Speaker 1: If where we're headed is trying to intentionally cultivate the
Speaker 1: full potential that people have, you need a different frame
Speaker 1: than the assumptions that underpin traditional psychometrics. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Todd Rose to
Speaker 1: the show. Todd is the co founder and president of Populace,
Speaker 1: a nonprofit think tank that works to find solutions to
Speaker 1: redistribute opportunity so all people have the chance to live
Speaker 1: fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he
Speaker 1: was a faculty member at Harvard University, where he founded
Speaker 1: the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind,
Speaker 1: Brain and Education Program. Todd is the best selling author
Speaker 1: of Dark Horse in the End of Average, and his
Speaker 1: most recent book is called Collective Illusions. What you're about
Speaker 1: to hear today is part one of a two part series.
Speaker 1: Todd and I had so much to talk about that
Speaker 1: we had to split it up into two parts. Today
Speaker 1: you'll hear our common interests in redefined intelligence and the amazing,
Speaker 1: amazingly important work Todd has done along those lines. Todd
Speaker 1: has argued that we really need to move away from
Speaker 1: these traditional metrics of measuring intelligence and valuing general cognito
Speaker 1: ability and what he refers to as jagged profiles, which
Speaker 1: all of us have. You know, all of us have
Speaker 1: amazing areas of strengths and amazing areas of weaknesses or
Speaker 1: profound areas of weaknesses. So I really like Todd's model
Speaker 1: of looking at intelligence because it really does emphasize the
Speaker 1: point that there's no such thing as average. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, I'll bring you Todd Rose. Hey, Todd, it's
Speaker 1: so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast today. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Scott. I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you for quite some time now, and on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I love your work. You know, we're obviously going to
Speaker 1: talk about your new work, but can I just start
Speaker 1: a second and go back to your original work and
Speaker 1: the experiences you had in education, because I know we
Speaker 1: really bond over that, and would you mind kind of
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about how you felt as a
Speaker 1: as a student. Are you okay talking about this or
Speaker 1: are you kind of you've moved on. It's funny, you know,
Speaker 1: you and I have very similar stories, and in my case,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a professor for quite a long time,
Speaker 1: got my doctorate, from Harvard. But before that, I was
Speaker 1: a high school dropout. And it's funny, it's at this
Speaker 1: i'd say, when I say a high school dropout, I
Speaker 1: actually failed out with a zero point nine GPA, which
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like now that like you have
Speaker 1: to work really hard to do that poorly, like, but
Speaker 1: you have to be willful, willful. Yeah, yeah, like it
Speaker 1: just just to not even get the social promotion right
Speaker 1: out of it all. But you know, not too long
Speaker 1: after filling out, my girlfriend who's still my wife today,
Speaker 1: found out she was pregnant, so we were I was
Speaker 1: like high school drop out with a kid on the way,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's just look what I experienced through
Speaker 1: most of education was just how poor of a fit
Speaker 1: it was between this sort of standardized institution and me
Speaker 1: as an individual. And for a long time I just
Speaker 1: internalized that as something wrong with me. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until out of sheer desperation I was able to go
Speaker 1: to get my ged, go to college, figure out how
Speaker 1: to make it work for myself. And then I ended
Speaker 1: up at Harvard working with a guy n in Kurt Fisher,
Speaker 1: who was like this preeminent scholar, Yeah, in this science
Speaker 1: of the individual and realized that actually so much of
Speaker 1: it was more in the design of the institutions that
Speaker 1: were built around an average person that we now knew
Speaker 1: didn't exist. And so it really actually made me quite
Speaker 1: angry because I felt like I'd internalized so much of
Speaker 1: that poor fit as a reflection of me and my abilities,
Speaker 1: and so that really fueled me in terms of wanting
Speaker 1: to really dive into this new science and understand individuality
Speaker 1: and what that means for not just education, but like
Speaker 1: it's already transforming you know, things like nutrition, you know,
Speaker 1: cancer research and treatment, you know, all precision medicine, so
Speaker 1: you know, out of personal experience, you know, fuel intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity that led to my career. Yeah, thank you, Todd.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you'd be okay with us dedicating
Speaker 1: this episode to Kurt Fisher to the memory of him.
Speaker 1: He passed away recently and may he rest in peace.
Speaker 1: I've never mentioned this on any of my podcasts, but
Speaker 1: when I was deciding for grad school where to go
Speaker 1: to grad school, the two places I was deciding was
Speaker 1: to either I was accepted to work with Kurt Fisher
Speaker 1: at Harvard where Robert Sternberg at Yale and that was
Speaker 1: one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make,
Speaker 1: but so easily I could have ended up at Harvard
Speaker 1: and have been your colleague. I'm not saying you made it,
Speaker 1: you made a bad choice, but it could have happened. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: look like I mean it. It was like I'm so
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to to dedicate Yeah that it's Kurt
Speaker 1: was a brilliant scholar. My life would be completely different
Speaker 1: without as a mentor. You know. I dedicated End of Average,
Speaker 1: one of my previous books, to him, and he just
Speaker 1: he was such a kind person too, like just just
Speaker 1: such a wonderful human being. So thank you. Agreed, Absolutely agreed.
Speaker 1: And his work was pretty revolutionary in the field of
Speaker 1: phenominal psychology and his thinking about intelligence. And that was
Speaker 1: the main inroad that I had with him, was I
Speaker 1: was this like twenty two year old kid who's like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to redefine intelligence. So I didn't know how,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to. I was like, we got to
Speaker 1: read inteligence and I I didn't have it all figured
Speaker 1: out yet, not like I have it all figured out out.
Speaker 1: But what I really liked about his approach was this
Speaker 1: kind of like very it was like micro like looking
Speaker 1: at the moments, the full process of the creative process
Speaker 1: and at a really detailed level that allow us to
Speaker 1: more fully capture what it means to be human. Could
Speaker 1: you maybe talk a little bit about his approach that
Speaker 1: he pioneered, the mythological approach, which is quite innovative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So his specific theory was dynamic skill theory, right, and
Speaker 1: to your point, like it was situated in broader dynamic
Speaker 1: systems theory. And you know, it's so funny because psychology
Speaker 1: in general is one of the few fields that was
Speaker 1: born out of statistics in some way, right, Like it's like,
Speaker 1: but statistics is funny, right, because my dad, who's an engineer,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, it's really funny about psychology. It's
Speaker 1: like the only field that he felt like that uses
Speaker 1: math that abstracts away from the phenomenon you're actually trying
Speaker 1: to understand, right, Like you're trying most psychology is about
Speaker 1: understanding individual human beings. Otherwise we're be sociology, right, and
Speaker 1: yet we rely on statistical methods that absolutely cannot tell
Speaker 1: you anything about individuals. They can tell you about groups,
Speaker 1: and then we just assumed that it says something about individuals.
Speaker 1: And so Kurt was part of a small group of
Speaker 1: people who were starting to think about the application of
Speaker 1: dynamic systems theory in some of these or these methodologies
Speaker 1: that were capable of modeling individuals and thinking about how
Speaker 1: that you could scale up an entire science that gave
Speaker 1: you generalizable statements starting with individuals and Kurt's Kurt's application
Speaker 1: of that was to development, which is kind of funny, right,
Speaker 1: because the development is by definition change, right, and yet
Speaker 1: we're using methods that are incapable of modeling change, so
Speaker 1: you know. And so what was so fascinating and amazing
Speaker 1: about Kurt's work and I actually think dynamic skill theory
Speaker 1: was so far ahead of its time that it will
Speaker 1: be it was will look it will become more and
Speaker 1: more mainstream as the years go on. But his ability
Speaker 1: to model an individual with their full complexity, right, the
Speaker 1: multi dimensionality of a human being, and import certainly in context, right,
Speaker 1: because so much of psychology abstracts away from the context,
Speaker 1: and we talk about personality types or things like that,
Speaker 1: And what Kurt was able to show is it just
Speaker 1: you can't describe behavior that way. And if you start
Speaker 1: to take person in context, seriously, not only can you
Speaker 1: get accurate statements, your predictive power goes way up. And
Speaker 1: so I just you know, it taught me a lot
Speaker 1: about how to see the world. And man, I just
Speaker 1: I can't say enough about it. Just how grateful I
Speaker 1: am to have been able to be in that kind
Speaker 1: of intellectual environment. Not so much Harvard, although I liked Harvard.
