Education Bookcast

Let's set things straight - intelligence isn't really *all* that matters. The editor seems to have forced a provocative title that even the author doesn't agree with. But intelligence does really matter, and the evidence on this point is overwhelming. Early on in my study of education, I was enamoured with Carol Dweck's Mindset research, and in all of my growth mindset zeal I couldn't bear to even consider that people might differ in some apparently "fixed" way. However, with time I have had the courage to face this issue; or, more realistically, it has beseiged me enough that I have had to give in. Intelligence is real, it varies from person to person, and it has a large heritable component. Research on intelligence has continued for well over 100 years, and it has several findings which are very well supported by evidence. The most important finding is the positive manifold, which states that all mental capacities - from vocabulary size to social intelligence to mental rotation to reaction time - are positi