Speaker 2: age in your life. I want to start that with
Speaker 2: that postulate, so you can be seventy years old and
Speaker 2: suddenly become captivated by something. It seems to me what
Speaker 2: happens with a lot of these prodigies is that, you know,
Speaker 2: while other two year olds are out there trying to
Speaker 2: you know, like screaming and trying to get food and water,
Speaker 2: there are some two year olds who are trying to
Speaker 2: consume books and like water, you know, and and and
Speaker 2: that is so that's that's what is an anomalists anomalists
Speaker 2: about about prodigies. But they still are starting, you know,
Speaker 2: that they're starting the mastery process like anyone would start
Speaker 2: the mastery process who hasn't maybe a little bit of
Speaker 2: a knack for something. Is there a benefit? So I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna actually ask my question. Is there a benefit
Speaker 2: with what we know about you know, narrow periods uh
Speaker 2: where where we can soak up knowledge at certain ages
Speaker 2: easier than other ages? Is that? Why is that? Why
Speaker 2: does that help explain a little bit why starting with
Speaker 2: that rage to master at a very very young age
Speaker 2: might bring better long term dividends than when you start
Speaker 2: later in life.
Speaker 1: Well, of course I can't answer that question scientifically, but
Speaker 1: I can just speculate that doing that, there's something very
Speaker 1: special about the young child's mind and the way the
Speaker 1: young child, typical or gifted learns so effortlessly and rapidly.
Speaker 1: Think of how children learn language. So I think when
Speaker 1: a child is showing a rage to master at a
Speaker 1: very early age, they're consuming a huge amount of information
Speaker 1: and processing it in their minds, and it may well
Speaker 1: lead to them being better eventually in their domain. Then
Speaker 1: somebody who starts doing this in adulthood I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: or in late adulthood, and of course the child has
Speaker 1: the benefit of all the years ahead of that child,
Speaker 1: whereas if you start something late, you have less time
Speaker 1: to develop that talent.
Speaker 2: Well, that's assuming that you live a long life. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, every everything's just I feel like everything's kind
Speaker 2: of like up to luck.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of luck involved, a lot of luck
Speaker 1: in the genetic and in combination and environmental And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things David Feldman talks about, is the
Speaker 1: the co occurrence of many things that lead to a
Speaker 1: child prodigy.
Speaker 2: That's right, Well, how how important is that co occurrence
Speaker 2: of IQ. I know that's a very contentious topic, and
Speaker 2: one which have you heard of Howard Gardner's work?
Speaker 1: You know what? Oh, you know, he's my husband.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I'm joking. Okay, yeah, I was
Speaker 2: going to say, have you heard of your husband's work?
Speaker 2: But then I thought i'd you know, so he's, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously done a lot of work trying to expand our
Speaker 2: news of what intelligence means. But I think that he's
Speaker 2: I think he would admit that he's. He's often misunderstood.
Speaker 2: His theory is often misunderstood. You know, he's he's still
Speaker 2: he's you know, he expanded multiple intelligences, but still each
Speaker 2: of those intelligences have their own giftedness and talent associated
Speaker 2: and there's still individual differences. It's just amazing to me
Speaker 2: how people take his theory like it meant therefore we
Speaker 2: all can be geniuses, all.
Speaker 1: Children are gifted. And he never said that.
Speaker 2: He never said that. I get it. I get him,
Speaker 2: I get him, and I understand his theory. So when
Speaker 2: you're in your own work with prodigies, to what extent
Speaker 2: do you really see that multiple intelligences play out?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: With your own eyes.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you look at the domains where
Speaker 1: we see prodigies, they are they constitute some of the intelligence, logical, mathematical.
Speaker 1: We see mathematical prodigies. There's linguistic, and we see kids
Speaker 1: who speak early and read early, and there's musical, and
Speaker 1: we see that there's visual spatial and that I think
Speaker 1: I would put our visual art prodigies in there. What
Speaker 1: about the other intelligences? Do we find prodigies there? I don't.
Speaker 1: People haven't really reported prodigies in interpersonal like understanding other
Speaker 1: people or intrapt personal like understanding yourself. Those may be
Speaker 1: harder to detect. And there's no reason to think that there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know some children are precocious and empathy.
