To Be or Not to Be. . .
Are we born smart or do we get smart?

Mrs. Smyth was my favorite teacher. She was young and graceful and wore camel-colored cashmere sweaters and matching wool skirts and smelled of Shalimar. Sometime around the holiday break in my fifth grade year, she told us she would be moving away. She assured me that she wouldn't leave us until after the school year was over and promised us her address. I adored her.

On the last day of school, I hung back, wanting to be the last person to say goodbye to Mrs. Smyth. I found little tasks to do around our classroom, picking up trash, straightening desks until the last two children were lining up for their hug goodbye. They happened to be Bobby Eaton and Sue Ewald, who I had known since pre-school. Mrs. Smyth hugged them and then placed a slender hand on their shoulders. "You two are so smart," she told them leaning down to look right in their eyes. "I expect to read about both of you when you receive Boettcher scholarships. You are definitely Boettcher material." Boettchers were reserved for Colorado's top graduating high school students.

I don't recall if she hugged me. But I am sure she didn't say anything about how smart I was. To me that meant I wasn't. I have often wondered if Sue and Bobby remember that moment.

Years later I heard nationally known Harvard scholar Jeff Howard speak to a group of educators about innate intelligence. He asked the group to respond to this question: Is smart something you are or something you can get? Intriguing question, intriguing way to pose it. The overwhelming majority of educators that day defended innate intelligence, an intelligence quotient, some hard-wired, pre-determined intelligence with which we are born. Nothing, they argued can drive that IQ number up or down. That's just the way it is.

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