Speaker 1: That the environment Kurt created the way he would push
Speaker 1: us to think for ourselves and do big things. And
Speaker 1: then one of the things he did that was so
Speaker 1: remarkable was when he founded the Mind Brand education program
Speaker 1: with Howard Gardner, he intentionally said, we are never going
Speaker 1: to be at each other's throats. So many other programs
Speaker 1: pit students against students, and he created a culture with
Speaker 1: norms where we really had each other's back and we
Speaker 1: were proud of each other. And to this day, you know,
Speaker 1: just the friends that I have that were I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to make you feel bad for making the wrong choice,
Speaker 1: but I feel I know, I'm like, does that make
Speaker 1: the wrong choice? I'm on your podcast, so something went right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it no, it's wonderful. It's really wonderful to hear
Speaker 1: about that. And I'd like to double click a little
Speaker 1: bit on your unique contributions as well, which have been
Speaker 1: very significant. We're obviously both standing on the shoulders of
Speaker 1: the giants that are Kurt Fisher, Harro Gardner, Robert Sternberg, etc.
Speaker 1: But I love your own way of thinking about this.
Speaker 1: To answer this question about your own theory, I want
Speaker 1: to go in by asking this, do you see any
Speaker 1: value to the standard psychometric model of like you testing?
Speaker 1: Do you see any value in the standard model before
Speaker 1: we get to your model? I do not, Look, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that might be too harsh, right, Like, here's
Speaker 1: my problem with it. It's like what are we trying
Speaker 1: to do? Right? Like so much measurement we forget, like
Speaker 1: what really is our goal? And a lot of the
Speaker 1: standard psychometric models, you know, they made assumptions about human
Speaker 1: beings that are demonstratively false now, right, so we can
Speaker 1: forgive them, whether they realize that back then or not.
Speaker 1: And most of it is really about trying to compare
Speaker 1: people with either other people or a hypothetical average person, right,
Speaker 1: so that you get a nice spell curve and we
Speaker 1: can say something about your relative rank. Okay, look, is
Speaker 1: there some value that I don't know? I don't see
Speaker 1: a lot of value in it. I'm open to the
Speaker 1: idea that there's some value that I'm just blind to.
Speaker 1: But what's frustrating to me is in my mind, whether
Speaker 1: in education the point should be the cultivation of human potential,
Speaker 1: the cultivation of uniqueness and potential and helping people convert
Speaker 1: that into contribution. In that case, I need to know
Speaker 1: more about you as Scott, your your aspirations, your abilities,
Speaker 1: and from my perspective and from Kurt's perspective, who I
Speaker 1: learned it from. You're not separating ability independent context is
Speaker 1: kind of a silly statement, right, and so I want
Speaker 1: to know who you are, what you care about, your
Speaker 1: what we would call like a jagged profile of abilities,
Speaker 1: and then work like crazy to create an environment that
Speaker 1: really fits you so that you can develop your full
Speaker 1: potential make your best contribution. If that's the aim, then
Speaker 1: a lot of traditional psychometric models don't they fall short? Right,
Speaker 1: I guess is the most generous way I could describe it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for elucidating that. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: a jagged profile. The psychometrics can still help you understand
Speaker 1: a person's jagged profile, though, right, Because I got a
Speaker 1: lot of educational opportunities in inhibited, like a lot of
Speaker 1: things were shut down for me because of my global
Speaker 1: IQ score. But interestingly enough, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: my friend Rex Young, the neuroscientist of intelligence, He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't buy that you're stupid. I'm gonna I'm wanna
Speaker 1: look at your brain. And so I went to University
Speaker 1: of Mexico and I and he gave me an a
Speaker 1: full battery IQ test. He gave me a brain scan everything.
Speaker 1: And the conclusion which I wished my ten year old
Speaker 1: school psychologist looked at, is that the real interesting data
Speaker 1: was in the jacket profile. It was it was the
Speaker 1: fact that I really stuck legitimately at visual mental rotation.
Speaker 1: It's true, and I could own that. But I'm and
Speaker 1: I say this with all due humility, but this is objective,
Speaker 1: verbally gifted, verbally gifted. So they totally missed that. I mean,
Speaker 1: even though I loved writing, I loved I wrote novels
Speaker 1: when I was eight years old, nine years old, but
Speaker 1: all that was ignored, All that was ignored because of
Speaker 1: the global IQ score. So I think this is your
Speaker 1: point right to a large degree. And what's great, here's
Speaker 1: the thing and so now I'll come back from the
Speaker 1: extreme because I think you're exactly right. Look, when we
Speaker 1: think about yeah, so it's funny because we've known that
Speaker 1: since the very first days of IQ testing that when
Speaker 1: when you look at sub scores and their patterns, right,
Speaker 1: there's just massive individual variation, and we just willfully ignore that. Right,
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. One reason why I believe we
Speaker 1: ignored it is it's very hard to rank patterns. But
Speaker 1: I can rank a single score. And if what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do is rank people, I just what do
Speaker 1: I do with a jagged profile? Right? But what you
Speaker 1: see is and what we find is like this is true.
Speaker 1: You know I wrote about it an end of average.
Speaker 1: Whether it's body size or mental abilities, people all have
Speaker 1: these jagged profiles. Meaning like so something like body size
Speaker 1: is not one dimensional, right we think of it that way, small, medium, large,
Speaker 1: extra large. It doesn't work that way. Really, that's just
Speaker 1: a shortcut because of production constraints. Right, So everybody's on
Speaker 1: the high end on some aspects of like size is
Speaker 1: multi dimensional. And what's fascinating is is that those dimensions
Speaker 1: just don't correlate with each other like we'd like to
Speaker 1: think they do. So it means that you're going to
Speaker 1: be high on some things, in the middle on other things,
Speaker 1: and on the low end on other things. Right, everybody
Speaker 1: like and you know, the US Air Force learned that
Speaker 1: the hard way in the fifties when trying to design
Speaker 1: design fighter jet cockpits, right, that that didn't really fit anybody.
Speaker 1: But in the mental space, you know, to your point, So,
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing to know about you is the
Speaker 1: jagged profile. Right, And this is not to say that
Speaker 1: people don't have weaknesses. Of course we all do. Everybody does.
Speaker 1: And so now, so understanding that profile starts to tell
Speaker 1: me something. But then the question again is what am
Speaker 1: I trying to do with that information? And traditionally, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's not the psychometric methods so much as the
Speaker 1: intention of the people that we're creating them. It was like,
Speaker 1: I don't really care about that. I just need to
Speaker 1: find the people who are sort of gifted who deserve
Speaker 1: more resources. Right, It's like a sorting mechanism. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's take even the jagged profile. Well, if you ignore context,
Speaker 1: then you're still in trouble. Right, So what I'll share
Speaker 1: a story because it's funny because people think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing for me, but it's just it's hilarious. So
Speaker 1: remember that on the gr like, I don't know when
Speaker 1: you took it. When I took it, it had you know,
Speaker 1: quantitative verbal and then they had the analytical reasoning, which
Speaker 1: I don't think they have anymore. But it's like, and
Speaker 1: give me these questions, like I was, Oh, yes, it
Speaker 1: was brutal. I got almost a zero percent on the
Speaker 1: analytical and the same year they switched it, they added
Speaker 1: the writing thing, and then I got almost a perfect
Speaker 1: on the writing. So I was able so lucky to
Speaker 1: not submit the zero percent. The story is in the Gifted.
Speaker 1: Actually I have the story and unlifted. It's unbelievable. Right,
Speaker 1: So here here's my story. So I am. I have
Speaker 1: gone from a high school dropout zero point in n GPA.
