On first glance, it would be tempting to label all kids as "gifted" in the belief that they would then work up to that expectation, but that's not the way it works . According to the research of Stanford's Dr. Carol Dweck, both positive and negative labels, whether "gifted" or "seriously learning disabled," encourage a "fixed mindset," or the belief that nothing children do or think will change their intelligence. For "gifted" kids, that can mean that they are so worried about marring the shiny veneer of that label that they never risk failure, and for the "seriously learning disabled" kids, the grungy tattiness of their label can lead to apathy and hopelessness.

I stare at the history exam. With intense effort, I pick up my pencil to fill in the rest of the answers. I hesitate and put the pencil back down on the desk. I know the answers. I can go through the motions. But what's the point? They have given me as much time as I want to complete this test. I have the rest of my life to finish this test. If I ace the test now, or ace it when I'm 40, what's the difference? It's the start of ninth grade, and I'm still in special education. I yearn for more of a challenge. So much more.

Fortunately, Scott Barry Kaufman did not allow himself to fall in Dweck's "fixed mindset," and he spent much of his young life attempting to convince everyone around him - teachers, administrators, his parents - that his IQ, the two-digit representation of his potential that he'd been assigned when he was eleven years old, was incorrect. Kaufman embodies Dweck's "growth mindset," where the intrinsic motivation to achieve comes from within, where learning is its own end rather than a means to an A or a trophy.

Heart pounding, I thrust my chest out, put on my smartest facial expression, and start walking toward her. She greets me with the welcoming smile. "Hi. I'm Scott, and I think I may be gifted," I blurt out.

Kaufman was absolutely confident that he was not the sum of his IQ, that some mistake had been made, and if someone - anyone - would just give him a chance to show his classmates and his teachers what he was truly capable of, his true identity would be revealed. Unfortunately, Kaufman's teachers put their faith in power of the number elicited in that fourth grade IQ test, and continued to expect little of him. Alas, the only person with high expectations for Scott Barry Kaufman was Scott Barry Kaufman.

So, I've been reviewing your charts," he says seemingly nervous. Which makes me even more nervous. He takes out a piece of notebook paper and a pen, and robotically draws me a diagram. "This is you," he says as he pushes up his horn-rimmed glasses and points to the left side of what look like the outline of a camel's hump. "And this," he says, moving his finger toward the far right of the hump, "is gifted."

An IQ score is a lovely, simple, and tidy number. It takes up very little room on a school record, it's easy to remember, and renders the elaborate and complex workings of human intelligence down to one, user-friendly quotient. Above 140? Genius. 90-110? Average. Below 70? "Definite feeble-mindedness," according to Lewis Terman, professor of psychology at Stanford University. He took the much more comprehensive testing strategy invented by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in 1905, and turned it into the standalone, numerical measure of intelligence we use today. Terman had high hopes for his IQ score; he wanted to use the test to identify people of both low intelligence (though Terman favored the term "feebleminded") and the intellectually gifted. He had big plans to identify and institutionalize the feebleminded in order to eliminate crime and poverty while exalting the gifted as the next, best hope for the future of humanity. Scott Barry Kaufman could have done a lot worse than imprisonment in the learning resource room; for a while Terman's devotees lobbied for forced sterilization for the feebleminded.

I decide to take a different approach. After school I dash off to the local library and find a book about human intelligence. I flip through the pages and come face to face with a terrifying chart. At the top is listed the average IQ of PhDs. I am way lower than that number. Tentatively, I go down the list. College graduate? Closer, but still no cigar. My blood pressure is rising. Semiskilled laborer? In my dreams. After some time, I finally find my range: "Lucky to graduate high school," it says.

Labels are not bad in and of themselves. Labels, like grades, are tools. We classify learning disabilities because children with dyslexia require very different academic support than children with Asperger's. In order to help these very different children, we must identify and understand their deficits and the resources those children will need. I have sat in on many meetings in which we - teams of psychologists, teachers, parents, learning specialists, and administrators - work to find the ideal combination of resources for kids with learning challenges. I have even recommended intelligence testing for students who, despite their persistence, diligence and effort, are not succeeding in school. I've seen testing lead to real academic and cognitive improvement, thanks to individualized education plans and access to learning resource professionals. However, when teachers and parents get lazy, and allow labels to supplant cultivation of potential, we fail. We fail our children, and we fail as educators and parents. For far too many children, the assignation of a label signals a death knell for future effort, learning, and academic achievement.