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You can see other samples of my writings
Aphrodisia  and Athena's Birth

Puede leer esta hoja en ESPAÑOL

THIS BOOK IS THOUGHT  FOR BEGINNERS IN PARENTHOOD IT IS DISCUSSED IN IT  THE MEANING OF INTELLIGENCE AND THE WAY TO DEVELOP IT AUTHOR:   LEOPOLDO PERDOMO

     This book is to defend a thesis:  that intelligence is made by the appropriate training.  Perhaps you do not agree  with this thesis.
    I surely think you can get some new ideas about the means to educate a child.
    If you have any farther interest in this subject
your are invited to communicate with me at the following mail:
 <leopoldo@perdomo.com>

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      The intelligence has always seemed a complex concept. This is because it has become an abstract word.  And being abstract, it makes for a  difficult understanding. This is specially true if one does not insist on facing up the problem.  Depending on the theory one takes as a reference, the idea could be more or less difficult to grasp. After giving the word some turns, the answer is clear in this book. The final definition is framed in the following way:

 
INTELLIGENCE IS A SET OF ACQUIRED ABILITIES
USEFUL FOR SURVIVAL OR WELL-BEING
OF THE SOCIAL GROUP AND THE INDIVIDUAL

  This indicates the nature of the difficulty.  The acquired abilities are  varied and are much related to the physical medium and the social  circumstances where one lives.  For that reason it is understood that the volume and the quality of the acquired abilities vary much between human groups and from a family to another.  Even, one can say that those circumstances vary inside the same family in a few years.  These abilities -the intelligence, I mean-  are the result of the educational program that the parents apply at home with the boy. The basic intelligence is manufactured at home.  For this reason we can not expect the school to be a substitute for parents to create the roots and maintenance of the intelligence.  My position is in this that intelligence is relative and, therefore, its value depends much upon the circumstances.
    The society also imposes some limits to the intelligence of people for diverse reasons.  Well,  only a reduced number of individuals are needed  with very acute intelligence.   If we all were brilliant who will carry out the more tedious and worse paid tasks?

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HOW CAN WE ENCOURAGE THE CHILD TO PRACTICE?

 
    People don't have any problem spending the day in front of a TV or loitering; this kind of behavior does not require any effort on our part.  It is mildly pleasant and not very demanding.  Even if it requires a slight  effort, it is easily accepted.
    That brings us to the question:  how or why  is a child going willingly accept  to be trained?   By training I do not mean physical training or muscular exercising.  Although this also enters into the question.  Many parents, believe that giving the pertinent orders is enough as his part.  This is an error.   The orders alone and the petitions given to  children, and adults alike, produce only weak responses.   That is a fact;  orders are accepted with scarce enthusiasm.  Then, what?  What can we do?
   Some variables of the ambient are called  "reinforcers".  When applied, they have the power to increase the frequency on any kind of behavior  you choose.   If we want a boy to train on any piece of a chosen  behavior we should apply those "reinforcers".   But we will not expect the behavior  to start at once like a meteor.  This must start carefully, bit by bit, a little more work every day.  And in a few days that grows a lot.  But when you see the child working alone by itself, you can not go to watch the TV or to wash the cups and plates.   It will quickly evaporate all this work in a few minutes, days, or weeks, depending on the strength of the behavior. You must persevere reinforcing during weeks, months and years.

   The good behavior is controlled almost the same way as the bad.  The undesirable behaviors repeat themselves, once and again, because the child receives attentions, recriminations and homilies, when he executes them.  These are also "reinforcers".  So there is no need for slaps and the punishments.  These are known in the jargon as "aversive controls"  and have  undesirable effects in the long run.
 