Speaker 1: I heard about one child who used to cry when
Speaker 1: people were in her family were sad because she was
Speaker 1: so or she cried from sad music because she was
Speaker 1: so overwhelmed by other people's sadness. You know, that could
Speaker 1: be some kind of interpersonal intelligence. And as for nat ruralism,
Speaker 1: you know, the naturalist intelligence, probably Charles Darwin was a
Speaker 1: prodigy in naturalist intelligence. He went around collecting beetles of
Speaker 1: all kinds and was fascinated with them, but we don't
Speaker 1: really hear reports of kids in these less structured domains.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean they're not out there, we just
Speaker 1: don't haven't had reports of them. Now, there is a
Speaker 1: myth that a gifted child is gifted in everything, and
Speaker 1: that does actually go against the idea of multiple intelligences,
Speaker 1: which argues that these intelligence are separate from one another.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you can't have all of them and
Speaker 1: be at a high level. It just means that you
Speaker 1: can also have just one and not be at a
Speaker 1: high level in others. And so that comes out back
Speaker 1: to the question of IQ. In the visual arts, there
Speaker 1: are several pieces of data showing that kids who and
Speaker 1: adults too who are visual artists do not have above
Speaker 1: average intelligences. Of course some do, but on average they
Speaker 1: don't IQ. Yeah, IQ, because yes IQ, thanks for correcting me.
Speaker 3: If you.
Speaker 1: Remember the I. If you if you think about savants
Speaker 1: who are low in IQ and also autistic, they can
Speaker 1: do amazing things in visual arts and in memory and
Speaker 1: in music. And people like to say, well, they're not
Speaker 1: they're they're just like machines. They're not creative. But there
Speaker 1: have been some studies showing that actually musical savants are
Speaker 1: they are doing their improvising, they can improvise, They're not
Speaker 1: just machines. Clearly, these kinds of talents can exist without
Speaker 1: IQ with that a high IQ. Now as for math
Speaker 1: and verbal and linguistic intelligences, well those are really part
Speaker 1: of the IQ test, so I doubt you could have
Speaker 1: You might have a savant prodigy in math who doesn't
Speaker 1: have a high IQ. But what savant prodigies do is calculation.
Speaker 1: That's a very narrow area of mathematics. But if you
Speaker 1: have a child that's really good at grasping mathematical concepts,
Speaker 1: it's likely that that child will have a higher than
Speaker 1: an average IQ, since IQ involves numerical reasoning. So I
Speaker 1: think it depends on the domain. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: controversy about music too, whether musical talent musically gifted children
Speaker 1: have a hireman an average IQ. There's some evidence yes,
Speaker 1: But there's also some evidence that children who are have
Speaker 1: a high IQ tend to gravitate to music. Maybe they
Speaker 1: like the structured part of it. But we don't know
Speaker 1: anything about kids who are musically talented in rock and
Speaker 1: roll or garage bands, so it may be that kids
Speaker 1: who want to do classical music, maybe that those kids
Speaker 1: come to it because they have i Q or it's
Speaker 1: correlated with it. But we can't just say musical giftedness
Speaker 1: is correlated with higher IQ because we haven't studied We've
Speaker 1: only studied one kind of musical giftedness, which is classical performance,
Speaker 1: classical music performance.
Speaker 2: Why do people get so fixated on IQ? I think
Speaker 2: there's this kind of thought that, well, anything that's not
Speaker 2: IQ is learnable, whereas IQ is fixed. But that's like,
Speaker 2: that's not true out of look if you if you
Speaker 2: don't have the arts gene as well.
Speaker 1: And also IQ is somewhat learnable because we know that
Speaker 1: our IQ scores have gone up over the over.
Speaker 3: The decades, that's true flin effect.
Speaker 1: And you know that children's IQ drops after their summer
Speaker 1: vacation and has to go back up again during school.
Speaker 1: So there certainly are environmental.
Speaker 3: Influences, that's right.
Speaker 2: They are both biological and environmental influences and everything and
Speaker 2: every psychological trait. Get over it, people get over it already,
Speaker 2: move on because people got so fixated on on IQ.
Speaker 2: So I'm really glad that you you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: going down this list of realities and myths, and you've really,
Speaker 2: you're really organically covering so many of them. So thank you.
Speaker 2: One that I think a lot of people think about
Speaker 2: when they think about gifted children, they think of them
Speaker 2: as psychological and social misfits. What has been your own
Speaker 2: experience and working with these kinds of kids.
Speaker 1: I think that I would make a distinction between moderately
Speaker 1: gifted and severely gifted. The more extreme the gift, the
Speaker 1: more social problems the child has. But it's not because
Speaker 1: the child is gifted. It's because the child is so alone,
Speaker 1: because there's not others like that child for that child
Speaker 1: to associate with. And so I think if that child
Speaker 1: were in a class of other kids just as gifted,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have problems. I think the problem comes because
Speaker 1: you're there's so few like you. And I always say
Speaker 1: to parents, the most important thing you can do for
Speaker 1: your child is find that if you have a prodigy,
Speaker 1: is to find at least one other child like your
Speaker 1: child so they don't feel so isolated.
