Did an IQ Test Change My Life?

Interesting days at school

In my last post, I talked about a cool teacher I had in primary school in Titirangi, a guy called Jack Friel. His son read it and made contact with me. It turns out that Jack is still alive at the awesome age of 96 he still has his faculties other than having lost his eyesight. He said he would play the audio version of my post to him, which is very cool.

The year I was in his class would have been 1966. There were some iconic hits on the radio at the time, my only way of listening to pop music. Songs like Sunshine Superman by Donavon who I would later meet briefly at a party in Christchurch.

There were the Supremes with You Can’t Hurry Love. I didn’t get to see the original band, but I did have the good fortune to see the fabulous Mary Wilson live at one of the awesome Mission concerts, along with many other Motown artists.

And then there was the iconic Yellow Submarine, which also became a movie. My favorite part was the harmony in the chorus.

Anyway, I’m just setting the scene, and if anything, illustrating that it was a long, long time ago. Was it a pivotal year in my life, or just a period of enlightenment of significance that I didn’t appreciate at the time?

One day, my teacher Mr. Friel, I probably didn’t know his name was Jack at the time, called a group of maybe 20 kids together and told us that we had the opportunity to be part of a University of Auckland Psychology Department study, which would follow us through maybe 20 years of our lives if our parents approved. There actually was no follow-up, but that doesn’t matter.

My parents approved and our group hopped on a bus into the city and joined kids from many other schools. I don’t know how many kids there were, but it must have been well over a hundred.

We were trooped into a lecture theatre and told that we would spend the next 2 or 3 days doing some tests and that it would be fun. It was.

For the next 3 days, we were broken into groups and would complete tests with written questions, physical puzzles, memory tests, general knowledge quizzes, and much more. They were all broken up so that it didn’t get boring. I’m sure you have seen these before.

You may have done them before. Here’s one for you to answer in the comments. If a bat and ball cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

This event finished on a Friday at lunchtime. Most of the kids were sent home, but about 20 of us were asked to stay a bit longer. We were then asked if we would come back the following week, for a whole week of extra tests. I had such a good time, the idea of coming back for more, was exciting, and I can tell you I had a ball, the following week as the questions got harder and harder.

In the end, there were only about 5 of us left on the last day as we got to a point where the questions got really difficult. I really had no idea what it was all about, other than having really enjoyed it.

When I went back to school, things changed a bit. In addition to my normal studies, I was often asked to go over to Lopdell House, which at least in part, was an Education Department office. Titirangi School was involved in some experimentation with new methods of teaching, and one area of study was gifted children. Again, I didn’t know anything about that. I just knew that I got to go over there during school time.

Sometimes they would get me to do more quizzes, sometimes they just talked with me, or at least that’s how I interpreted it, and sometimes I was just a gopher, taking documents to or from Lopdell House and the school. Again, I really enjoyed the opportunity. I often found class lessons boring, although I had a real hunger for knowledge.

I was an avid reader, and as well as devouring everything there was at home, in English and Dutch, I would go to the library and read books there, as well as take the maximum allowance of books which was 3, home with me.

Other than those visits to Lopdell House, I was an ordinary kid, I got up to mischief as much as any kid, I got six-of-the-best from the headmaster from time to time, was disruptive in class and got to sit outside his office if I was bored, or had been teasing the girls in the playground. I enjoyed swimming, kapa haka (although it wasn’t called that back then), playground sports, and performing in school plays, and enjoyed music, particularly with Mr. Jamieson in my last year, as he and I both played guitar. I do have to say that if I heard the Street of Laredo (his favorite song) one more time, it would almost be one too many times.

So there was no more talk of IQ tests at school, and no further mention of my results, although my parents were told and didn’t tell me anything until many years later. My father did let me know that I wasn’t quite as bright as he was, even though we were both invited to join Mensa, after doing tests online. In his autobiography, he wrote that he scored 165, saying “So what?” His test was about 100 questions, mine was 8 days of questions, and they did say that at a certain point, there isn’t enough data to have an exact measure, and it doesn’t really matter.

What did matter and what had a significant impact on my life was that I am bright. Maybe not as bright today as when I was a kid, but there is a reason why skills like problem-solving come easy to me, and it is probably an equal balance of nature and nurture, as I would learn in McGraw Hill’s Psychology 101. I didn’t just have a hunger for knowledge, I was able to learn, retain what I had learned, and apply it across the many opportunities I had, including learning and speaking several languages and taking a leadership role in many different career changes.

Being bright also had many negative impacts, because I found many people boring, and conversation for its own sake was something I found banal and struggled with. Conversation with intelligent people on the other hand was something I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s just that I didn’t find that many of my own age, and at times unsuccessfully tried to find ways to dumb down because I would get so frustrated with people making poor decisions or spouting inaccurate information. This included everything from my teachers at school in later years, to managers and conspiracy theorists. My struggles would begin at Intermediate School……