I've always been intrigued by the subject of intelligence. As a child my mom would refer to me as "smart," but I fast noticed that all parents refer to their children as smart. In time I would study that all children are not smart, just as all babies are not cute. If that were the case, we'd have a world full of beautiful, smart habitancy - which we don't.
Some of us are smart; but not as smart as we think, and others are smarter than they seem, which makes me wonder, how do we define smart? What makes one man smarter than another? When do "street smarts" matter more than "book smarts"? Can you be both smart and stupid? Is being smart more of a direct affect of genetics, or one's environment?
Then there are the issues of education, intelligence and wisdom.
What does it mean to be highly educated? What's the divergence between being highly educated and highly intelligent? Does being highly educated automatically make you highly intelligent? Can one be highly sharp without being highly educated? Do Iqs surely mean anything? What makes a man wise? Why is wisdom typically connected with old age?
My desire to seek answers to these questions inspired many hours of intense study which included the reading of 6 books, hundreds of study documents, and countless hours on the Internet; which pales in comparison to the lifetime of studies and study that pioneers in the fields of intelligence and study like Howard Gardner, Richard Sternberg, Linda S. Gottfredson, Thomas Sowell, Alfie Kohn, and Diane F. Halpern whose work is cited in this article.
My goal was simple: Amass, synthesize, and present data on what it means to be smart, educated and sharp so that it can be understood and used by anyone for their benefit.
Prenatal Care
With this in mind, there was not a great (or more appropriate) place to start than at the very starting of our existence: as a fetus in the womb.
There is mounting evidence that the consumption of food that's high in iron both before and while fertilization is important to building the prenatal brain. Researchers have found a strong connection between low iron levels while fertilization and diminished Iq. Foods rich in iron comprise lima beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, seafoods, nuts, dried fruits, oatmeal, and fortified cereals.
Children with low iron status in utero (in the uterus) scored lower on every test and had significantly lower language ability, fine-motor skills, and tractability than children with higher prenatal iron levels. In essence, permissible prenatal care is important to the amelioration of cognitive skills.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are the basic mental abilities we use to think, study, and learn. They comprise a wide collection of mental processes used to analyze sounds and images, recall information from memory, make associations between dissimilar pieces of information, and enounce attentiveness on particular tasks. They can be individually identified and measured. Cognitive skill force and efficiency correlates directly with students' ease of learning.
Drinking, Pregnancy, And Its Intellectual Impact
Drinking while pregnant is not smart. In fact, it's downright stupid.
A study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research has found that even light to moderate drinking - especially while the second trimester - is connected with lower Iqs in offspring at 10 years of age. This result was especially pronounced among African-American rather than Caucasian offspring.
"Iq is a quantum of the child's potential to learn and to survive in his or her environment. It predicts the potential for success in school and in daily life. Although a small but important percentage of children are diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Fas) each year, many more children are exposed to alcohol while fertilization who do not meet criteria for Fas yet feel deficits in increase and cognitive function," said Jennifer A. Willford, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Paul D. Connor, clinical director of the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit and assistant professor in the branch of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington has this to say about the subject:
"There are a estimate of domains of cognitive functioning that can be impaired even in the face of a relatively general Iq, along with scholastic achievement (especially arithmetic), adaptive functioning, and administrative functions (the potential to qoute solve and learn from experiences). Deficits in intellectual, achievement, adaptive, and administrative functioning could make it difficult to appropriately manage finances, function independently without assistance, and understand the consequences of - or react appropriately to - mistakes."
This is a key looking which speaks directly to the (psychological) definition of intelligence which is addressed later in this article.
Ultra Sounds
Studies have shown that the frequent exposure of the human fetus to ultrasound waves is connected with a decrease in newborn body weight, an increase in the frequency of left-handedness, and delayed speech.