Speaker 2: There was a a researcher, her last name was Hollingsworth,
Speaker 2: who really yes, she talked. She she wrote you know
Speaker 2: above one e d I Q you know kind of
Speaker 2: children she studied, She found that a lot of their
Speaker 2: social awkwardness disappeared when she allowed them to kind of
Speaker 2: talk to each other. Now, I think that, like, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, this could be kind of like an
Speaker 2: excuse for my awkwardness, But I also think we can
Speaker 2: we need to also be careful to not get into
Speaker 2: that mindset. We're like, oh, the reason why I feel
Speaker 2: awkward around ordinary civilians is because they're just not at
Speaker 2: my level of intelligence. Now, I don't want to get
Speaker 2: into that mindset, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So, how can we you know, how can we raise
Speaker 2: these kids by being honest about you know, Wow, there
Speaker 2: is a certain you know, it's really good to be
Speaker 2: around like minded and really like minded you know literally
Speaker 2: literally like minded people. But also to not look down
Speaker 2: on others, not think that because you know, because you
Speaker 2: have a particularly high Q, that you're better than others. Right,
Speaker 2: these are seemed to be lessons that we should instill
Speaker 2: in these children. Do you agree?
Speaker 1: Yes? And I think that that's why I don't particularly
Speaker 1: like the label gifted or prodigy to be used with
Speaker 1: the child. I think it's much because that can lead
Speaker 1: to feelings that they're better than other people. I would
Speaker 1: just say, you're really good at this, and you really
Speaker 1: love this, and other people are good at other things.
Speaker 1: But if your child is feeling, you know, like bullied
Speaker 1: because he's so different, or just lonely because he doesn't
Speaker 1: have anybody to talk to because nobody's on his wavelength,
Speaker 1: that's when I say to parents, try to find one
Speaker 1: other child. Now with the Internet, there are all kinds
Speaker 1: of more They are more opportunities, but it's not the
Speaker 1: same as face to face. You can't have play dates.
Speaker 1: But I would say that as kids get older, the
Speaker 1: problem is lessened because when you go to high school
Speaker 1: there are more opportunity, opportunities to take advanced classes, and
Speaker 1: you might find other kids in those classes. And certainly
Speaker 1: when you go to college, people self select into colleges
Speaker 1: which are of you know, which some colleges demand extremely
Speaker 1: high ability, so they when they come to if you
Speaker 1: go to you know, am I T Or Harvard or
Speaker 1: Princeton or Yale or Stanford, you're going to find other
Speaker 1: Not that everybody there is like that, but you're certainly
Speaker 1: going to find more atypical kids at the high end,
Speaker 1: and therefore you're less likely to be alone, but in
Speaker 1: kindergarten and in elementary school it can be really difficult.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds to me like you advocate an acceleration
Speaker 2: grade skipping program above a pull out classroom gifted program.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think the pullout program is like a band aid.
Speaker 1: It may be nice because kids meet other kids who
Speaker 1: are gifted that they might not be gifted in the
Speaker 1: same area doesn't so it might be good socially, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to help their board of
Speaker 1: in school, so I would ideally it would be great
Speaker 1: if there could be instead of grade skipping, there could
Speaker 1: be domain specific skipping, so that let's say you have
Speaker 1: a math whiz, why can't that child go to during
Speaker 1: regular math class go up to the math class of
Speaker 1: kids three years older. Of course, schools have to be
Speaker 1: organized by this so that they have vertical organization of classes,
Speaker 1: so that all the math classes are at the same time.
Speaker 1: I think that would be a nice solution. I think
Speaker 1: that would be much better than taking a child and
Speaker 1: putting them in a grade three or four years older
Speaker 1: in all areas. I do know of several children whose
Speaker 1: parents have managed to figure that out, and that kids
Speaker 1: were in a school which had an elementary school and
Speaker 1: a middle school and a high school on three different campuses.
Speaker 1: This child was busted to the high school for math
Speaker 1: class and then bust back when he was in elementary
Speaker 1: and middle school.
Speaker 2: Well, I agree about pull out programs. I think often
Speaker 2: there's more money that school districts spend on identification than programming,
Speaker 2: and they get to the point where they spend ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent of their money for finding the right IQ test,
Speaker 2: and then they just stick them all together and say,
Speaker 2: go be gifted, right, And that doesn't seem very promising.