Speaker 1: I am about to graduate from Weaber State University with
Speaker 1: a three point ninety seven Honor Student of the Year.
Speaker 1: My advisors said, you should apply to grad school. I'm
Speaker 1: the only person in my family to ever go to
Speaker 1: grad school. There. Back at that point, I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about that, and I had to take this standardized test,
Speaker 1: and I suck at stantidaized tests, right, well, I went
Speaker 1: on Saturdays to these prep sessions, and I was taking
Speaker 1: all the practice exams and like you, so I finally
Speaker 1: got up the quant score and the verbal score took
Speaker 1: like reasonable, you know, okay, I won't be laughed out
Speaker 1: of the room. And up until two weeks before I
Speaker 1: had to take the actual exam, I had never scored
Speaker 1: higher than the thirteenth percentile on the nather cour reasoning
Speaker 1: because it was just I could not get my head round.
Speaker 1: It's like armor, John has four rows and things, and
Speaker 1: corn can't be by peas, and peas can only be
Speaker 1: second whatever. And then it'd be like, okay, what's planted
Speaker 1: in row three, like third from left. I'm like, I know, wow,
Speaker 1: I don't okay. So here's what's crazy. There is a
Speaker 1: real point to this. So I'm sitt here thinking, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just not analytical right, like it is what it is.
Speaker 1: But I'm certainly not going to get in grad school.
Speaker 1: Probably not. You were not going to yell with a
Speaker 1: zero on this. And I was like, so I'm at
Speaker 1: my parents' house trying to say because we lived in
Speaker 1: a four hundred square foot apartment with kids, so I
Speaker 1: had to go there to study for it, and I
Speaker 1: was so frustrated two weeks before I to take it
Speaker 1: that I flung my pencil across the room. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that, right, I control myself, but like as my
Speaker 1: dad walked in and about hits him and he's just like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? And I finally told myself like
Speaker 1: I don't get this, and I'm really frustrated. And he's
Speaker 1: an engineer by training, and he walks over and he
Speaker 1: looks at it and he goes, well, that's a degree
Speaker 1: of freedom problem. And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't help me.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, right like, and he says,
Speaker 1: he said, well, how are you trying to do that?
Speaker 1: And I tell him I was trying to dot my
Speaker 1: head and he said, well, you have terrible working memory,
Speaker 1: which is definitely true. He said there's a visual way
Speaker 1: to do this, and he said look and he shows
Speaker 1: me this this diagram. He said, use that And I
Speaker 1: tried it on one problem and it was really easy
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that can't it can't be right, Like,
Speaker 1: it can't be that easy. But all the answers I
Speaker 1: had in the back, you know that every other answer
Speaker 1: they kept working for So I went to my to
Speaker 1: my tutor and I said, hey, look my dad told
Speaker 1: me I could use this. Does this work? And he goes, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you could use it. I just don't need to.
Speaker 1: That's what he told me. I'm like, wait, okay, so
Speaker 1: no kid, there's no kidding. I go two weeks later
Speaker 1: and I only missed one question on the entire analytical
Speaker 1: reasoning section. Wow, you went from thirteen yes. And so
Speaker 1: here's the thing. One story could be, look how smart
Speaker 1: I am in terms of analytical reasoning. The other story,
Speaker 1: and the one I think is correct, is that there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as aptitude that doesn't involve strategy. And
Speaker 1: it's like understanding that someone with my jagget profile with
Speaker 1: poor working memory, a strategy that is related to doing
Speaker 1: it in your head was going to make me look incoonfident.
Speaker 1: But getting the right strategy applied to my individuality and
Speaker 1: suddenly I look like the smartest person in the room,
Speaker 1: like I never forgot that right. And it's again, it's
Speaker 1: not about me being smart. It's about recognizing that we
Speaker 1: all have jagged profiles, and those jagged profiles have they
Speaker 1: are good in some context, poor in others. But there
Speaker 1: is always a strategy that can work for you, and
Speaker 1: we don't teach kids that right. Like, so I try
Speaker 1: something I don't do very well. Well, I'm not very
Speaker 1: good at it right, And to me, that's whether they
Speaker 1: amend it or not. That's the legacy of a lot
Speaker 1: of the psychometric approaches and the way we've chose chosen
Speaker 1: to use them in society is we're left thinking that
Speaker 1: we're smart or dumb mediocre, when in fact, as Kurt
Speaker 1: Fisher would have told anyone who would listen, the truth
Speaker 1: is a lot more complicated. Absolutely. When I was an undergrad,
Speaker 1: I was I studied with Herb Simon on the expertise
Speaker 1: approach and my senior honors thesis. Never again, I've never
Speaker 1: talked about a lot of stuff I'm telling about today
Speaker 1: on this podcast, but I think you'll appreciate this. My
Speaker 1: senior honors thesis, I was looking at isomorphs. I was
Speaker 1: fascinated with the idea of isomorphs, and I wondered, if
Speaker 1: you give people like patterns on IQ tests like ABC,
Speaker 1: what's next? You know, and they get harder and harder,
Speaker 1: and you take people who are musicians, but you just
Speaker 1: convert to musical notes, but it's the same exact pattern.
Speaker 1: Is there a correlation between your ability to solve it
Speaker 1: once you have the expertise versus the IQ type item?
Speaker 1: And I found the correlation was very low. So people
Speaker 1: could when they if there were musical experts and they
Speaker 1: heard the same a complex pattern in music, they were like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, dun duh, dun duh, the next one is
Speaker 1: but they couldn't get the same one right if it
Speaker 1: was just in numbers, you know, it's there were isomorphs.
Speaker 1: And so I think this relates to what you're saying
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, you know. And that was senior
Speaker 1: honors thesis. That's amazing. Yeah, and so think about just
Speaker 1: think about, like what I took away from all this
Speaker 1: research is we have woefully underestimated human potential, Like just
Speaker 1: wolfully underestimated. And maybe that was okay in a standardized
Speaker 1: industrial society that really didn't have a lot of use
Speaker 1: for divergent intelligence and diverse outcomes. They just did what
Speaker 1: do you do with it? Right? So what we were
Speaker 1: doing is trying to come up with tests that could
Speaker 1: sort people into their social roles, right and dole out
Speaker 1: reward and opportunity. Accordingly, in the sort of Frederick Taylor
Speaker 1: scientific management model, that world is gone now and we
Speaker 1: all know that things like creativity and passion and purpose matter.
Speaker 1: They matter. And what we're seeing is it was our
Speaker 1: assumptions about human potential that guaranteed the outcome as we
Speaker 1: were getting. And I look, I'm not saying my view
Speaker 1: of potential is not I'm not saying everybody's Einstein. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I mean, the jagged profiles would suggest that we all
Speaker 1: have some limitations. Like I love I would, I would
Speaker 1: love to play in the NFL. I don't have the
Speaker 1: ability first of it, like it'd be great. Right, you've
Speaker 1: broad shoulders. You could be aligned back? I do, I could,
Speaker 1: I could, okay, may maybe maybe I could be aligned right,
Speaker 1: I should broad shoulders. I'm six feet tall. I do,
Speaker 1: thank you, And I've been working out. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: notice of Scott. I can tell, but I can like,
Speaker 1: here's here's here's what I Here's what I'm saying. Everybody
Speaker 1: is capable of excellence of some form, everybody, and we
Speaker 1: do not know in advance what any one person is
Speaker 1: capable of accomplishing. We just don't you know, you think
Speaker 1: about the longitudinal studies using i Q trying to pick.