Because ultrasound power is a high-frequency mechanical vibration, researchers hypothesized that it might affect the migration of neurons in a developing fetus. Neurons in mammals multiply early in fetal amelioration and then migrate to their final destinations. Any interference or disruption in the process could result in abnormal brain function.
Commercial clubs (which do ultrasounds for "keepsake" purposes) are now creating more fine ultrasound machines capable of providing favorite 3D and 4D images. The procedure, however, lasts longer as they try to make 30-minute videos of the fetus in the uterus.
The main stream magazine New Scientist reported the following: Ultrasound scans can stop cells from dividing and make them commit suicide. Habit scans, which have let doctors peek at fetuses and internal organs for the past 40 years, affect the general cell cycle.
On the Fda website this information is posted about ultrasounds:
While ultrasound has been colse to for many years, expectant women and their families need to know that the long-term effects of repeated ultrasound exposures on the fetus are not fully known. In light of all that remains unknown, having a prenatal ultrasound for non-medical reasons is not a good idea.
Nature Versus Nurture...The debate Continues
Now that you are aware of some of the known factors which determine, improve, and impact the intellectual amelioration of a fetus, it's time for conception. Once that baby is born, which will be more crucial in the amelioration of its intellect: nature (genetics) or raise (the environment)?
Apparently for centuries, scientists and psychologists have gone back and forth on this. I read many comprehensive studies and reports on this subject while the study phase of this article, and I believe that it's time to put this debate to rest. Both nature and raise are equally as important and must be fully observed in the intellectual amelioration of all children. This shouldn't be an either/or proposition.
A modern study shows that early intervention in the home and in the classroom can make a big divergence for a child born into ultimate poverty, according to Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The study concludes that while genetic makeup explains most of the differences in Iq for children in wealthier families, environment - and not genes - makes a bigger divergence for minority children in low-income homes.
Specifically, what researchers call "heritability"- the degree to which genes affect Iq - was significantly lower for poor families. "Once you're put into an adequate environment, your genes start to take over," Mr. Turkheimer said, "but in poor environments genes don't have that ability."
But there are reports that contradict these findings...sort of.
Linda S. Gottfredson, a professor of educational studies at the University of Delaware, wrote in her article, The general intelligence Factor that environments shared by siblings have slight to do with Iq. Many habitancy still mistakenly believe that social, psychological and economic differences among families originate lasting and marked differences in Iq.
She found that behavioral geneticists refer to such environmental effects as "shared" because they are tasteless to siblings who grow up together. Her reports states that the heritability of Iq rises with age; that is to say, the extent to which genetics accounts for differences in Iq among individuals increases as habitancy get older.
In her record she also refers to studies comparing same and fraternal twins, published in the past decade by a group led by Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., of the University of Minnesota and other scholars, show that about 40 percent of Iq differences among preschoolers stems from genetic differences, but that heritability rises to 60 percent by adolescence and to 80 percent by late adulthood.
And this is maybe the most sharp bit of information, and relevant to this section of my article:
With age, differences among individuals in their advanced intelligence come to mirror more closely their genetic differences. It appears that the effects of environment on intelligence fade rather than grow with time.
Bouchard concludes that young children have the circumstances of their lives imposed on them by parents, schools and other agents of society, but as habitancy get older they come to be more independent and tend to seek out the life niches that are most congenial to their genetic proclivities.
Breast-Feeding Increases Intelligence
Researchers from Christchurch School of medicine in New Zealand studied over 1,000 children born between April and August 1977. while the duration from birth to one year, they gathered information on how these children were fed.
The infants were then followed to age 18. Over the years, the researchers collected a range of cognitive and scholastic information on the children, along with Iq, educator ratings of school execution in reading and math, and results of standardized tests of reading comprehension, mathematics, and scholastic ability. The researchers also looked at the estimate of passing grades achieved in national School Certificate examinations taken at the end of the third year of high school.
The results indicated that the longer children had been breast-fed, the higher they scored on such tests.
