Robert Sternberg
Robert Sternberg
Robert Sternbergis an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, Sternberg was president of the University of Wyoming. He has been Provost and Professor at Oklahoma State University, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University. He is a member of the editorial boards of numerous journals, including American Psychologist. He was the past President for the American Psychological Association...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 December 1949
CountryUnited States of America
To the Kenyan families, school doesn't really matter because none of them are going on to college. Almost all of drop out of school and so, they're spending their time learning things that are important to them.
In other words, unlike some people with new theories, we will go out, we'll go into a school and we get products and the products are evaluated, whether it's by teachers or others. The scores are quantified and then we compare performances.
But in any case, I did poorly on the tests and so, in the first three years of school, I had teachers who thought I was stupid and when people think you're stupid, they have low expectations for you.
If there's going to be an SAT, it's probably practical to invest in a book or perhaps in a course, but I'm sorry to say, I went to some classes that my kids took and it was clear in school that what they were doing was just SAT training.
Our goal is to get better students and send a message that these things really matter. The great students will get in, anyway. This is about the middle.
Research has shown that IQ type tests account for about 10% of the variation in how successful people are in various aspects of their adult lives.
All of the studies we do in my group are quantified.
Well, I don't think that the SAT is a scam.
The problem is that there are very few technologies that essentially haven't changed for 60, 70 years.
The three parts of the theory are analytical ability, the ability to analyze things to judge, to criticize. Creative, the ability to create, to invent and discover and practical, the ability to apply and use what you know.
And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?
In other words, the better they did on the IQ test, the worse they did on the practical test and the better they did on the practical tests, the worse they did on the IQ test.
If Tufts doesn't work out, my safety is to go back to Yale, where I used to teach.
capitalize on their strengths, but also to correct and compensate for their weaknesses.