Measuring what shouldn't be measured

Apparently there’s been another one of those “prodigiously clever children” programmes on TV recently. I didn’t watch it, but I watched the Channel 4 version earlier in the year, in which a number of mini-geniuses were pitted against one another in a sort of intellectual Olympics. This created an interesting jumping off point for me to write about our obsession with measuring things. In my opinion you see, intelligence can't really be tested. How can it be, when we can't even agree on what it is? Even in academic psychology, where they love devising creative ways to measure human diversity, the tests have been largely discredited. The tests measure ability to complete the tests and that's about it. They are still carried out, but it's with the resigned acceptance that for all their flaws, they are still the only measure we have.  Which is fine, as it goes, but it's a bit like being a champion crossword solver - great if you enjoy that kind of thing and do it for fun but otherwise, so what? 

What was interesting to me was the reaction from the viewing public. I remember that Twitter went into overdrive at the time, discussing whether it’s OK to encourage children to jump through these kind of hoops. Questions were raised about whose agenda was being advanced by such events - the belief that it’s really ‘all about the parents’ was very common, leading to the inevitable accusations of pushy parenting.      

The parents featured in the programme might say that this is rather unfair; after all, those who encourage their kids in the arts, sport or music don't get anything like that kind of criticism. And in a way, that's true; those who spend many an hour at the side of a football field, athletics track, dancing class or swimming pool are rarely accused of effectively abusing their kids, so why the parents of clever kids? I think the programme title "Child Genius" doesn't exactly help, but I think the problem runs deeper than the idea that someone else has really clever children, I think it's the suspicion of coercion. Many people find it hard to imagine that anyone, least of all children, would do those things for fun. Anyone with a small child will know how hard it is to get a kid to do anything they don't want to (extending to 'getting dressed' sometimes, in our house), so I'd imagine much of the 'coercion' is about creating a climate in which these things are valued, a view which ultimately comes to be adopted by the children too. Abusive? I wouldn't say so, but I do think there's a fine line between supporting a child in their interests and colonising their life with your own. At the more extreme end of the spectrum are the experiences of certain well-known examples, such as tennis player Andre Agassi. He famously had a tennis ball mobile above his cot as a baby and a tennis racket strapped to his wrist at the age of three. His autobiography reveals a heartbreakingly sad early life, he was pushed beyond what most people would consider reasonable, was extremely unhappy and even at the peak of his success, hated tennis. It made me wonder whether people believe that the ends justify the means when someone excels?    

Back to our obsession with measuring things, I probably underestimated our obsession with “measuring stuff” (including people). And of course, it’s extremely flattering for you or your child to be painted in a favourable light - I’ve yet to hear anyone boast that their level of intelligence is ‘distinctly average.’ What puzzles me more though is the idea of personality tests. I’m a bit puzzled by the idea that personality is a) a thing and b) that it can be tested. I don’t actually believe that personality exists. I know we all use that word to describe ‘how somebody is,’ a kind of linguistic shorthand but personally, I think who we are is mutable to the point where it’s impossible to say that anyone has a personality at all. I think we are internally numerous and that ‘who we are’ is created as we go about the business of our lives – the self being constantly redrawn and recreated in the light of different experiences. I agree that there will be some fairly constant themes (usually created by our upbringing and the processes of socialisation), but much of it is an active work in progress. The beauty of this approach is that it leaves the door open for us to change those ways, if we choose to. And this is a highly significant point for me. It’s much harder to change a ‘personality’ because when it comes right down to it, you are who you are. If you apply this line of thinking to the growth in diagnoses of ‘personality disorders,’ you can see that if a person believes their behaviour is shaped by ‘personality,’ (which can’t be changed) then they may see themselves as a lost cause. Unfortunately, this view dominates thinking in mental health - research has shown that people with certain personality disorders are discriminated against in terms of treatment. I believe that the vast majority of people can be helped to better understand how and who they are, to explore the ways they are in the world have been helpful (or not) and maybe think about how they might do things differently. It just goes to show that measurement can have unintended consequences.