Speaker 1: They predict some things, which is middle management. They're really
Speaker 1: good at predicting like who will do well in the
Speaker 1: system we had created, but they miss so much brilliance.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that that kind of approach is
Speaker 1: a good national strategy, right. I think that if where
Speaker 1: we're headed is trying to intentionally cultivate the full potential
Speaker 1: that people have. You need a different frame than the
Speaker 1: assumptions that underpin traditional psychometrics. Yeah, well, Todd, I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree with you more. I feel like I'm your brother. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm just followed. This is good, No, this is like
Speaker 1: I'm like, I feel like we're part of the same
Speaker 1: family here and lovely everything you just said. What do
Speaker 1: you think teachers can do? And realistically in a classroom,
Speaker 1: teachers are incentivized to get their students up to standards, right,
Speaker 1: So what can we do to equip teachers with the
Speaker 1: capacity to transcend that? Yeah, teachers right now are in
Speaker 1: the hardest position of any profession that I know. And
Speaker 1: here's why they are operating in a one size fits
Speaker 1: all system when that's not really why they got into
Speaker 1: teaching anyway. I don't know any teacher that was like,
Speaker 1: what I really wanted was classroom management right and teaching
Speaker 1: to the test. They're stuck there. Meanwhile, what we've seen
Speaker 1: in our own data at my think tank is privately
Speaker 1: a revolution in terms of what the public wants and
Speaker 1: expects out of education. So they don't want better, they
Speaker 1: want different. They want a system that is doing the
Speaker 1: kinds of things you and I have been talking about,
Speaker 1: and they really do. It's across all demographics. That's different,
Speaker 1: not better, right, And so teachers have a really tough
Speaker 1: job here because in the constraints of the system as
Speaker 1: it's structured, it's next to impossible to do the things
Speaker 1: we're talking about. That doesn't mean we can't make progress, right,
Speaker 1: and we don't. We don't have to write off a
Speaker 1: whole generation and say, well, look, the next generation we're
Speaker 1: going to get it right, will transform the system. I
Speaker 1: think there are three really important things that we can do.
Speaker 1: The first is actually doing something for teachers, which is
Speaker 1: this a lot of human variation that matters when it
Speaker 1: comes to education is pretty systematic, right, It's not idiostocratic,
Speaker 1: it's not one off people very naturally let's just take
Speaker 1: something like their reading ability. In every classroom in the country,
Speaker 1: kids are going to vary in their reading ability. Well,
Speaker 1: if you know that in advance, that design the environment
Speaker 1: to accommodate that variation, create flexibility in the environment. Education
Speaker 1: is one of the few industries that still incentivizes average
Speaker 1: based design. Think about it. We call it like developmentally appropriate,
Speaker 1: which sounds good, but it just means what does the
Speaker 1: average kid of this age know and can do well
Speaker 1: with our digital technology phrase? Oh, it's just so, it's
Speaker 1: it's I you too. And it's like, so you take
Speaker 1: something take something like Universal Design for Learning, which is
Speaker 1: it's this is something that is in federal law that
Speaker 1: so any school, anywhere, any district can do it. It
Speaker 1: was created by someone named David Rose, who's no relation
Speaker 1: to me, but was mentor of mine. That says, here
Speaker 1: are the dimensions of human variation that matter for learning,
Speaker 1: and here's how you design for them. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you actually have that built into any curriculum, that's the
Speaker 1: first step, right, Like, it's like, there should be flexibility here,
Speaker 1: and we know how to do it, and it's unacceptable
Speaker 1: that we don't. Second is there's no substitute for the
Speaker 1: human relationship. None. Like I'm a big fan of technology.
Speaker 1: I think there's things that tech can do better sometimes,
Speaker 1: especially in the mastery space, but that should always be
Speaker 1: in service of freeing up time for the teacher student
Speaker 1: relationship and the student student relationship. I'm sure you probably
Speaker 1: have stories too for all the bad things I had
Speaker 1: in school. I am sitting here right now talking to
Speaker 1: you in part because when I got to college, I
Speaker 1: had phenomenal individual mentors and teachers who made all the
Speaker 1: difference in the world. Right So, And the third thing
Speaker 1: is is thinking about student aid agency a little more
Speaker 1: self determination. I'm not saying Lord of the flies, and
Speaker 1: whatever the kid wants to do, they get to do.
Speaker 1: But you can get a really long way seeding a
Speaker 1: little bit of control to kids, right Meaningful choice is
Speaker 1: motivating kids persevere on things that they have a say in.
Speaker 1: Right So, I look all those things we can do
Speaker 1: right now, and I think if we treated teachers with
Speaker 1: the respect they deserve to say, Look, let's show you
Speaker 1: what we know about development, about learning, about intelligence. Let's
Speaker 1: help you see that in the kids that are under
Speaker 1: your steward ship, I think we can get a long way. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: those of us that are operating on the system instead
Speaker 1: of in it, can do our work and trying to
Speaker 1: transform that system so it is actually working along with
Speaker 1: the teacher and a and on behalf of students. But again,
Speaker 1: I think we can do some things right now that
Speaker 1: we're just not doing one hundred percent. And I love
Speaker 1: the things that you're saying. There's a gap in the
Speaker 1: interpersonal story, though, I want to elucidate for our listeners. Now,
Speaker 1: you said you were a high school dropout. Now we
Speaker 1: fast forward and you just said you were in college.
Speaker 1: So what happened there in between? I'd like to say
Speaker 1: it was like super intentional, but it was like for
Speaker 1: two years after dropping out, I worked a string of
Speaker 1: minimum wage jobs, like the kind of jobs you could
Speaker 1: get if you don't have a high school diploma, right,
Speaker 1: and it culminated, you know, I was the four to
Speaker 1: thirty person in the morning at Einstein's Bagels. I sold
Speaker 1: television's cell phones like I literally with my wife we
Speaker 1: had a paper route, like my wife was selling blood
Speaker 1: plasma like, you know, just to get by. We ended
Speaker 1: up on welfare. That's bonding, which yeah, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: bonding with Hey, honey, ready for our paper route, not
Speaker 1: too weak from giving blood. But you know, I the
Speaker 1: last we were on welfare, which was a pretty humiliating
Speaker 1: experience in and of itself and really shaped a lot
Speaker 1: of the news I have right now about, you know,
Speaker 1: the way we treat people who face poverty. But the
Speaker 1: job I had before I made this change, there's no kidding.
Speaker 1: I was giving enemis for a living because as a
Speaker 1: home help associate, because it paid a dollar fifty more
Speaker 1: an hour than the job I've had, and I needed
Speaker 1: the money. And listen, it's it's it's honest work and
Speaker 1: somebody has to do it. I'm just glad it's not
Speaker 1: me anymore. And was that like a professional dominatrix context, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been great, that would have been This
Speaker 1: was this was people who couldn't get out of the
Speaker 1: house and needed that help, and they didn't want me there,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to be there, and you know,
Speaker 1: so you know, at the time, a lot of my
Speaker 1: on my wife's side, they were really frustrated me, and
Speaker 1: rightfully so, like I'd just taken their daughter from them,
Speaker 1: like and I couldn't see the whold of job. And
Speaker 1: my father in law said he actually told me that
Speaker 1: I know the problem is that you're lazy, and I
Speaker 1: started to internalize that, like maybe that's just me. And
Speaker 1: luckily my dad I happened to share that with him
Speaker 1: a day and he said, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: that it's that you're lazy. I think that you just
Speaker 1: always have to be motivated, because he said, like, when
Speaker 1: you're motivated, you're as good as anybody, and when you're not,
Speaker 1: you're not and there's like no in between, which is
Speaker 1: definitely true. He nailed that I would be the worst
Speaker 1: employee on the planet unless I really care about what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. And he said, you know, there's a path
Speaker 1: for you where you could make good money doing things
Speaker 1: that you love, but you can't get there where you
Speaker 1: are right now. And he said, you probably either need
Speaker 1: to start a business or you need to go to school.