Speaker 2: I also like the idea of elevating the standards for everyone.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with that? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: I think it's great, it's just pie in the sky.
Speaker 1: But that's the first thing I would say, and I
Speaker 1: do say this in my book. Elevate the standards for everybody,
Speaker 1: expect more. And then kids who are just moderately gifted,
Speaker 1: you know, they maybe one or two years in advance,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll be just fine, they won't be bored, but
Speaker 1: so you still have the issue for the extremes. And
Speaker 1: by the way, even in schools for the gifted, and
Speaker 1: I studied one school in California called the Nueva School,
Speaker 1: and I wrote about that in my book. Even there,
Speaker 1: parents of the extreme gifted complained that there were too
Speaker 1: many moderately gifted kids and their kid was still too extreme.
Speaker 1: They were still born in school. And when you have
Speaker 1: that problem, then I think you have to be flexible
Speaker 1: and give that child more advanced work, individual educational programs
Speaker 1: worked out for individual children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. I like that. It just seems
Speaker 2: like at the end of the day, we're just talking
Speaker 2: about helping all children self actualize in their own way, yes,
Speaker 2: and to the best of their potential. And I kind
Speaker 2: of like that framing a little bit better. That's how
Speaker 2: I kind of frame it. I just I'm not in
Speaker 2: love with these labels like moderately gifted, exemplarly get what
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 3: What does it?
Speaker 2: Ex severely disease severely sound makes it sound like a
Speaker 2: disease severely severely you know, gifted? Because gifted. This is
Speaker 2: not an essence, right, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: But it's not an essence of a person. It's a
Speaker 2: characteristic of a human, of a human. You know, they're
Speaker 2: humans first, yes, and it's.
Speaker 1: A continuum it's a continuum, you know, yeah, from typical
Speaker 1: to more and more and more gifted. And you know
Speaker 1: when where's the cutoff for a prodigy? You know? David
Speaker 1: Feldon says it's when they can do adult work by
Speaker 1: age thirteen or below. That's his cutoff. I don't really
Speaker 1: care whether we can classify a child as a prodigy
Speaker 1: or an almost prodigy. I think we just have to
Speaker 1: think of this as a continuum. And if children are
Speaker 1: not getting adequately stimulated in school, something needs to be
Speaker 1: done because we don't want them to get bored and
Speaker 1: turned off of school. And I know a child right
Speaker 1: now who's in second grade who's experiencing that, and I
Speaker 1: worry about it.
Speaker 2: I worry about that a lot too. And I worry
Speaker 2: about the pressure to achieve that these kids feel, and
Speaker 2: the shame, the shame they may feel.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's why I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: good idea for parents to put their kids on the
Speaker 1: public stage, whether it's performing music or being on Spelling
Speaker 1: Bee programs or whiz Kid programs on TV. I just
Speaker 1: do not think this is good for children. It's stressful,
Speaker 1: and it may make them feel they're better than others,
Speaker 1: and it may make them feel like that's what their
Speaker 1: parents love them for and nothing else.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. That's a really, really truly great point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's almost like there's this sense that a lot of
Speaker 2: the kids feel like the only reason why they have
Speaker 2: worth in this world is because of their talent.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, and that they should stay in that area
Speaker 1: as they grow up because they have to kind of
Speaker 1: make a commitment to it. And that's not fair either.
Speaker 1: They may well go want to go into something completely different.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the kids that I studied in
Speaker 1: my book was a math prodigy. I called him a
Speaker 1: number boy because he called himself that. He's now in
Speaker 1: law school.
Speaker 2: Can you be accomplished, not even accomplished, but can you, like,
Speaker 2: can you become gifted? I'm not saying prodigies because I
Speaker 2: understand prodigies has a specific age limit. You can't be
Speaker 2: a fifty year old prodigy. I get that, I get that,
Speaker 2: But can you fifty year Can you be fifty year
Speaker 2: old and suddenly become gifted at something?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe you didn't realize that you had a gift
Speaker 1: in some area and then you find that area and
Speaker 1: you find that you're gifted in it. I think it's
Speaker 1: I don't believe that you can work in music all
Speaker 1: your life and then suddenly become and not be more
Speaker 1: than typical, and then suddenly at age fifty become gifted
Speaker 1: in music. Because I do think of gifted as an
Speaker 1: as part of you. It's not something think you said
Speaker 1: it's it's not an essence, but uh, what is it?
Speaker 1: What would it mean to say you've become gifted? If
Speaker 1: we're saying that giftedness has a genetic component, a biological component.
