I woke up at four A.M to find that it had been blizzarding all night. The steep road in front of my house leading down the mountain had blended into the adjoining meadow creating a world that was a perfection of white. Gradually the scene disappeared altogether as the intensity of the falling snow enveloped my house in stillness. Our little mountain town was snowed in; leaving us locked inside our homes.

     Then I heard it: approaching from a distance the faint roar of a big truck. Impossible! How with zero visibility and the snow-covered road nowhere to be seen could a driver know where the road was? As the muffled roar of the approaching truck came closer I could see faint flashes of red and yellow light amidst the intensity of the falling snow. That meant that the roaring truck was the big snowplow with Scotty Smith at the helm. What total madness! How could Scotty possibly plow a road he couldn't see? Besides, even on a clear sunny day that road is a terror with its steep curves down the mountain into the valley. Which is why there are repeated signs along the way warning, "use lower gear." We've had so many accidents.

     The muffled roar of the truck became fainter. Scotty was charging down the mountain road at top speed. I couldn't believe it. How could he possibly navigate that road under these conditions? But about an hour later the roar of the truck was heard again. This time coming up the mountain, again at top speed. Off and on for the rest of the day and night the muffled roar of the truck could be heard periodically. By the next morning the town was blanketed in six feet of snow. But the road in front of my house was open with snow walls exceeding ten feet. Our town's roads were clear and its residents were able to get to work.

     I had seen something extraordinary and had to find out more. So when I next saw Scotty I asked. "How in the world could you make that run down the mountain when you couldn't see the road? You were going full tilt under whiteout conditions. And the snow was already so deep that there was no road."

     "I could feel the road." was Scotty's simple reply.

     Amazing! Scotty could feel a road he couldn't see. He had become one with the machine he was driving at top speed. And because the machine had become an extension of himself it let him know that it saw (felt) a road his own eyes were unable to see. What a remarkable mind!

     But I was in for a surprise. When I described Scotty's astonishing feat to an old timer who had moved away my description was met with an appalled look and aghast exclamations: "Scotty! He's driving trucks! That boy's retarded! Are they crazy to let that boy drive trucks!"

     The old timer's recollection was correct. "Retarded" had indeed been the school's diagnostic label. Later, as an adult, Scotty's low level of literacy prevented him from passing exams for jobs involving the machines he understood so well. But his own town knew better than those exams; he was sneaked into the local highway department. And that is why our little mountain town has the benefit of an expert mechanic and driver of trucks; and why our roads buffeted by northern New England winters are clear and its inhabitant are able to get to work.

     So, was the school right? Is Scotty retarded or, phrased in our latest euphemism, is he "intellectually challenged?" Not when he and I have conversations about people and the meaning of their actions. When it comes to understanding people, animals and machines Scotty demonstrates a superior intelligence.

     But why and how could he then have been labeled "retarded?" The answer is two-fold. First, because of the way schools teach, and second because of the way schools test their students. These two practices became linked historically about 100 years ago. That was when Alfred Binet sat in on the French classroom, watched how and what teachers taught, took segments of these teachings and used them as items for his test. That first test was intended as an instrument to determine who had mastered the various requirements of the school curriculum and could therefore pass on to the next grade. The test was a success and reduced the arbitrariness of many a school decision.

     Shortly thereafter the English statistician Spearman found that Binet's test and similar subsequent scholastic tests correlated with one another. On the basis of these correlations he made the assumption that the tests must all be measuring the same ability, which he labeled general intelligence or "g". General intelligence or "g" became an accepted conceptualization of cognitive ability and the tests, now called intelligence tests (IQ tests), became a part of our culture. The IQ tests put a numerical tag on children, which was, and usually still is, assumed to be predictive of their intellectual potential.

     Today's intelligence tests still resemble Alfred Binet's early test, which had been based on the classroom instruction of a century ago. Also still resembling those early Binet days are how today's schools teach the basics of reading and math. The result is that the linkage between the educational techniques of the beginning nineteen hundreds and the concept of intelligence (IQ), despite extensive contrary evidence, has not been broken. The relationship has been further enhanced by the recent burgeoning testing requirements associated with school accountability. Now, the tests not only reflect what is usually being taught in the classroom, they make it difficult to deviate from what have become the "teaching musts." More and more teachers feel required to "teach to the tests" or face the danger of poor ratings. And that is why the linkage between IQ scores and the teaching techniques of a century ago continue to haunt the Scottys of our world.

     But what happens to test results when you alter the type of instruction, when you cease using the teaching techniques of the beginning 19teen hundreds? How valid and reliable are the present tests then? Would the tests under these conditions tell us how well a student is functioning intellectually, or how well she/he will function in the future? With altered instruction could any of these tests have predicted Scotty's performance on the winter mountain roads? Our research has shown that when students like Scotty have been exposed to the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system and as a consequence have become proficient readers they, not surprisingly, pass the IQ test items that require reading. And also not surprisingly this resulted in higher IQ scores. However, in Scotty's case an actual performance examination would still have been more predictive. This was well understood during the Middle Ages with its apprenticeship system and the requirement of a masterpiece before the apprentice could become a Master.

     But it is not just for people with lower IQ scores that the tests can be poor predictors. At the other extreme from Scotty was Marge. She always aced every test given her. Her high test scores helped open the doors of Ivy League colleges. She did quite well in one of the top five. But that was the end of her superior achievements: because now real life performance was required. And with these new requirements Marge didn't do too well. Today she is a seamstress carrying out the designs of others whose test results and school achievements had been decidedly inferior to hers. A recent acquaintance unaware of Marge's school successes labeled her "stupid." "You know she's conversationally more than a bit simple; the way she parrots 'all the right things.' She hasn't got a thought of her own."