Speaker 1: And since I had thirteen dollars in my bank account,
Speaker 1: which is probably a lie, I don't think it less
Speaker 1: than that, I was like, like, I know the first
Speaker 1: thing about business, So I said, well, you know, and
Speaker 1: here's what's really cool. So I chose to get my
Speaker 1: ged and go start at night school at Weaver State,
Speaker 1: which is an open enrollment school in Ogden, Utah. And
Speaker 1: it's funny when I graduated as an Honors Student of
Speaker 1: the Year got into Harvard. The first time a reporter
Speaker 1: ever talked to me was around this story. And the
Speaker 1: first question she asked is like, wait, hold on, why
Speaker 1: would you have thought it would be a good idea
Speaker 1: to try your hand at school again? And I just
Speaker 1: like it never dawned on me that like my absolute failure,
Speaker 1: like would suggest that I couldn't do it. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is my dad was the first high school
Speaker 1: graduate in our family, and he was a mechanic. And
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in grade school, he came
Speaker 1: home and he said, look, I think there's something more
Speaker 1: for me. And he decided he was going to go
Speaker 1: to school at night while he worked during the day
Speaker 1: and become and he became a mechanical engineer and he
Speaker 1: just retired. And I have to say, he always hates
Speaker 1: it when I brag about him, So sorry, Dad, if
Speaker 1: if you're listening, that he has he went and became
Speaker 1: a mechanical engineer, worked at Auto Leave, and he has
Speaker 1: so many patents on airbags. He is like responsible for
Speaker 1: so many innovations in that field that have saved so
Speaker 1: many people's lives, and it's like to recognize that. And
Speaker 1: I lived through that. I saw us go from living
Speaker 1: in a rural part of the country, solidly working class
Speaker 1: to becoming a middle class and you know, and and
Speaker 1: I saw it change him as a person. And so
Speaker 1: when it came time to thinking about my own, like
Speaker 1: how do I turn my life around? It was in
Speaker 1: some ways a lot easier for me than it was
Speaker 1: for him, because I had a clear model, right, an
Speaker 1: example of the awesome power of education to transform lives
Speaker 1: and life circumstances. So I went to the same school
Speaker 1: he went to there and wow, where did you go
Speaker 1: to college? Weaver State University, Ogden, Ogden, Utah Wildcats. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: Damian Lillard. Yeah, So we've got some, We've got some,
Speaker 1: We've got some good ones there. But it was very cheap.
Speaker 1: But even then I couldn't afford very much. My family
Speaker 1: and even my in laws cobbled together what they had.
Speaker 1: They said, this could get you through through one year,
Speaker 1: but if you can't get a scholarship, that's it. And
Speaker 1: so it was really out of desperation that I had
Speaker 1: to figure it out. And the best advice my Dad
Speaker 1: told me was that listen, you should listen to other people,
Speaker 1: but we should go ahead and assume that whatever you
Speaker 1: were doing before it didn't work right. So like I
Speaker 1: just knew that I had to I had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make it work for myself. And it
Speaker 1: became really clear that knowing who I was and making
Speaker 1: decisions based on that was the way forward. I can
Speaker 1: tell you one there's one story. I'm just chewing up
Speaker 1: scenery here, but where that changed my life forever. And
Speaker 1: in this frame of understanding your individuality and creating that
Speaker 1: fit you know, it's about two years in de Weaver State.
Speaker 1: I was doing fine and I had I was sitting
Speaker 1: in a big auditorium in a history class next to
Speaker 1: my buddy Steve, and I was kind of complaining about
Speaker 1: how boring that class was because I couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of it was a required class, big auditorium, and it's
Speaker 1: just the worst cun situation for me for learning. And
Speaker 1: he says, well, man, this is nothing compared to what
Speaker 1: I got myself into. And he tells me he's in
Speaker 1: this thing they called the honors program, And in my mind,
Speaker 1: honors was just the same stuff, only more work, right,
Speaker 1: so I was like, that's a sucker stuff, like who
Speaker 1: would do that? But no, no, he's like he's like, no, no, that, no,
Speaker 1: you got it wrong. He's like it's so much worse.
Speaker 1: He's like, there are no tests you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you just have the right stuff. He's like, can't hide
Speaker 1: in an auditorium. They're small rooms. And he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not even sure they're right answers. All we do is
Speaker 1: debate things. And I was like, this sounds amazing, like amazing, right,
Speaker 1: So I was so impulsive. The class ends and I
Speaker 1: rush to that. The honors program is above the library
Speaker 1: at the top of the hill, and I go right
Speaker 1: in and I tell the secretary, a woman named Marilyn Diamond,
Speaker 1: I'd like to be the honors program. And she said,
Speaker 1: well great, let me let's let me get you an appointment.
Speaker 1: So luckily the director's right there sees me, and he says, okay, great,
Speaker 1: you want to be in the honors program. He's like,
Speaker 1: I said a few questions. We're really proud of this program,
Speaker 1: And how did you do on the A C. T
Speaker 1: that was the you know, we we took that to
Speaker 1: the SAT And I told him the number which you know,
Speaker 1: I was the lower end of the curve. And he
Speaker 1: goes to his credit. He goes, well, don't worry, not
Speaker 1: one's good at standay's test. What was your high school GPA?
Speaker 1: Like this is no kidding. There we go, this is
Speaker 1: no kidding. Nine. Yeah, I said point nine and there's
Speaker 1: no joke. He says, what point nine? I said zero
Speaker 1: point nine? And he was so nice about it, but
Speaker 1: he goes, look, look, you can't be in the honors program, right.
Speaker 1: And he didn't say this, but I heard we had
Speaker 1: a standards so you can't be in the honored pram, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I hadn't. I hadn't thought it through.
Speaker 1: So I just rushed up there and I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: there and I just wanted to crawl in a hole. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I stood up, I reached across the desk, shook his hand,
Speaker 1: and I went to leave. And I walked out the
Speaker 1: door and Marilyn Diamond, the secretary, her desk was right
Speaker 1: by the door, and I walked past. She reached out
Speaker 1: and grabbed my arm and she said, hey, I heard
Speaker 1: the conversation. If you want this don't take no for
Speaker 1: an answer. And I was like, wait, you can do
Speaker 1: that like you can like and she said just sit
Speaker 1: sit on the couch and don't leave until he lets
Speaker 1: you in. And I sat there and it was it
Speaker 1: felt like forever. The director came out to he's like
Speaker 1: to go teach a class, and he's like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? I said, I want to be in the
Speaker 1: honored program. You can't be in the honored program, right.
Speaker 1: And he came back and it had been a few
Speaker 1: hours all told, and then he pokes his head out
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, Todd, come back in here.
Speaker 1: And I went back in and he said, listen, tell
Speaker 1: me why you want to be in the because I
Speaker 1: don't get it right. And so I explained to him
Speaker 1: what I've learned about myself and why I thought this
Speaker 1: was a good fit, even though in truth I should
Speaker 1: have been in remedial classes in a lot of places, right.
Speaker 1: And he said, look, I can't let you in straight in,
Speaker 1: but what I'll do is I'll give you a provisional status.
Speaker 1: And here's what I mean. You choose one honors class,
Speaker 1: and if you do well, I'll let you take another
Speaker 1: one and we'll go from there, and so I chose wisely.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I got to pick something. I
Speaker 1: really it was called Plagues of the Modern Era. First
Speaker 1: of all, it almost made me Vegan. I couldn't meet
Speaker 1: bad but I did really well. It was such a
Speaker 1: perfect fit and so and so you just do this
Speaker 1: and then suddenly again I'm graduating as the honor student
Speaker 1: of the year. And like for me, it's like on paper,
Speaker 1: you'd say, well, obviously someone who literally literally had to
Speaker 1: take remedial math because I filled algebra three times in
Speaker 1: high school, And you know, why would you think honors
Speaker 1: would be a better fit. But you realize that's because
Speaker 1: we still think about this kind of thing like ability
Speaker 1: in this old way that is just completely hamstrung us. Right,
Speaker 1: And so it is the honors program right for everyone,
Speaker 1: of course not It certainly wasn't right for my buddy Steve,
Speaker 1: who was plenty smart. Right for me, it was perfect,
Speaker 1: and it prepared me for Harvard in a way that
Speaker 1: nothing else could have. And so you know, for that,
Speaker 1: it's like both tells me a lot about context. Again.