Speaker 2: Well, the way that it's often presented in these talent
Speaker 2: is Overrated books is these best selling books, you know,
Speaker 2: like Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, et cetera. They the way
Speaker 2: that they view that situation is that what this is
Speaker 2: what they'll say. They'll say, what appears like some innate
Speaker 2: talent is really so many years of hard work and
Speaker 2: that and that what you don't see is all the
Speaker 2: boring tasks that they do and all the hard work
Speaker 2: they do. So that's their narrative they're putting forward about
Speaker 2: the situation.
Speaker 1: That's when I'm right, and what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: it takes any typical child is not going to work
Speaker 1: that hard. I mean, what typical child is going to
Speaker 1: sit down at the piano and practice for four hours day?
Speaker 2: Leave an adult. I'm tking about adults too, yeah, fifty
Speaker 2: year olds. I'm talking about adults as well, Like.
Speaker 1: Fifty Okay, what typical adult is going to do that?
Speaker 1: You have to you have to experience that. It has
Speaker 1: to come easily to you, and you have to get
Speaker 1: flow from it. And if it's not something that you
Speaker 1: particularly get good at, you can work at it. But
Speaker 1: I think working hard without talent is not going to
Speaker 1: get you that far. In my book, I have a
Speaker 1: child who drew trains obsessively as a very young child,
Speaker 1: pre K, and his trains did get better, but they
Speaker 1: were nothing on the level of what child prodigies in
Speaker 1: art do. So I think it's it's just yeah, that's
Speaker 1: can work hard on things, but you're not going to
Speaker 1: get to the level. You're not going to get to
Speaker 1: be a Yo yom not just by working hard. You've
Speaker 1: got to have some kind of proclivity to music.
Speaker 2: Logical mike mike drop, mike drop. That's an expression they
Speaker 2: used to say, you drop the mic, you last, you
Speaker 2: have the last word on the situation that's.
Speaker 1: You want me to turn the mic off.
Speaker 2: There's an expression, there's okay, okay, Obama's Obama's last speech.
Speaker 2: He he did his mic drop he's he he said
Speaker 2: his last thing that was amazing, dropped the mic ellen. Okay,
Speaker 2: of course, Well so that is amazing what you just said,
Speaker 2: and so so profound because there really that really isn't
Speaker 2: that the majority narrative. That really isn't the majority narrative now.
Speaker 2: But I will say this, and uh, I'm sure you'll agree.
Speaker 2: It's possible to have the absorption and interest not have
Speaker 2: the talent, and that can still carry you pretty far. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe there are limits on how far that can take you.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've recently gotten into magic at this age.
Speaker 2: I'm older, you know, but I've gone down the rabbit hole,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if I have a talent for it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I tell you I love it,
Speaker 2: and I just get in the flow state by trying
Speaker 2: to master master all sorts of methods that I'm learning.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we don't know anything about prodigies in magic,
Speaker 1: but I would guess that if you're really drawn to
Speaker 1: it and you're working hard, at it, and of course
Speaker 1: all self driven. No teacher is giving you this as
Speaker 1: an assignment. We do have a talent. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what intelligence is it takes to be a good musician magician,
Speaker 1: but certainly inter personal would have to be very important
Speaker 1: because you have to be able to fool people. M
Speaker 1: and maybe spatial because you have to be very deft
Speaker 1: with your hands.
Speaker 2: Psychology too, Yes, right, you have to.
Speaker 1: But that's what I meant by inter personally. You have
Speaker 1: to kind of understand other people's minds and understand how
Speaker 1: you want them to believe what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Right, right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, I'm a I'm
Speaker 2: a mentalist, which is a form of magic where you
Speaker 2: read people's minds. Oh, it's called mentalism. I love it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you pretend you get people to believe you're
Speaker 1: reading their minds, or you really do read their minds.
Speaker 2: I think it's a combination.
Speaker 1: Well, you have to pay very careful attention to the
Speaker 1: little subtle cues, leakages in their face, you know, leakages
Speaker 1: of their If they're they're tapping their foot very quickly
Speaker 1: while they're smiling, you might think there that that's a
Speaker 1: sign that's leaking out of them. That shows they're really stressed.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. But back
Speaker 2: to you, back to you here. You've written two additional
Speaker 2: books about arts education and an Art in the Psychology
Speaker 2: of Art. One is called an Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse,
Speaker 2: Art Education from Colonial Time to a Promising Feature, and
Speaker 2: How art Works a psychological exploration. So I just want
Speaker 2: to be thinking, Okay, studio amazing, Well, your body of
Speaker 2: work is incredible. So what what makes something art?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: What a question? That is right?