Talking To Your Children Makes A Difference
Thomas Sowell, author of Race, Iq, Black Crime, and facts Liberals Ignore uncovered some sharp information that every parent should take note of. He writes:
There is a strong case that black Americans suffer from a series of disadvantageous environments. Studies show time and again that before they go to school, black children are on average exposed to a smaller vocabulary than white children, in part due to socioeconomic factors.
While children from professional households typically exposed to a total of 2,150 dissimilar words each day, children from working class households are exposed to 1,250, and children from households on welfare a mere 620.
Yes, smart sounding children tend to come from educated, professional, two-parent environments where they pick-up important language skills and vocabulary from its smart sounding inhabitants.
Mr. Sowell continues: Black children are obviously not to blame for their poor socioeconomic status, but something beyond economic status is at work in black homes. Black habitancy have not signed up for the "great mission" of the white middle class - the constant quest to stimulate intellectual increase and get their child into Harvard or Oxbridge.
Elsie Moore of Arizona State University, Phoenix, studied black children adopted by whether black or white parents, all of whom were middle-class professionals. By the age of 7.5 years, those in black homes were 13 Iq points behind those being raised in the white homes.
Accumulated Advantages
At this juncture in my study it dawned on me, and should be fairly safe bet to you, that many children are predisposed to being smart, educated, and intelligent, plainly by their exposure to the influential factors which conclude them long before they start school.
An informed mother, permissible prenatal care, educated, communicative parents, and a nurturing environment in which to live, all add up to accumulated advantages that formulate intellectual abilities. As you can see, some children have unfair advantages from the very beginning.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of top-selling book Outliers, wrote that "accumulated advantages" are made potential by arbitrary rules...and such unfair advantages are everywhere. "It is those who are flourishing who are most likely to be given the kinds of public opportunities that lead to supplementary success," he writes. "It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and most attention."
With that in mind, we turn our attentiveness to study and intelligence.
What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?
Alfie Kohn, author of the book What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? poses the question, does the phrase well educated refer to a potential of study you received, or something about you? Does it denote what you were taught? Or what you remember?
I enounce that to be well educated is all in the application; the application and use of information. Information has to be used in order to come to be knowledge, and as we all have heard, knowledge is power.
Most habitancy are aware of the floundering state of study in this country on some level. We tell our children that nothing is more important than getting a "good" education, and every year, due to government funds shortfalls, teachers are laid off, classes are condensed, schools are closed, and many educational programs - especially those which help the underprivileged - are cut.
The reality is, we don't surely value education. We value it as a business, an industry, political ammunition, and as an standard form of discrimination, but not for what it was intended: a means of enriching one's character and life through learning.
What we value as a society, are athletes and the entertainment they offer. The fact that a professional athlete makes more money in one season, than most teachers in any region will make in their careers, is abominable. There's always money to build new sports stadiums, but not sufficient to give teachers a decent (and well-deserved) raise.
Ironically, the best teachers don't go into the profession for money. They teach because it's a calling. Most of them were influenced by a surely good educator as a student. With the mass exodus of teachers, many students are not able to cultivate the mentoring relationships that they once were able to because so many are leaving the profession - voluntarily and involuntarily - within an average of three years.
At the high school level, where I got my start, the emphasis is not on how to educate the students to get ready them for life, or even college (all high schools should be college-prep schools, right?), it was about preparation them to excel on their standardized tests. Then the controversial "exit" exams were implemented and literally, many high schools were transformed into testing centers. Learning has approximately come to be secondary.
This mentality carries over into college, which of course there's a test one must take in order to enroll (the Sat or Act). This explains why so many college students are more concerned with completing a course, than Learning from it. They are focused on getting "A's" and degrees, instead of becoming degreed thinkers. The latter of which are in greater ask by employers and comprise the bulk of the self-employed. The "get-the-good-grade" mindset is directly attributable to the relentless and often unnecessary testing that our students are subjected to in schools.