Speaker 1: But then also back to these relationships, right, And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you something so funny just to end this part
Speaker 1: of the story and let you talk for a minute. Right.
Speaker 1: So I came back just a couple of few years ago,
Speaker 1: back to Weaver State because they were giving me an
Speaker 1: award for you know whatever, not completely screening about my life.
Speaker 1: And Marilyn Diamond was there, and she was in the audience,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, what a great opportunity to acknowledge
Speaker 1: this person and their influence, because in my mind I
Speaker 1: had held her up as this she saw something in me, right,
Speaker 1: And and I told the story that I just shared
Speaker 1: with you, and they asked her to come up. And
Speaker 1: the first thing she says is, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: remember that, and you don't remember that, like this is
Speaker 1: like the most important thing, And it wasn't because I
Speaker 1: was that forgettable. It turned out that almost everybody had
Speaker 1: a Marilyn Diamond story. She did that. She was that
Speaker 1: kind of person. She believed in people's potential and she
Speaker 1: took action on it. Right. So, I, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful for the life I get to lead. Right now,
Speaker 1: it would be the height of arrogance to pretend that
Speaker 1: it's just about some innate ability independent of situation and
Speaker 1: including other people and their willingness to believe in me. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad we went. We went down that rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: so to speak, because it's so profound and I have chills.
Speaker 1: It's really speaks to this thing I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: my whole life, which is what is the real intelligence?
Speaker 1: You know, there's this idea that if you measured on
Speaker 1: the IQ test, that's the real intelligence, and then if
Speaker 1: the person shows any intelligence outside of that, it doesn't count.
Speaker 1: And it's such a narrow way of thinking about human
Speaker 1: potential and it's limiting. It's so limiting. It also can create,
Speaker 1: as it did for me for many years, an imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome kind of thing. Because in a similar story, I'm
Speaker 1: very much relating to your story. I was rejected from
Speaker 1: Gifted ED because mike qu score was not high enough.
Speaker 1: My senior year of high school. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: from special Ed to Gifted ED, so I tried again
Speaker 1: the gifted and they rejected me because mike u score.
Speaker 1: But the Gifted ED teacher let me in unofficially my
Speaker 1: senior year and she told me at the end, she said,
Speaker 1: you're the most gifted, not actually gifted person I've ever
Speaker 1: had in my gifted head classroom, which gave me an
Speaker 1: imposture syndrome, because it's like, then what's the real what counts? Right?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? Something really profound here.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is Benjamin Bloom, you know, invented
Speaker 1: mastery learning. Yeah, once said he had a student who
Speaker 1: was studying the way we admit into gifted programs using
Speaker 1: IQ tests, and she asked him about it, and he said,
Speaker 1: that is exactly how ungifted people would select for gifted programs.
Speaker 1: Like it's like the worst possible way to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And never until that they did was no so so
Speaker 1: interest because again, when you have a bell curve, there's
Speaker 1: always somebody that's in the top five percent. Even if
Speaker 1: nobody's very good at something, somebody has to be the top.
Speaker 1: And it means that there's a lot of people, like
Speaker 1: everybody could be good at it, but somebody has to
Speaker 1: lose on those measures, right. And what they found in
Speaker 1: that research, if I remember it correctly, the gist of
Speaker 1: it was this, which is when they studied randomized trials
Speaker 1: about like how you how people selected the gift programs
Speaker 1: using IQ using other metrics. The one that won out
Speaker 1: in terms of kids get in there and do really
Speaker 1: well and stay in was literally showing kids what was
Speaker 1: required and letting them choose for themselves, because like, if
Speaker 1: you're not good at something and you don't care, you're
Speaker 1: not going to take on the extra burden that comes
Speaker 1: with the work and the Gifted program? Are you kidding me? Right?
Speaker 1: But I just never forgot that. It's like, like, so,
Speaker 1: so it turns out that the kids themselves were better
Speaker 1: at deciding whether they should be in the Gifted program
Speaker 1: than any other test we've created. I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that so true? Well were you were you in
Speaker 1: special education as a kid? Like, what was your diagnosed?
Speaker 1: If you can reveal that, no, so what was going
Speaker 1: wrong with you there? Yea, yeah, so the guy was
Speaker 1: always like hyperactive and you know whatever, like which, to
Speaker 1: this day it bothers me to no end, this whole
Speaker 1: disease model of this. We've pathologized natural human variation. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that some kids don't need help, including medicine whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's just garbage to treat it as if we're
Speaker 1: talking about something like cancer or something like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So I like, I have terrible working memory, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little overactive, and rather than accept, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful I had. My mom is the most
Speaker 1: stubborn person I know, and in the best possible way,
Speaker 1: right grew up in an ultra religious, rural part of
Speaker 1: the country where women weren't really viewed in the same
Speaker 1: way that you know, they should be viewed, and she
Speaker 1: wasn't taken any of that right, So I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about fighting for yourself from her and not accepting
Speaker 1: other people's definition of who you are. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: take the working memory thing. I now believe I'm probably
Speaker 1: the most organized person that I know. And I was
Speaker 1: incredibly disorganized. You wouldn't believe when I was in when
Speaker 1: I was in school younger, as a kid, I would
Speaker 1: literally sometimes do my homework and then forget to bring
Speaker 1: it back to school, right like, you know, I just
Speaker 1: like I couldn't organize myself and manage my time. Well,
Speaker 1: what changed for me is when I was in grad school,
Speaker 1: actually I was I better get a handle on this,
Speaker 1: and I studied not from a deficit standpoint, but elite
Speaker 1: Like what do people like CEOs? So how do they
Speaker 1: manage these incredible uh you know, daily workloads, and I
Speaker 1: found you're probably familiar with getting things done right if
Speaker 1: you're not completely changed my life, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: but it was written for executives because the thing about
Speaker 1: working memory, right is it's not we all have terrible
Speaker 1: working memory. It's a limiting thing on purpose theologically, it's
Speaker 1: not like we have it. But what's interesting about working
Speaker 1: memory is it's called like catastrophic loss of information, which
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you have this much or this
Speaker 1: much as soon as it overflows. It's not like a
Speaker 1: glass with a little bit skilling over the network files. Right.
Speaker 1: And so what I learned from this was you could
Speaker 1: build a system with your technology and your habits that
Speaker 1: offload and automate so much of this. And to this
Speaker 1: day that's how I live my life. I'm and I
Speaker 1: have it on my phone. I have it, and it
Speaker 1: just it changed everything for me. And so to me,
Speaker 1: this gets back to like, if you just see it
Speaker 1: as natural human variation in context with strategies tied to that,
Speaker 1: you can figure out a way to turn even things
Speaker 1: that are deficits into strengths. And I wish like we
Speaker 1: don't think of it that way. We don't teach kids
Speaker 1: to think of it that way, because we're still locked
Speaker 1: into this silly idea that there's some innate ability that
Speaker 1: some smart people can figure out in advance and decide
Speaker 1: who gets resources, who doesn't, who has, who deserves opportunity
Speaker 1: who doesn't, and that that approach is demonstratably wrong, right,
Speaker 1: and so anyway, I'll get off my high horse on that,
Speaker 1: but you know I don't get off My life and
Speaker 1: your life probably too, is a testament to this way
Speaker 1: of thinking about human potential. And sometimes when people hear
Speaker 1: my story and they're like, well, look, talented people find
Speaker 1: a way through, and I'm like, cool, that's okay. That
Speaker 1: makes me you're telling me I'm really talented. Okay, But
Speaker 1: like I look at it and go, yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: really the takeaway, because I can promise you, for every
Speaker 1: one of me or every one of you, there are
Speaker 1: so many other people that didn't have the same opportunity,
Speaker 1: didn't have the same relationships, and have never had the
Speaker 1: chance to live up to their full potential. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't just affect them and the kind of fulfilling life
Speaker 1: they can lead. It affects all of us because we're
Speaker 1: all missing their contribution. Yeah, absolutely no, here here, here, here.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the correlation though, between IQ
Speaker 1: and so many societally outcomes, and I mean there is
Speaker 1: a whole nexus. I wrote an article called IQ and
Speaker 1: Society for Scientific American about this because it's so hard
Speaker 1: to untangle the correlations and look at cause because we
Speaker 1: set up a society where that gating mechanism allows you
Speaker 1: the even opportunity to get to the next level, and
Speaker 1: then we kind of create that system then we say, look,
Speaker 1: old people with IQ's are the only ones who are
Speaker 1: allowed at the top. Right, So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: nerd out with you about that a second. What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts? Two things? Correlation is wildly misleading because the
Speaker 1: right number there is actually like an R squared number. Right,
Speaker 1: it's variants explained, and correlation I think gives the impression
Speaker 1: that you're explaining more than you really are. So let's
Speaker 1: take something in psychology, because when we talk about the correlations,
Speaker 1: you're usually talking about somewhere point three point four. If
Speaker 1: you found a point five, you'd probably do cartwheels, right, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, correctly if I'm wrong, because you did the work.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's take a correlation of point four, which
Speaker 1: in psychology we would call that's a that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good correlation. Right, you are explaining exactly sixteen percent of
Speaker 1: the variance. Now if I said it that way, what
Speaker 1: would your takeaway be? Your takeawayuld be maybe we don't
Speaker 1: really know what's going on with this phenomenon. If all
Speaker 1: you can do is explain sixteen percent of the variance.
