第一次世界大戰(zhàn)結(jié)束不久,年輕的斯坦福大學(xué)心理學(xué)教授劉易斯.特曼(Lewis Terman)
met a remarkable boy named Henry Cowell.
遇到了一個(gè)名叫亨利.考埃爾的非同尋常的男孩。
Cowell was raised in poverty in chaos.
考埃爾在混雜的貧民區(qū)長(zhǎng)大,
Because he did not get along with other children, he had been unschooled since the age of seven.
由于和同年齡的孩子相處經(jīng)常弄出亊端,所以他7歲之后一直沒(méi)有接受正規(guī)的學(xué)校教育。
He worked as a janitor at a one-room school house not far from the Stanford campus,
他長(zhǎng)期在斯坦福學(xué)校附近的一所單課室學(xué)校當(dāng)看門(mén)人。
and throughout the day, Cowell would sneak away from his work, and played the school piano.
但是,在這段日子里,考埃爾常常離開(kāi)工作崗位,偷偷地在學(xué)校鋼琴上演奏,
And the music he made was beautiful.
他演奏得非常棒。
Terman's specialty was intelligence testing;
而測(cè)試智商是特曼的專長(zhǎng):
the Standards IQ tests that million of people around the world would take over the following fifty years, the Standford Binet, was his creation.
50年后,世界上有數(shù)白萬(wàn)人進(jìn)行的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)IQ測(cè)試——斯坦福比奈測(cè)試——就是他發(fā)明的,
So he decided to test Cowell's IQ. The boy must be intelligent, he reasoned, and sure enough, he was.
因此,特曼決定測(cè)試一下考埃爾的智商。特曼有充分的理由相信,這個(gè)孩子肯定是聰明的。
He had an IQ of above 140, which is a genius level.
結(jié)果證明考埃爾不僅聰明,還可以說(shuō)是天才:他的IQ達(dá)到了140,這是接近天才的水準(zhǔn)。
Terman was fascinated. How many other diamonds in the rough were there? he wondered.
特曼被自己的發(fā)現(xiàn)弄得神魂顛倒。他想,世界上還有多少這樣的“真金白銀”沒(méi)被發(fā)現(xiàn)呢?
He began to look for others.
他開(kāi)始搜尋其他天才。
He found a girl who knew the alphabet at nineteen month, and another who was reading Dickens and Shakespear by the time she was four.
他發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)才17個(gè)月大就認(rèn)識(shí)字母表的女孩子,和另一個(gè)4歲就開(kāi)始讀狄更斯和莎士比亞作品的女孩。
He found a young man who had been kicked out of law school
他還發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)被法學(xué)院掃地出門(mén)的年輕人,
because his professions did not believe that it was possible for human being to precisely reproduce long passages of legal opinions from memory.
因?yàn)榉▽W(xué)院的教授認(rèn)為,無(wú)論如何,一個(gè)人是不可能憑借記憶脫口說(shuō)出法律意見(jiàn)書(shū)上冗長(zhǎng)的條文的,除非是弄虛作假。
In 1921, Terman decided to make the study of the gifted his life work.
從1921年開(kāi)始,特曼把研究天才作為自己的終身職業(yè)。
Armed with a large grand from the Commonwealth Foundation,
在聯(lián)邦基金會(huì)的大力支持下,
he put together a team of fieldworkers and sent them out into California's elementary schools.
特曼組織了—個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)到加利福尼亞的小學(xué)進(jìn)行研究。
Teachers were asked to nominate the brightest students in their class.
學(xué)校的老師首先從班級(jí)挑選出最聰明的一些學(xué)生,
Those students were given an intelligence test.
然后對(duì)這些學(xué)生進(jìn)行智力測(cè)試,
The students who scored in the top 10 percent were then given a second IQ test.
測(cè)試成績(jī)排在前面10%的學(xué)生進(jìn)入第二輪的智力測(cè)試,
And those who scored above 130 on that test were given a third IQ test.
這一輪測(cè)試成績(jī)達(dá)到130以上的學(xué)生接著進(jìn)行第三輪測(cè)試。
And from that set of results, Terman selected the best and the brightest.
最后,特曼根據(jù)婊終測(cè)試的結(jié)果挑選出最聰明最厲害的學(xué)生。