There was an incident once performed on 2 classes that had interesting results. I don’t remember the exact stats so I’m going to make them up.. It went something like this.
IQ tests were conducted on a class full of students and 2 groups were made out of them. The higher IQ group had an average of 120 while the lower IQ group had an average of 90. The idea was to give the smart ones special attention and the computer system grouped these into 2 separate classes for the coming year and in a funny computer error, mixed up the groups and named the ‘smart’ class ‘dumb’ and the ‘dumb’ class ‘smart’.
Now, the year progressed as per normal and IQ tests were again taken at the end of the year. What was observed was interesting –
-> The average IQ of the dumb class had gone up by a whopping 20 while..
-> The average IQ of the smart class had gone down by 10..
What made the difference?
The attitude of the teachers. When they were in the dumb class, they treated them as ‘slow learners’, never gave them the challenges necessary and in due time, dulled the mind while the opposite was done in the other class.
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The stats may not be accurate but I think it communicates the point..
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What we look for is what we see. Very often, external feedback, taints our opinion about a lot of things. I am not talking so much about reputation but more so about external points of view that keep popping in..
Feedback is always good and it’s important to listen to it with a balanced mind but it’s also good to remember that what we will see after absorbing these points of view is likely to change based on the color of the lenses of the spectacles we are wearing as well..
A Learning a Day 