Speaker 1: If your mechanic said, listen, I am an expert. I
Speaker 1: can explain sixteen percent of what goes on in your car,
Speaker 1: you would not pat them on the back and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: good job. Right, So that's the first thing. Let's just
Speaker 1: be clear. Second of all, if you think about in
Speaker 1: normal human nature, you have what's called dynamic stability, right,
Speaker 1: which is variation of the input so like a human being,
Speaker 1: and variation in the environment. Right. When you take and
Speaker 1: standardize something like the environment, which we did, which we've
Speaker 1: done for the last one hundred and something years. Right,
Speaker 1: as soon as you reduce the variation in the environment,
Speaker 1: it starts to make variation in biology look predictive. Right,
Speaker 1: So like for example, if I decide, if I decide,
Speaker 1: everything is a reading test, which that's most of school
Speaker 1: right like then, and we know that people naturally vary
Speaker 1: in terms of reading ability. Reading is something we literally
Speaker 1: made up. It is artificial. It's not like language which
Speaker 1: you can just acquire. You have to be taught how
Speaker 1: to read. Right, people vary. Well, if everything is a
Speaker 1: reading test, then genetic and neurological variation related to reading
Speaker 1: ability will look predictive of a whole bunch of outcomes.
Speaker 1: And we can pat ourselves on the back and say, look,
Speaker 1: how good of a job we did. We've discovered what
Speaker 1: causes all these accomplishments. But that's not really the whole story.
Speaker 1: What you've done is figure out what correlates with an
Speaker 1: outcome that you have artificially constrained. Right, So you know,
Speaker 1: we do this over and over again, and you know
Speaker 1: it's it's funny. It's like and we think we're learning.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to dismiss it, like I think
Speaker 1: that it's not that there's nothing there. But to me,
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at is what if you look it
Speaker 1: the other way and say, if I believe everyone has
Speaker 1: the ability to be excellent at something, and my job
Speaker 1: is to create the environment that cultivates that so we
Speaker 1: all benefit from it, then I would be trying to
Speaker 1: understand human variation not from a selection process, but from
Speaker 1: a design process. Right, how do I accommodate the widest
Speaker 1: range of variation possible? So those that was a long
Speaker 1: winded way of saying, Look, I think those correlations are true,
Speaker 1: and I think they are both wildly are explaining a
Speaker 1: lot less than we believe they are because we talk
Speaker 1: about correlations that are square, And the right takeaway when
Speaker 1: I see those correlations is how much of that is
Speaker 1: just a function of artificially standardizing an environment that didn't
Speaker 1: need to be standardized. Yeah. Yeah. This has been one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things for me to reconcile in my
Speaker 1: career because of my own I know my personal experiences,
Speaker 1: and I know the experience of so many people who
Speaker 1: have fallen through the cracks because of the standard program.
Speaker 1: Yet I also am aware of the science of IQ,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to sweep the actual science under
Speaker 1: the rug at all. So trying to reconcile all this
Speaker 1: has been very, very, very difficult, because you know, people
Speaker 1: will come back and you and say they as they
Speaker 1: have come back to me and say, well, you know, science,
Speaker 1: if you can predict that much experience variance explain. That's
Speaker 1: that's actually more than almost any other construct in the
Speaker 1: entire field of psychology variants explained. But then we could say, well, well,
Speaker 1: then maybe what the field psychology sucks? That's an indictment
Speaker 1: of psychology. Listen. I did my post. I did my
Speaker 1: post off at the Center for Astrophysics, the Harves Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Center for astro Physics, where I got to work with
Speaker 1: really amazing astrophysis who also used things like multar aggression
Speaker 1: and other things. And in that field, if you don't
Speaker 1: have an R square of like, if you're not explaining
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the variance, go home, right, forget it.
Speaker 1: Whenever we whenever I would bring it, I'm like, look
Speaker 1: at the model we've developed, and they're like, you can
Speaker 1: only explain twenty percent. And they're like, you're you don't
Speaker 1: under stand the phenomena that the phenomenon that you're actually investigating.
Speaker 1: Go back to the drawing board, right, And I just
Speaker 1: feel like it's like, I'm not trying to dismiss like
Speaker 1: I think we've made important Contriversis I think I qus
Speaker 1: measuring something right. I am just of the opinion that
Speaker 1: I don't know what the value proposition is. I just don't.
Speaker 1: I think if we go back to what we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, which is if I was going to use
Speaker 1: an IQ test, if some parent or teacher said should
Speaker 1: I give this kid an IQ test, I'd say, if
Speaker 1: you are using it to identify a jagged profile in
Speaker 1: order to understand strengths and weaknesses the pattern in order
Speaker 1: to create a better environment that allows them to thrive,
Speaker 1: then go for it. If you are using it to
Speaker 1: decide whether this kid is worth anything at all, than
Speaker 1: you are misusing that tool. You said something very key there,
Speaker 1: you said, use it to help them thrive. That's what's
Speaker 1: missing from even like so the CHC model you know,
Speaker 1: could tell Horn could like Carol, you know, and then
Speaker 1: they have like the they have other like new ones
Speaker 1: within the psychometric world. Yeah, they argue very much. They
Speaker 1: argue very much. So Kevin McGrew has argued we need
Speaker 1: to de emphasize the goal like you score and pay
Speaker 1: attention to patterns of strength and weakness on the test,
Speaker 1: but the emphasis is usually so we can help get
Speaker 1: them the remediation they need. The step you took was
Speaker 1: a different step which I'm on board, I'm ready there
Speaker 1: with you, brother, which is like, Okay, can't we do
Speaker 1: better than that? Can we do better than just using
Speaker 1: that information of their jagged profile to help them remediate?