     But Marge's test results had been great! How was this possible? The answer: from kindergarten on Marge methodically memorized every item her teachers taught her. By fifth grade she already took careful classroom notes. At exam time these notes were dutifully memorized and fed back to the delighted teacher. Since the test items on the SAT and the College Boards are based on what goes on in the classroom, Marge also had fairly high scores on these examinations. This procedure even worked, albeit to a more limited extent, at Marge's Ivy League college. But after graduating there were no more notes to memorize in order to pass examinations. Instead there were the demands of the real world which required that she think for herself. But Marge had never done that. Eventually she found the occupation that could use her methodical and careful carrying out of other people's ideas and she became a successful seamstress. But even here she was devoid of ideas of her own and as usual carried out the designs created by others.

     Was Marge intellectually challenged? Not according to her test results. And yet, both she and Scotty are cognitively weak in certain areas. Could their weaknesses have been bypassed by using different teaching approaches? In the case of Scotty I know from similar cases that he could so easily have become a skilled reader. And becoming a skilled reader would not only have raised his IQ score, but more important, it would have opened up the world of ideas allowing him to harness the remarkable gifts that are his. And Marge? Maybe someone should have burned her notes. How about the rest of us? Aren't many of us intellectually impaired, albeit in different ways, in different areas of cognition? Yet despite our various handicaps most of us manage to arrange our lives in ways that bypass our intellectual weaknesses thereby allowing us to pretend they never existed.

     Frances represents such an example. Very few people had any inkling that Frances, a successful politician, was intellectually challenged. In her case it was numbers. Fortunately for her, her constituents were unaware that this successful politician could barely add. She wrote such charming and pointed essays, gave great speeches with sound bites that understood the problems of the day. With considerable skill she avoided being placed in a position of having to do a budget.

     Frances' disastrous math skills were why her parents had sent her to a special private school; one that allowed her to bloom in the areas of her gifts, including of all things geometry. However, anything to do with numbers continued to be a disaster. She graduated from the private high school with a conditional diploma that essentially closed off a college career. But few people realized this since she frequently took college courses in her areas of special interest and abilities. Besides, she was known as a knowledgeable and sophisticated conversationalist and as a skilled politician with outstanding political connections. Her constituents were unaware of how severely intellectually challenged she really was.

     Is there a teaching approach that would have overcome Frances' cognitive weakness? Could she ever have reached the stage where she would have been able to understand or even do a budget? Since the brilliant psychologist, Catherine Stern with her system that she described in CHILDREN DISCOVER ARITHMETIC succeeded in teaching retarded students in Harlem how to understand and do square root, the answer is an emphatic yes! Such an intervention would have done more than just help Frances handle a budget. It would have eliminated her oppressive but secret feelings of inferiority. Those secret feelings of intellectual inadequacy were a reflection of her school failures and they continued to haunt her for the rest of her life. One dark evening she described how she felt that all her successes were a fraud because she had to hide her inability to deal with numbers - and that included dealing with the price of every day things.

     Frances and Scotty's schools had accepted in totality the prevailing "expert" opinion that IQ tests and tests for mathematical ability measure basic cognitive ability. And that meant it would be impossible to alter the levels of achievement that require these cognitive capacities. Even SAT scores, because they correlate with IQ tests, were presumed to be measuring basic cognitive ability. Consequently it should be impossible to increase SAT scores by practicing for the test items. But this dictum was eventually contradicted by entrepreneurs who set up classes that instructed students on typical SAT test items. The instruction frequently produced significant increases in SAT scores. Nowadays such classes for would-be SAT takers have become a competitive essential. And yet there are still "experts" who insist that because SAT scores continue to correlate with IQ tests they must be measuring basic cognitive ability. Then how come you can increase your SAT score by taking those SAT classes? Does that mean you have increased your intellectual ability?

     As for the immutability of IQ tests, that too turned out to be a failed dictum. One of the earliest research reports that contradicted this concept came from my own laboratory. A three-hour symposium at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in 1973 presented the data in detail. These research findings are described in the book IN SEARCH OF THE IQ CORRELATION. The data demonstrated that severely retarded students can quite readily learn to read and as a consequence frequently have a significant rise in IQ scores. Using the same teaching approach (the Ball-Stick-Bird reading series) a similar observation was made for both normal and superior populations. So much for the concept that IQ scores are immutable. Our human brain, as this evidence shows, was designed to absorb knowledge and thereby become altered in its capacities.

     So if at times we feel intellectually challenged - as do most of us – there's no need to despair. Our human brain is a multifaceted instrument. There are ways to enhance our cognitive ability. As already described, both the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system and Catherine Stern's method of teaching basic arithmetic demonstrated how this can be done. Of special importance is that the two teaching systems have fundamental aspects in common. Their communality informs us as to which aspects of cognitive organization can bring about intellectual enhancement. Both teaching systems present what has to be learned and understood embedded in exciting stories avoiding the use of flashcards or other repetitious drill. Why is such an approach effective? Because story format is how we humans organize information. Therefore, wherever your cognitive weaknesses reside, make a story or a sound bite (that's a miniature story) out of what you want to remember, want to learn. Many a difficult concept will suddenly become memorable and understandable. And you'll be able to use and to communicate what is now a proud possession of your brain.