Alfie Kohn advocates the "exhibition" of learning, in which students communicate their comprehension by means of in-depth projects, portfolios of assignments, and other demonstrations.
He cites a model pioneered by Ted Sizer and Deborah Meier. Meier has emphasized the importance of students having five "habits of mind," which are: the value of raising questions about evidence ("How do we know what we know?"), point of view, ("Whose perspective does this represent?"), connections ("How is this connected to that?"), supposition ("How might things have been otherwise?"), and relevance ("Why is this important?").
Kohn writes: It's only the potential to raise and riposte those questions that matters, though, but also the Habit to do so. For that matter, any set of intellectual objectives, any record of what it means to think deeply and critically, should be accompanied by a reference to one's interest or intrinsic motivation to do such thinking...to be well-educated then, is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that Learning never ends...
History And Purpose Of Iq
We've always wanted to quantum intelligence. Ironically, when you look at some the first methods used to value it in the 1800s, they were not, well, very intelligent. Tactics such as subjecting habitancy to discrete forms of torture to see what their threshold for pain was (the longer you could withstand wincing, the more sharp you were believed to be), or testing your potential to detect a high pitch sound that others could not hear.
Things have changed...or have they?
No seminar of intelligence or Iq can be complete without mention of Alfred Binet, a French psychologist who was responsible for laying the groundwork for Iq testing in 1904. His original intention was to devise a test that would diagnose Learning disabilities of students in France. The test results were then used to get ready extra programs to help students overcome their educational difficulties.
It was never intended to be used as an absolute quantum of one's intellectual capabilities.
According to Binet, intelligence could not be described as a particular score. He said that the use of the intelligence Quotient (Iq) as a exact statement of a child's intellectual potential would be a serious mistake. In addition, Binet feared that Iq measurement would be used to condemn a child to a permanent "condition" of stupidity, thereby negatively affecting his or her study and livelihood.
The original interest was in the estimation of 'mental age' -- the average level of intelligence for a man of a given age. His creation, the Binet-Simon test (originally called a "scale"), formed the archetype for future tests of intelligence.
H. H. Goddard, director of study at Vineland Training School in New Jersey, translated Binet's work into English and advocated a more general application of the Simon-Binet test. Unlike Binet, Goddard carefully intelligence a solitary, fixed and inborn entity that could be measured. With help of Lewis Terman of Stanford University, his final product, published in 1916 as the Stanford revising of the Binet-Simon Scale of intelligence (also known as the Stanford-Binet), became the standard intelligence test in the United States.
It's important to note that the fallacy about Iq is that it is fixed and can not be changed. The fact is that Iq scores are known to fluctuate - both up and down while the course of one's lifetime. It does not mean that you come to be more, or less intelligent, it merely means that you tested great on one day than another.
One more thing to know about Iq tests: They have been used for racist purposes since their importation into the U.S. Many of those who were complex in the importation and refinement of these tests believed that Iq was hereditary and are responsible for feeding the fallacy that it is a "fixed" trait.
Many immigrants were tested in the 1920s and failed these Iq tests miserably. As a result, many of them were denied entry into the U.S., or were forced to undergo sterilization for fear of populating America with "dumb" and "inferior" babies. If you recall, the tests were designed for white, middle class Americans. Who do you think would have the most mystery passing them?
Lewis Terman advanced the original notion of Iq and proposed this scale for classifying Iq scores:
000 - 070: exact feeble-mindedness
070 - 079: Borderline insufficiency
080 - 089: Dullness
090 - 109: general or average intelligence
110 - 119: first-rate intelligence
115 - 124: Above average (e.g., university students)
125 - 134: Gifted (e.g., post-graduate students)
135 - 144: highly gifted (e.g., intellectuals)
145 - 154: Genius (e.g., professors)
155 - 164: Genius (e.g., Nobel Prize winners)
165 - 179: High genius
180 - 200: top genius
200 - higher ?: Immeasurable genius
*Genius Iq is ordinarily carefully to begin colse to 140 to 145, representing only 25% of the habitancy (1 in 400).