    The dominant idea has always been that intelligence is genetic in origin.   This idea  has been able to cohabit without any friction with the existence of the education and study.  And although it is well understood that without these activities, education and study, it is not possible any intensive or specialized knowledge, nobody has questioned the paper of genetics.  We call  intelligent to those that have a great volume of  know- ledge and know how to apply in a rational and useful way.   We also call  intelligent to those who know to execute the works that are requested and they solve by himself the problems encountered.  But we frequently speak of "natural intelligence" refereeing to the people that acquire abundant abilities or knowledge without  any formal studies.
       So that we are going to bump on a very common thesis.  It is said very often that intelligence it is awed fifty-fifty to environment and genetic causes.  The genetic psychologists have made o lot of  studies to affirm the intelligence is mostly genetic to the eighty percent, approximately.  But, other psychologist refuse to accept these conclusions.

       Which is my side on this argument?   Before giving an answer I will present a case rather unpleasant.   If we had a son with Down Syndrome ("mongolism") what profit could we get if some "geneticist" tell us:  "This case is genetic; the locus so and so, in the chromosome number so, has a defect that hinders the learning of the boy?   This knowledge, it is useless, at the moment.  All we want to know is more simple:  It is there anything we can do to alleviate this?  How can we improve on this situation?   And there is really an answer:  special education programs for retarded children.  These are not going to make miracles but we can push these children toward the frontier of normal intelligence.  And if we start earlier it will get much better the results.   The genetic deafness gives place to the deaf-mutes, but they improve very much with special schools for deaf.  A child can have a genetic problem  with a severe lack on the focus of his sight;  this is remedied by means of glasses.
    On any argument, there are always some irrelevant positions or asumptions.   What I mean is, this theory about genetic intelligence could be arguable at most, but it is at least useless for the father or mother of a concrete child.  To any parent there is a much more interesting question:  can we do something to develop the intelligence of my child?   Can I trust this mission to the school and leave it in its hands?

There IS something WE CAN DO to develop intelligence?   Yes
CAN WE RELAY for this job on the public school?   No

    So next question it is:  Where is the know-how?, how can we get it?  We are answering to this question in this book.
 
    Why it is so much noise about "genetic intelligence"?   I have never read or heard cuch a question, neither an answer to it.  My opinion on this regard is, that high intelligence it is associated to a superior social status.  It is like money.  Intelligent  parents try to develop a maximum of intelligence in their kids.  But, people with less intelligence usually can not make it.  They ignore the way.   On  the other hand, society finds useful that the intelligence is distributed  unequally.  For this reason, society does not have any interest in developing much the intelligence of children.  It is enough if people have a discreet intelligence and not very well distributed.  This need can be a source for the prevalence genetic theories.
 

  The thesis of this book is that intelligence is a set of abilities acquired through experience by anyone since childhood and throughout its life.  Child is going to hold on the abilities that environment demands on him from the beginning.   As the physical or social environment changes, people invent new ways or choses what to do in each case among their former abilities.   At the same time, old abilities that are useful not more they start to fade out.  How quickly they fade relates  to the amount of work done to acquired them.   Most parents think of environment as it were mostly home  or the school.  But the social environment of the children, friends and mates, started to play bigger role as they grow.   If school were the main builder of intelligence, it will generate only minor differences among kids.  In fact, that is what  happens.  But if you want that your children be more intelligent than average, you need to do something.