Speaker 1: Can't we actually use a broader set of information about
Speaker 1: the human to help them thrive and self actipize. And
Speaker 1: by the way, like, it doesn't mean that that people
Speaker 1: aren't going to need remediation. Sometimes, of course they will, right, right,
Speaker 1: And I love of course no, me too, And look,
Speaker 1: I think it's really good and I think that so
Speaker 1: there is a remediation aspect. But think about when we
Speaker 1: go to that path all view of human variation, those
Speaker 1: kids end up being the only kids who spend most
Speaker 1: of their time on things they're not very good at. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know any model of human excellence that starts
Speaker 1: with find the things you suck at and have to
Speaker 1: work on those and spend no time on the things
Speaker 1: that you're passionate about or actually good at. Like what
Speaker 1: kind of advice is that? Right? And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: one thing that really blew my mind is when I was, yeah,
Speaker 1: in grad school, Like I was part of a project
Speaker 1: that back to this universal design for learning that it
Speaker 1: was for like sixth grade science notebook stuff, right, like
Speaker 1: the increased Science And it was a randomized trial of
Speaker 1: traditional science notebooks versus this digital version that had embedded
Speaker 1: all those flexibility like vocabulary support, different ways of representing
Speaker 1: the same scientific information. And it was being done in
Speaker 1: South Carolina as one of the states, in some schools,
Speaker 1: and like there was this one kid who was profoundly
Speaker 1: reading impaired, like profoundly read impaired, and the teacher had
Speaker 1: said she had signed up. She hated technology, but she
Speaker 1: was willing to willing to do this if it could
Speaker 1: reach this kid, because she's like, he's got a scientific mind, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you, like, if I weren't part of this,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have believed it. But over the course of
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, we kept getting reports about this kid doing
Speaker 1: better and better and better and better. When we went
Speaker 1: back and did final observations, I walked into the classroom,
Speaker 1: no kidding, and they were in their science doing their
Speaker 1: science work, and probably half the class was huddled around
Speaker 1: this one kid's desk and he was like holding court,
Speaker 1: like he was explaining everything to people, and it was
Speaker 1: like it turned out he was so dang good at this,
Speaker 1: but because he was struggling to read and everything was
Speaker 1: a reading test, he looked like he didn't much about science, right,
Speaker 1: and he had started to internalize that, And all we
Speaker 1: did was removed that artificial, arbitrary obstacle. We already know
Speaker 1: that he's struggling to read. Okay, so this kid definitely
Speaker 1: does need remediation. That's a part of my point, right,
Speaker 1: that's not going to fix itself. Fine, but it turns
Speaker 1: out he's really gifted in this science, and everybody knew it, right,
Speaker 1: And all we did was remove the arbitrary obstacle, right,
Speaker 1: And so I feel like, you know, I'm not someone
Speaker 1: who's saying everybody is amazing and no one ever has
Speaker 1: to struggle or no one has limitations. What I'm saying
Speaker 1: is when we have too narrow of a view of
Speaker 1: human potential, it just drives us into a ditch. And
Speaker 1: we don't need to do that. And the work of
Speaker 1: the work you've done the folks like Kurt Fisher, so
Speaker 1: we know a lot more about not only the nature
Speaker 1: of human potential, but what it takes to cultivate it
Speaker 1: in a way that I believe is scalable. And so
Speaker 1: to me, the thing that's holding us back from having
Speaker 1: that kind of society is not our technology, not our
Speaker 1: know how, but our will to do it. And so
Speaker 1: I get a little, you know, frustrated, because I'm just
Speaker 1: like you know, I want people to have the same
Speaker 1: kind of experiences that you and I have had, Right.
Speaker 1: There is nothing better. I know, we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to live the kind of lives we're living.
Speaker 1: I mean, we get a wake up every day and
Speaker 1: pursue the things we're passionate about, right, And I'd like
Speaker 1: to believe we're making some contributions. And I want that
Speaker 1: for everybody. Beautiful, beautiful. And another step towards that direction
Speaker 1: seems to be expanding the whole idea of what counts
Speaker 1: as a strength, right because in a school system there's
Speaker 1: such a focus on the cognitive right, like like it's
Speaker 1: hard for IQ test makers when they look at their
Speaker 1: jagged profile of like of like GFGC like fluid intelligence
Speaker 1: Chris to think, well, there's actually a broader array of
Speaker 1: what counts as a strength as a human, right, Like
Speaker 1: what about compassion? What about right? What about you know, authenticity?
Speaker 1: What about you know what I mean for me, I've
Speaker 1: found things like talent and even intelligence. While I know
Speaker 1: they are real as constructs, I find them not a
Speaker 1: good starting point because to me, it's about contribution. Like,
Speaker 1: what I want is a society where people are doing
Speaker 1: things that are fulfilling to them and making their best contribution.
Speaker 1: And in my view, your best contribution is likely and
Speaker 1: things that are most fulfilling are going to be are
Speaker 1: going to be related to your own individuality, things that
Speaker 1: matter to you, things that you're good at. Right, And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, how about we gelt acknowledge that for
Speaker 1: the last one hundred years, we've tried to play this
Speaker 1: game of pretending we understand what human potential is and
Speaker 1: how to select for it, And if we're honest with ourselves,
Speaker 1: I'd say we are mediocre at that at best. And
Speaker 1: it's one thing when you're doing that with your own life.
Speaker 1: It's a whole other thing when you are condemning entire
Speaker 1: generation of kids to our assumptions about what human potential is.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's fair, and I don't think it
Speaker 1: is even it's demonstratably fault and so it is unacceptable
Speaker 1: to me as a scientist to continue with assumptions that
Speaker 1: we know are incorrect when it has real world consequences
Speaker 1: for people's lives, both individually and collectively, because again, we
Speaker 1: are missing out on enormous amounts of contribution. And so
Speaker 1: if we can get past that and realize a better assumption,
Speaker 1: in my mind, is that everybody is capable of excellence
Speaker 1: of some kind, and that because of the complexity of
Speaker 1: human beings, no person is smart enough to know in
Speaker 1: advance what any one person is capable of doing. But
Speaker 1: we do know the conditions that everyone needs to be
Speaker 1: able to thrive, and we can work like crazy to
Speaker 1: ensure that every kid in this country has that. Todd,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more and I would say
Speaker 1: you've made a major contribution, not just thinking a little
Speaker 1: bit of contributor. You have a lot of humility, so
Speaker 1: it's been for me to say this, but you really
Speaker 1: have made a major contribution. I just love the way
Speaker 1: you're moving the needle on our thinking. However, I'm now
Speaker 1: in a bit of a quagmire because we just spent
Speaker 1: an hour and seven an hour talking about I should
Speaker 1: have predicted that we would once we got started on this.
Speaker 1: This was a long time coming. Should we hold off
Speaker 1: on a discussion about Collective for another time. What do
Speaker 1: you do? What do we do with this? If I
Speaker 1: were king for a day, this is what I propose.
Speaker 1: I would love to do a part two because I
Speaker 1: think Collective Illusions, let's do that. The book that's out
Speaker 1: now is really important and relevant to the time we're
Speaker 1: living in and I'd love to give it. And that
Speaker 1: gives me excuse to come back and talk to you,
Speaker 1: So I if you want to do that, I will
Speaker 1: come back this whenever you tell me to, and we'll
Speaker 1: do part two. I love it. Why don't we in
Speaker 1: the next month schedule a Part two recording, and then
Speaker 1: what I'll do is I'll release You'll you'll be two
Speaker 1: full weeks of the Psychology podcast. I'll release them back
Speaker 1: to look at that. So we'll have part one and
Speaker 1: then the following part Part two. So you'll it'll be
Speaker 1: a lot. It'll be great. It'll be great. That'll be amazing. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's do it. I'll prioritize it. I'll make the time
Speaker 1: as soon as you're ready. Beautiful, Thank you Todd so
Speaker 1: much for being my podcast today and for your your
Speaker 1: just humility, passion, spirits, intelligence, intelligence, really extraordinary intelligence and
Speaker 1: uh and uh, you know, being on being on the
Speaker 1: show today, Well, thanks for having me and to all
Speaker 1: our colleagues who do really good work in in psychometrics
Speaker 1: and intelligence. You know, forgive me for you know, being
Speaker 1: a little passionate about it. I do appreciate the work
Speaker 1: that's going on. We may have different assumptions, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of good work by honest, decent people, really
Speaker 1: intelligent people that you know, I don't want to dismiss
Speaker 1: out of it. But of course, of course they'll get
Speaker 1: over it, or we'll hear we'll hear about it, we'll
Speaker 1: hear about it on Twitter. Thanks Todd, it was a
Speaker 1: real pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 1: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
Speaker 1: the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com or on our
Speaker 1: YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast. We also put up some
Speaker 1: videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 1: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 1: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.