Is Your Kid REALLY in the Top 5%?
How smart do you think you are? If you are like most, probably 'way smarter than you really are. smartplanet.com says 40% of us think we're in the top 5% (in my city, the gifted child program was dropped because too many parents with kids in the top 25% insisted their kids be part of it). The Web site quotes David Dunning, who says that, "not only are we terrible at seeing how stupid we are, but we're also too dumb to recognize genius right in front of us." Here's another stunning fact he's come across. Incompetence can mask the awareness of one’s incompetence. The phenomenon is now called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, according to smartplanet.com. Dunning reportedly based this on a bank robber who squirted lemon juice all over his face and thought he was invisible because in a photo he took with a Polaroid, his image mysteriously disappeared. But that story's for another day. The bottom line: he didn't even know what an idiot he was.