    To answer the question that heads this page,  others will call the Piaget thesis.  But Piaget attribute intelligence growth to stimuli from physical environment.  That assertion does not enlightens us much.  If you read his papers,  Piaget seems to suggest that environment stimulates the child to act and as a result he gets the  intelligence as a reflex.   If we accept that, we are running directly on the the genetic differences to acquire  intelligence.   It is easy to arrive to this conclusion;  if physical environment by itself does all the work,  most differences will come from the genetic constitution.  To accept this thesis it is such a thing as to think:  "Let the stimuli from the street, the sky and the school teach  my children how to be smart.  His intelligence is in its genes."  So you can conclude: "He can not be more stupid that his own genetic makeup".
     I propose instead the Skinner thesis over learning.  According to Skinner, organisms learn by the consequences  of their actions.  They try to repeat  actions with pleasant consequences and avoid actions that result aversive.  But  the most valued social behaviors are those that require a long time to learn.   So we tend to call intelligent to people well endowed with these valued abilities.  The behavior that help us the better to earn a living are the most valued of them all.
     Language and memory are the most accepted abilities of human intelligence.  And when we say memory there is a lot of meaning in it.  I am not pointing to rote learning of verbal phrases, but about the whole lot of operations thet we need to achieve the relevant purposes in each case.  Because it is not the same case to be a successful musician than to be a great lawyer, or a theoretical physicist.  Each career needs a set of quite different abilities.
    When we speak of intelligence quite often we are thinking about high levels of it.  So most of us are aiming for our children to acquire high doses of intelligence.  This is the aim of the book.  How to make it.
     The main problem to increase intelligence is how to assist on  memorization processes.  This is a complex problem we can not solve in a few phrases.  Only I remind the reader what I have said about "reinforcers".  If the child is not controlled almost daily by reinforcers his interest for the work of training soon fades.   Some  parents believe in discipline as the main source or guide to make their children work. If this is all they can do their children will not arrive very far.  To achieve a demanding career children and young people need something more sweet than stern orders.  And also something more near and much more frequent  than the promise of a remote well paid job.    How to achieve that aim is the purpose of the book.

     I had already spoke about the means to train a child and also about reinforcers.  Disobedience is the resistance to execute orders or petitions.  The form that authoritarian parents treat this matter it is the cause that generates this behavior.
     Authoritarian people like to think that children, as any subordinate, should obey without farther arguments or philosophies.   Their motto will be:  "Order and you shall be obeyed".  To a certain degree this system works.
     But it happens that this rule have some failings, to say the least.  Where is the problem?  It is on little point that nobody pays much attention.  People does receive very few congratulations by  mere obedience.

    Everything begins when the boy starts to learn the language.  When arriving to the verbs, we tell to the child, sit down and he or she sits down.  "Catch the tablespoon" and the child catches it.  Etc. etc.   When we are in this phase teaching language, the boy usually receives many attentions for executing the action of these verbs.  And a moment arrives when the child becomes a small robot and we tell him/her:  "Give this to mom", or "give this to dad" and the child goes on and do it.  At the beginning she/he receives many attentions for this reason.  But, after a week or two passes they do not pay the child much attention for this.  However, it remain in parents  a certain pleasure in giving orders.  So they continue to do that, but the boy doesn't receive any verbal recompense, or very seldom, for executing the order.  As consequence of this stinginess the child loses the interest in obeying an order.  So  things at this point can change a little because some parents are very sensitive at this.  When their child ignores an order.

What does it happen when an order is ignored?  
    Usually the the father, or the mother, will insist and repeat the order.  Technically, this works  as a reinforcer of the disobedience.  Because the human voice is a "conditioned reinforcer".  For that reason, the most authoritarian parents usually have more problems  with the discipline of their children.  On the opposite divide, liberal parents are not so sensitive, and they ignore the delay of the obedience and forget the whole thing apparently.  But they do better, they reinforce more often the obedient behavior of the child.
    The book tries with some detail these topics.  In the case of intelligent children, the disobedience is not very important.  It is not very important because it is very difficult to be both ways, very intelligent and disobedient at the same time.  But sometimes it could happen, when a child is obedient in a restricted sense.  It is the case when he/she has some career in mind against the will of one his/her parents.  This could be understood as a case of partial disobedience.  It happens sometimes.  The child wants to do a good thing, but not exactly the one that his/her parent wants.
    This type a behavior occurs when the main reinforcer is working in certain direction and some other less influential, by example an absent or very busy father, wants to drive the child against the main established direction.  Sometimes a child is building an artistic ability and one day comes his/her father and tell him to make a career in Law.  The same case is when a child is doing nothing at all, or very little in life, and the father choses for him/her a very difficult career.  This is idiotic.
 