*Einstein was carefully to "only" have an Iq of about 160.
Defining Intelligence
Diane F. Halpern, a psychologist and past-president of the American Psychological connection (Apa), wrote in her essay offering to Why Smart habitancy Can Be So Stupid that in general, we identify habitancy as sharp if they have some compound of these achievements (1) good grades in school; (2) a high level of education; (3) a responsible, complex job; (4) some other recognition of being intelligent, such as winning prestigious awards or earning a large salary; (5) the potential to read complex text with good comprehension; (6) solve difficult and novel problems.
Throughout my study and in the early phases of this article, I came over many definitions of the word intelligence. Some were long, some were short. Some I couldn't even understand. The definition that is most prevalent is the one created by the Apa which is: the potential to adapt to one's environment, and learn from one's mistakes.
How about that? There's the word environment again. We just can't seem to leave it. This adds deeper meaning to the saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It means recognizing what's going on in your environment, and having the intelligence adapt to it - and the habitancy who occupy it - in order to survive and result within it.
There are also many dissimilar forms of intelligence. Most notably those created by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of study at Harvard University.
Dr. Gardner believes (and I agree) that our schools and culture focus most of their attentiveness on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly enounce or logical habitancy of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attentiveness on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live.
He felt that the original notion of intelligence, based on Iq testing, was far too slight and created the Theories Of manifold Intelligences in 1983 to list for a broader range of human potential in children and adults.
These intelligences are:
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
Not connected with Dr. Gardner, but equally respected are:
Fluid & Crystallized Intelligence
According to About.com, Psychologist Raymond Cattell first proposed the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence and supplementary advanced the law with John Horn. The Cattell-Horn law of fluid and crystallized intelligence suggests that intelligence is composed of a estimate of dissimilar abilities that interact and work together to yield comprehensive individual intelligence.
Cattell defined fluid intelligence as "...the potential to perceive relationships independent of former exact convention or study about those relationships." Fluid intelligence is the potential to think and theorize abstractly and solve problems. This potential is carefully independent of learning, experience, and education. Examples of the use of fluid intelligence comprise solving puzzles and advent up with qoute solving strategies.
Crystallized intelligence is learning from past experiences and learning. Situations that want crystallized intelligence comprise reading comprehension and vocabulary exams. This type of intelligence is based upon facts and rooted in experiences. This type of intelligence becomes stronger as we age and fetch new knowledge and understanding.
Both types of intelligence increase throughout childhood and adolescence. Fluid intelligence peaks in adolescence and begins to decline progressively starting colse to age 30 or 40. Crystallized intelligence continues to grow throughout adulthood.
Successful Intelligence
Then there's Successful Intelligence, which is authored by intelligence psychologist and Yale professor, Robert J. Sternberg, who believes that the whole notion of relating Iq to life achievement is misguided, because he believes that Iq is a pretty miserable predictor of life achievement.
His flourishing intelligence law focuses on 3 types of intelligence which are combined to conduce to one's comprehensive success: Analytical Intelligence; mental steps or components used to solve problems; Creative Intelligence: the use of feel in ways that raise comprehension (creativity/divergent thinking); and Practical Intelligence: the potential to read and adapt to the contexts of daily life.
With regard to environment, Mr. Sternberg writes in his book Successful Intelligence: Successfully sharp habitancy perceive that the environment in which they find themselves may or may not be able to make the most of their talents. They actively seek an environment where they can not only do flourishing work, but make a difference. They originate opportunities rather than let opportunities be slight by circumstances in which they happen to find themselves.
As an educator, I subscribe to Mr. Sternberg's flourishing intelligence approach to teaching. It has proven to be a highly effective tool and mindset for my college students. Using flourishing intelligence as the backbone of my context-driven curriculum surely inspires students to see how study makes their life goals more attainable, and motivates them to supplementary found their expertise. Mr. Sternberg believes that the major factor in achieving expertise is purposeful engagement.