Speaker 1: What are the first chance? I know, I know it's
Speaker 1: my first chapter. And how art works? And that is
Speaker 1: that basically, don't confuse the question of what is art
Speaker 1: with what is good art? If I put it in
Speaker 1: a museum, it is functioning as art. You may think
Speaker 1: it's junk, but it is called art. So whatever art is,
Speaker 1: it's something that we set aside and put a special
Speaker 1: put it in a special place, and ask people to
Speaker 1: respond to it. And it's a socially constructed category. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like tree, which is a biological category. It's
Speaker 1: something that humans have constructed.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I mean there's so many thousands of years
Speaker 2: where all we had were aesthetic can axes that were
Speaker 2: they got more and more aesthetic. But that's that's it
Speaker 2: didn't dawn on until culture was created. It didn't dawn
Speaker 2: on us. We could do more with our creativity than
Speaker 2: more ornamental.
Speaker 1: Hand in don't forget the cave paintings.
Speaker 2: That's true that that came a little bit later, but no,
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right, you're absolute right. And also the cave
Speaker 2: paintings show our our human drive for significance because you
Speaker 2: see a lot of a lot of people, you know
Speaker 2: that you see there they're signing their their names in
Speaker 2: the way that they have at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get some posterity, you know. So there's also
Speaker 2: that drive that's shown in the paintings.
Speaker 1: But are you saying the cave paintings were signed.
Speaker 2: Well, what you do see our handprints.
Speaker 1: Yes, and sometimes considered the artist's signature.
Speaker 2: That's the way I personally, That's why I said, in
Speaker 2: their own way, you know, signed in their own and
Speaker 2: whatever that meant in there that I think that's the
Speaker 2: that humans were trying to get out, you know, like
Speaker 2: the Chavelet Cave. You know, they found all.
Speaker 1: These Yes, I've seen those.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, people have debated the function of those
Speaker 1: cave paintings for a long time, and I don't think
Speaker 1: we're ever going to know. Is it to inspire people
Speaker 1: to go out for the hunt? Is it to make
Speaker 1: themselves admired so they'll get a mate? You know, that's
Speaker 1: what evolutionary psychologists might say. So we can speculate, but
Speaker 1: certainly the artistic urge was there from the very beginning
Speaker 1: of being human.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's for sure. Why do we seek out
Speaker 2: and even share it sorrow and fear from art when
Speaker 2: we don't go out of our way to experience those
Speaker 2: things in real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very puzzling question psychologically and philosophically, but
Speaker 1: we certainly do. So we can look at a painting
Speaker 1: depicting war like Wernica by Picasso and think this is
Speaker 1: powerful and even beauty full, and it makes us also
Speaker 1: confront the sadness and the painting. But we don't mind
Speaker 1: doing that. And you know, Winfrey manning House has written
Speaker 1: about this from he was the former head of thenox
Speaker 1: Plank Institute in Germany. We put an esthetic frame around
Speaker 1: it so it's not happening to us, so there's a
Speaker 1: certain distancing, aesthetic distancing, and so we can savor these emotions,
Speaker 1: these negative emotions, because we know that they exist. They
Speaker 1: exist in our lives personally, and so we want to
Speaker 1: understand them. And we can find beauty in the formal
Speaker 1: properties of the arts that convey sadness. Plenty of very
Speaker 1: beautiful sad music that makes you feel sad, but it
Speaker 1: also is beautiful. So I think it's it's the concept
Speaker 1: of being moved. We really like to feel moved, and
Speaker 1: we get moved, particularly by sad art, by tragic art,
Speaker 1: because it's so strong and it gives us a feeling
Speaker 1: of meaning and understanding. It's it's kind of surprising that
Speaker 1: humans will pay money to feel sad, or to even
Speaker 1: feel horror. I might feel horror by looking at Guernica.
Speaker 1: Have you run away from that in your own life,
Speaker 1: because it's not distanced, it's happening to you.
Speaker 2: It's true. Does art help us increase our empathy towards
Speaker 2: others that are very different from ourselves.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting question, and it's a very feel
Speaker 1: good claim that art makes us more empathetic. I'm skeptical, though,
Speaker 1: I have one study showing something very specific in that area.
Speaker 1: But I'm skeptical because there's so many examples of people
Speaker 1: who are not empathetic who understood art and loved art.
Speaker 1: And the best example is the Nazis. They loved art,
Speaker 1: they collected it, and they listened to music, classical music,
Speaker 1: and they loved Wagner. And yet look what they showed
Speaker 1: no empathy. So my feeling what the study that I
Speaker 1: did on this, I said, I think we can't just
Speaker 1: we have to look at a specific kind of art
Speaker 1: about a specific issue and it might lead to empathy.