 

   At the moment the book is also in spanish.
It name is  NIÑOS INTELIGENTES Y FELICES,
(Happy and Intelligent Children).
It is issue by Ediciones  Pirámide, SA.
ISBN 84-368-1180-1    Author:  Leopoldo Perdomo.

I expect, that soon will be translate into English.
If you need more information you can

    This means that a person's abilities should agree with the demands of the environment.  If one this studying Nuclear Physics, to put an example, is of little use that we work very hard at playing the violin.  But we can use it as a playful activity to rest from other works.
    They will not give us a diploma or a degree in Physics for playing very well the violin or a piano.  If we were naked in the desert of Kalahari, with an arch, some arrows and a small lance, it will serve us for nothing a doctorate in Astrophysics.
    Therefore, my previous definition has a consistency. The value and the utility of the behavior repertoires allow us to survive in a direct or indirect way. In civilized societies, individuals depend a lot from others to survive.  But in  primitive societies the family unit should be supplied only, or most of it,  by the members of the group.  If they are waiting for someone else to feed them, they would die of hunger in a few weeks.
    And now we invert the terms of the concept.  Being so valuable to the survival in the desert, the intelligence or knowledge of the Kalahari people, they won't serve them in any way to drive an automobile on the streets of Manhattan or to work in the  Physical Laboratory of Fermi in Chicago.
    Therefore, the program to create intelligence must change according to the needs or the objectives to achieve.   Do we want a chess champion? That requires a very different program  if we wanted only a champion of swimming, or a scientist. What is it that we want?  According to the answer, we need a different program.  Of course, there is something called general intelligence, but there it is a program of a sort  in the head of all parents for that.  It is called 'common sense'.    Do we want general intelligence?  So we should make a program for general intelligence.   We can not expect the school to make this work for us.   I believe the book INTELLIGENT CHILDREN AND HAPPY CHILDREN responds to all these questions and a lot more.

    I think was Skinner the first to mention reinforcers.  Well, I am not an historian and can not be sure of this.  In any case, it was Skinner well who made enough noise over this issue.
    What are reinforcers?  A reinforcer is a pleasant contingency, or a happenstance, that occurs at the time a subject is doing something, or just when he/she has done it. 
This happenstance increases the possibility of the subject to repeat a piece of behavior.  In the case of animals, behavior is controlled by the consequences of what they do;  except in the case of domesticated animals who are controlled by humans with artificial means.  In the case of human beings, the complexity of behavior patterns and the length of time involved in learning,  make a great distance between present, when we study, and the fruits to be harvested by the student at a future time.  Think of a child who is training to play the piano.  If the rewards for training will only come in ten or twelve years, he is going to lose the interest in practicing.  So, if you want a child to train daily for several hours, you must reward him from this very moment.  You can not expect the child to train with the only hope of winning the Great Price for Young  Piano Players ten years into the future.
   Any behavior of difficult achievement  needs a lot of time to practice.  You can point any valued ability.  Traditional philosophy speaks about the "strength of will".  In this issue, if we look close enough, just only tell us that "strength of will" is a daily training in a certain behavior to achieve a remote goal into the future.
     So we know the same thing as before.  People who do the train have the will; those who don't have not.  When the ability is much valued by society, they put farther obstacles to limit the winners or the trainees.
    All these problems disappear when we are able to tell if there is a way for anyone to do a certain amount of daily training for a long period of time.  If we are able to state that without the resource of speaking about the "strength of will" we are winning at the pools.
    This problem disappears when we speak of reinforcers.   People do drink beer because he is just resting, a little thirsty  or just chatting with friends.  People eats fry potatoes, because they are a little hungry and these potato chips taste good.  What can we say about boy who practices piano during two or three hours a day?  Why he do it?  Or the boy practices with the math's or something?  Well, if they do it is because someone is  reinforcing them almost every day for doing that.  And these reinforcers are mostly words to encourage or praise for the student's work.   Reinforcers could also be pocket money or presents for the work the student is doing, or for the achievement he has just done at this very moment.  But it is no very useful to promise he/she something for the next week, month, or year.
    We must not reinforce with words or any kind of chatting when the student is lazy watching TV or reading comics.  In these cases, the student must be invisible.  The reasons for this are clearly discussed in the book.
   There is a catch in all this.  If we get tired of maintaining the  schedule of reinforcement, the pace of work of the student is going to fall;  after a few days.  This is called a behavior extinction.  So we must execute a  program to increase the resistance to extinction of the working behavior.
    In any case, if any behavior of your child is weak your are not  reinforcing well.  Do not mistake reinforcers for promises; even for big promises such as a used car or a fancy bicycle;  promises are not strong enough to strengthen or maintain the work of a student.   Forget about using promises  alone.  But if a promise goes on, bit by bit, and the money is pouring each day on the table when the kid is working, that could help a lot.  The kid see how the money is increasing every day, and he count it, and he can see the promise is fast getting real.  But you must be sure, the work is in progress and the kid is not faking a home-work.  If he cheats you are lost.  You must be alert.