Emotional Intelligence
In his best-selling 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reported that study shows that conventional measures of intelligence - Iq - only list for 20% of a person's success in life. For example, study on Iq and study shows that high Iq predicts 10 to 25% of grades in college. The percentage will vary depending on how we define success. Nonetheless, Goleman's assertion begs the question: What accounts for the other 80%?
You guessed it...Emotional Intelligence. What exactly is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence (also called Eq or Ei) refers to the potential to perceive, control, and value emotions. Many corporations now have mandatory Eq training for their managers in an exertion to improve worker
relations and increase productivity.
Tacit Knowledge aka "Street Smarts"
You've heard the phrase, "Experience is the many teacher..."
In psychology circles knowledge gained from daily feel is called tacit knowledge. The colloquial term is "street smarts," which implies that formal, classroom study (aka "book smarts") has nothing to do with it. The individual is not directly instructed as to what he or she should learn, but rather must extract the important lesson from the feel even when Learning is not the original objective.
Tacit knowledge is closely connected to tasteless sense, which is sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. As you know, tasteless sense is not all that common.
Tacit knowledge, or the lessons obtained from it, seems to "stick" both faster and great when the lessons have direct relevance to the individual's goals. Knowledge that is based on one's own practical feel will likely be more instrumental to achieving one's goals than will be knowledge that is based on man else's experience, or that is overly generic and abstract.
Being Both Smart And Stupid
Yes, it's potential to be both smart and stupid. I'm sure man you know comes to mind at this correct moment. But the goal here is not to ridicule, but to understand how some seemingly highly intelligent, or highly educated individuals can be so smart in one way, and incredibly brainless in others.
The woman who is a respected, well paid, dynamic administrative who consistently chooses men who don't appear to be worthy of her, or the man who appears to be a pillar of the community, with a loving wife and happy kids, ends up being arrested on rape charges.
It happens, but why? I found the riposte in Why Smart habitancy Can Be So Stupid. Essentially, intellect is domain specific. In other words, being smart (knowledgeable) in one area of your life, and brainless (ignorant) in another is natural. Turning off one's brain is quite tasteless especially when it comes to what we desire. A shared characteristic among those who are smart and stupid, is the mystery in delaying gratification.
Olem Ayduk & Walter Mischel who wrote the chapter summarized: Sometimes brainless behavior in smart habitancy may arise from faulty expectations, erroneous beliefs, or merely a lack of motivation to enact control strategies even when one has them. But sometimes it is an inability to regulate one's affective states and the behavioral tendencies connected with them that leads to brainless and self-defeating behavior.
The central character in this book who many of these lessons about being smart and brainless revolve colse to is Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinksky.
Wisdom & Conclusion
My great grandmother, Leola Cecil, maybe had an 8th grade study at the most. By no stretch of the imagination was she highly educated, but she had what seemed like infinite wisdom. She was very observant and could "read" habitancy with anticipated accuracy. Till the very end of her life she shared her "crystallized intelligence" with whomever was receptive to it.
She died at the age of 94. I often use many of her sayings as a public speaker, but most importantly, I use her philosophies to make sure that I'm being guided spiritually and not just intellectually. Many of us who are lucky sufficient to have a great grandparent can testify that there is something extra about their knowledge. They seem to have life figured out, and a knack for helping those of us who are smart, educated and sharp see things more clearly when we are too busy thinking.
What they have is what we should all aspire to end up with if we are lucky: wisdom.
Wisdom is the potential to look through a person, when others can only look at them. Wisdom slows down the mental process and makes it more organic; synchronizing it with intuition. Wisdom helps you make great judgments about decisions, and makes you less judgmental. Wisdom is comprehension without knowing, and accepting without understanding. Wisdom is recognizing what's important to other people, and knowing that other habitancy are of the utmost importance to you. Wisdom is both a starting point, and a final conclusion.