Speaker 1: So what we looked at were a story about immigrants
Speaker 1: who had been brought over as children and who were
Speaker 1: not did not have citizenship, and they were living in
Speaker 1: huge amount of stress, and we showed and we wanted
Speaker 1: to find out whether people who read that book as
Speaker 1: opposed to newspaper clippings about the plight of immigrants, whether
Speaker 1: the book people would actually change their attitudes towards undocumented
Speaker 1: immigrants in a more empathetic direction. And we were able
Speaker 1: to show that, but we did not show that it
Speaker 1: changed their behavior because we couldn't test their behavior. All
Speaker 1: we showed is it changed their attitudes, and that lasted
Speaker 1: for several months because we tested them again and their
Speaker 1: attitudes remained change. But that doesn't mean that art in
Speaker 1: general can do this. It may be specific to narrative
Speaker 1: art about a specific issue, and maybe it can change
Speaker 1: your mind about that issue. But I think it's very,
Speaker 1: very difficult to change people's minds towards and make them
Speaker 1: more empathetic by a one shot thing. There has to
Speaker 1: be a long process, and it probably has to involve
Speaker 1: talking and discussing with the say children who are being
Speaker 1: shown artworks. There's no good evidence that looking at works
Speaker 1: of art improves people's empathy. What works of visual art
Speaker 1: or listening to sad music improves their empathy? Those kind
Speaker 1: of general empathy. The only thing I can pinpoint is
Speaker 1: attitude change in the direction of empathy. If it's if
Speaker 1: the artwork is connected to that attitude change.
Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate that honesty, but that makes a
Speaker 2: lot of common sense as well. You know, context matters
Speaker 2: is basically what you're saying, right, is art making therapeutic?
Speaker 2: What do you think of art? I mean, our art
Speaker 2: therapy is a whole business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there is quite a bit of evidence on that,
Speaker 1: and I know, you know, Jen Drake and her her
Speaker 1: work has shun her that making art, even very simple,
Speaker 1: making a simple drawing, improves mood into a more positive direction,
Speaker 1: whether it's children or adults, and that may be part
Speaker 1: of the basis of art therapy. Of course, art therapy
Speaker 1: is different because it involves a therapist who's talking to
Speaker 1: you about your art and interpreting it. And but what
Speaker 1: Jen has shown is simply making art improves mood for
Speaker 1: at least some amount of time, and that it improves
Speaker 1: well being. She also showed that people have turned to
Speaker 1: the arts during the COVID pandemic, and I think that
Speaker 1: certainly tells you something about people trying to find comfort.
Speaker 2: I'm still getting a little I'm still getting a little
Speaker 2: hung up on what art is and what art isn't.
Speaker 2: What isn't art? What isn't art is? Why is science
Speaker 2: not art?
Speaker 1: Okay, what isn't art? This glass here? If I put
Speaker 1: this in a museum and gave it a title like
Speaker 1: glass half full or whatever, yes that's art. You may
Speaker 1: think it's of no interest at all, but it is art.
Speaker 1: But by itself it's just an object. Now. Nelson Goodman,
Speaker 1: who was the founder of Project Zero, was very interested
Speaker 1: in the difference between symbols used in the arts and
Speaker 1: symbols used in science. And he said, you could take
Speaker 1: the same zigzag line, and in the context of a
Speaker 1: electro cardiogram cardiograph, that would be a scientific symbol. But
Speaker 1: if you take that same line and put a frame
Speaker 1: around it and put in a museum, people start attending
Speaker 1: to certain features that they didn't attend to in the
Speaker 1: scientific graph. They attend to the color of the line,
Speaker 1: the texture, whether there are any variations in thickness. So
Speaker 1: he called that repleteness, that the symbol becomes replete when
Speaker 1: we think of as art, but we look right through
Speaker 1: it when they think of it as science, because we're
Speaker 1: not interested in the texture of the line. We could
Speaker 1: translate that graph into numbers and get exactly the same information.
Speaker 2: I see, I think, I get it. I mean, well, so,
Speaker 2: but I mean science can be art, then, I mean
Speaker 2: data itself can be art in the right context, in
Speaker 2: the right presentation, I should say, in the right presentation
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you put your scatter plot in yes, yes,
Speaker 1: then people will The argument is that then people will
Speaker 1: actually look at differently and they will start to perceive
Speaker 1: properties that were not important? Got it when they were
Speaker 1: looking at it as just a plain scatter plot.