    Not all kinds of behavior in a child are as nice as we would like.   This is why we talk about undesirable behaviors.   The undesirable actions could be caused by a case of conditioned disobedience.  Sometimes we give the kids some words of warning about something he is doing.  It looks silly, by we are reinforcing with these words the very behavior we abhor.   Usually, there are lots of bad behavior and most parents are always warning about:   Don't do this, don't do that, because if you do...  so and so.  A long speech.
     Well, this system makes a good disobedient kid.  He learns early what thing is a grave enough and what it is not.    So the drive toward  disobedience is already made at home.   But if the parents are very punitive but not enough, a child could imitate these manners and become aggressive in school with other kids.  Or could become a sadist or a bully as he grows.  But if parent press the child very hard with discipline, the kid could become autistic, or a depressive maniac, or someone without self-esteem.
    The book discuses how to treat undesirable behaviors and its idea is contrary to the ideals of punitive and disciplinarian parents.

     We could say that this subject is a following to the fore discussion.  The disciplinarian people love punitive means of control.  This is a kind of traditional dogma.   At sort term the aversive controls function well.  They have quick results.  We can see this every day on the TV  screens.   Some- one with a shotgun comes to bank and put everybody on the floor.  And when the gunman its corralled  by the police it is the turn of the gunman to lay in the floor.   This effect seems clear enough for everybody.  So it is very popular in some quarters.

 
     What are the reasons to speak against it?   Well, the aversive controls function well in the sort term.  But if we used them to control the good behavior by aversive means, if we say "behave yourself properly or... you will suffer the consequences", we taint the good  behavior with aversives.  In this case, the behavior itself becomes aversive conditioned.    And if the good behavior becomes aversive we do not feel the drive to do it by our own will.  We behave properly because someone is watching us.
     If you thing can find any inconsistencies is this argument it is because the controls are always mixed;  the reinforcers,  the aversive warnings, and punishments. So you can point some cases to argue on this thesis.  But epistemic analysis do not find reasons to value the aversive controls except in grave cases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eysenck, H.J.E. y Kamin, L.  INTELLIGENCE: THE BATTLE FOR THE MIND
Amsterdam: (1990) Multimedia Publications Inc.
 

Humbling, Buckholdt et als. THE HUMANIZATION PROCESSES
New York: (1976) John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Jay Gould, S.   THE MISMEASURE OF MEN
New York: (1981) W.W. Norton and Company

Martin, G. y Pear, J. (1992)   BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION
New York:  Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Pines, M.  REVOLUTION IN LEARNING.
THE YEARS FROM BIRTH TO SIX
New York:  (1967)   Harper and Row.

SKINNER, B.F. SCIENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR.
New York:  (1953)  MacMillan

Whaley, D.L. y Malott, R. W.   ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOR
New Jersey: (1971)  Prentice-Hall, Inc.