Earlier this month, Johns Hopkins Center For Talented Youth named 13-year-old Indian-American Natasha Perianayagam on a list of ‘world’s brightest’ students, that comprised of 15,000 students across 76 countries. But just how beneficial or detrimental can labels and assessment tools be? Three experts decode the subsequent impact on children.

Uma Kogekar, CEO of CEQUE — an NGO that works with teachers of government and low-income private schools to establish better pedagogic practices — highlights how such labels can narrow the definition and assessment of brightness and intelligence. Kogekar cites Howard Gardener’s multiple intelligence theory to illustrate her point. The theory suggests traditional measures of intelligence lack the scope to gauge the full range of a person’s abilities. The theory suggests these measures include musical, logistical and mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, inter and intra-personal, spatial-visual interpersonal, linguistic and verbal intelligence, naturalistic, and existential intelligence.