Speaker 2: Got it. Thank you for giving me the clearst answer
Speaker 2: to that question of why is science not art? Anyone's
Speaker 2: ever given to me in my entire life. So thank you.
Speaker 2: And why is that important? Why is art important in schools?
Speaker 2: Why are they cutting arts programs? And what are your
Speaker 2: thoughts on what we should be doing about that?
Speaker 1: Well, of course I think that's a very sad thing
Speaker 1: that we're cutting art in schools, or that they're always
Speaker 1: the first thing to be cut when there's a budget crunch,
Speaker 1: because art is important for people's well being, and I
Speaker 1: think it's There are all kinds of reasons. One, it's
Speaker 1: important for students' well being. Two, students might be talented
Speaker 1: in an art form and never know it and may
Speaker 1: not be good in academic subjects. And if there's art
Speaker 1: in school, they may discover their talent and realize that
Speaker 1: they could go on in a career somehow related to
Speaker 1: visual art or music. And the other reason is that
Speaker 1: art is a fundamental part of being human, and if
Speaker 1: kids in school should be I think that schools should
Speaker 1: be teaching kids about the most important things that humans
Speaker 1: have ever done. And that includes science, but it also
Speaker 1: includes the arts, and if you leave that out, I
Speaker 1: think they're getting a lopsided education. Yeah, it's also the
Speaker 1: only it's probably the only area in school where they're
Speaker 1: doing something which doesn't have right and wrong.
Speaker 2: Answers, divergent thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pash forbid.
Speaker 1: Now, not all art education is creative. There's some very
Speaker 1: bad art education. And in our several books called Studio Thinking,
Speaker 1: where we have new editions of them, but we called
Speaker 1: it studio Thinking the Real Value of Visual Art Education,
Speaker 1: and we study the best teachers and visual very strong
Speaker 1: teachers in visual art, and we found that these teachers
Speaker 1: were teaching their kids artistic dispositions or artistic ways of thinking,
Speaker 1: learning to look really carefully, learning to express themselves, learning
Speaker 1: to reflect on what they're doing and take criticism and revise.
Speaker 1: Very important thinking dispositions that can be taught in strong
Speaker 1: arts education programs. And it may well be that those
Speaker 1: skills transfer to other domains, like you may become a
Speaker 1: better observer in science if you learn to observe closely
Speaker 1: in art. But that should never be the justification for
Speaker 1: having art classes, because art should be considered important in itself.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about the value of math because it
Speaker 1: might transfer to understanding musical skills. We just assume that
Speaker 1: math is important on its own.
Speaker 2: Love that. Well, you make a good case for why
Speaker 2: we shouldn't cut these programs in schools, and and concominantly,
Speaker 2: And I don't think I just invented that word concominantly,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it's a word. But anyway, similarly,
Speaker 2: along similar lines, we shouldn't cut gifted programs for similar reasons. Yep,
Speaker 2: because we have a lot of kids who are going
Speaker 2: to be even if they don't become the most high
Speaker 2: achieving artist in the world, they still are going to
Speaker 2: contribute great, great things to culture and even art class.
Speaker 1: I would say in art class, you may not need
Speaker 1: a gifted art class because kids work at their own
Speaker 1: pace in art.
Speaker 2: Cool and good point.
Speaker 3: So yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: I was just trying to tie everything up in a
Speaker 2: neat bow at the end of this interview. Well, let's
Speaker 2: not cut gift You will agree, though, let's not cut
Speaker 2: arts programs. Let's not cut gifted programs.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But I think that most parents would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's not cut art programs. But if you say to them,
Speaker 1: would you rather have art classes cut or would you
Speaker 1: rather have math classes cut? They'll say, Matt, I'd rather
Speaker 1: have the art classes cut. But generally there's public approval
Speaker 1: of keeping art in our schools. But the idea of
Speaker 1: gifted programs is very controversial because people worry that it's
Speaker 1: keeping out minorities, and unfortunately that may sometimes happen. So
Speaker 1: we have to search hard for kids from underrepresented groups
Speaker 1: to be put into these programs. But it's an unpopular
Speaker 1: view because it's maybe considered elitist.
Speaker 2: All right, the answer is to expand the search, not
Speaker 2: limit women excellence exactly. Ellen Winter, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for being on my show today and for the legendary
Speaker 2: work that you've done in the field and for personally
Speaker 2: inspiring me to do what I do.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Scott, it's been a pleasure talking
Speaker 1: to you, ask great questions.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Glad we finally got this one in the can.