I've all the time been intrigued by the subject of intelligence. As a child my mum would refer to me as "smart," but I quickly noticed that all parents refer to their children as smart. In time I would inspect 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 citizen - 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 someone 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, brain and wisdom.
What does it mean to be extremely educated? What's the inequity between being extremely educated and extremely intelligent? Does being extremely educated automatically make you extremely intelligent? Can one be extremely thoughprovoking without being extremely educated? Do Iqs assuredly mean anything? What makes a someone wise? Why is wisdom typically associated with old age?
My desire to seek answers to these questions inspired many hours of intense explore which included the reading of 6 books, hundreds of explore documents, and countless hours on the Internet; which pales in comparison to the lifetime of studies and explore that pioneers in the fields of brain and instruction 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 thoughprovoking so that it can be understood and used by anyone for their benefit.
Prenatal Care
With this in mind, there was not a best (or more appropriate) place to start than at the very beginning 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 during fertilization is needful to construction the prenatal brain. Researchers have found a strong relationship between low iron levels during fertilization and diminished Iq. Foods rich in iron consist of 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, proper prenatal care is needful to the amelioration of cognitive skills.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are the basic thinking abilities we use to think, study, and learn. They consist of a wide range of thinking processes used to analyze sounds and images, recall information from memory, make associations between different pieces of information, and allege attentiveness on singular tasks. They can be individually identified and measured. Cognitive skill vigor 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 during the second trimester - is associated with lower Iqs in offspring at 10 years of age. This succeed was especially pronounced among African-American rather than Caucasian offspring.
"Iq is a measure of the child's capability to learn and to survive in his or her environment. It predicts the inherent for success in school and in everyday life. Although a small but needful division of children are diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Fas) each year, many more children are exposed to alcohol during fertilization who do not meet criteria for Fas yet caress 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 department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington has this to say about the subject:
"There are a whole of domains of cognitive functioning that can be impaired even in the face of a relatively general Iq, including schoraly achievement (especially arithmetic), adaptive functioning, and administrative functions (the capability to problem solve and learn from experiences). Deficits in intellectual, achievement, adaptive, and administrative functioning could make it difficult to appropriately conduct finances, function independently without assistance, and understand the consequences of - or react appropriately to - mistakes."
This is a key finding which speaks directly to the (psychological) definition of brain which is addressed later in this article.
Ultra Sounds
Studies have shown that the frequent exposure of the human fetus to ultrasound waves is associated with a decrease in newborn body weight, an increase in the frequency of left-handedness, and delayed speech.
Because ultrasound vigor 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 succeed in abnormal brain function.
Commercial associates (which do ultrasounds for "keepsake" purposes) are now creating more considerable 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. Disposition 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 around 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 turn over 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 bring up (the environment)?
Apparently for centuries, scientists and psychologists have gone back and forth on this. I read many extensive studies and reports on this subject during the explore phase of this article, and I believe that it's time to put this turn over to rest. Both nature and bring up 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 new study shows that early intervention in the home and in the classroom can make a big inequity for a child born into greatest poverty, agreeing 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 inequity 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 brain Factor that environments shared by siblings have miniature to do with Iq. Many citizen still mistakenly believe that social, psychological and economic differences among families originate continuing and marked differences in Iq.
She found that behavioral geneticists refer to such environmental effects as "shared" because they are base 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 citizen get older.
In her report 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 perhaps the most thoughprovoking bit of information, and relevant to this section of my article:
With age, differences among individuals in their advanced brain come to mirror more intimately their genetic differences. It appears that the effects of environment on brain 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 citizen 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. during the period 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 schoraly information on the children, including Iq, instructor ratings of school execution in reading and math, and results of standardized tests of reading comprehension, mathematics, and schoraly ability. The researchers also looked at the whole 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 thoughprovoking 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 midpoint exposed to a smaller vocabulary than white children, in part due to socioeconomic factors.
While children from expert households typically exposed to a total of 2,150 different 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 needful 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 citizen 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 either 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 explore it dawned on me, and should be fairly confident to you, that many children are predisposed to being smart, educated, and intelligent, simply by their exposure to the influential factors which rule them long before they start school.
An informed mother, proper 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 inherent by arbitrary rules...and such unfair advantages are everywhere. "It is those who are prosperous who are most likely to be given the kinds of social opportunities that lead to additional 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 instruction 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 capability of instruction you received, or something about you? Does it denote what you were taught? Or what you remember?
I allege 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 citizen are aware of the floundering state of instruction 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 allocation 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 assuredly value education. We value it as a business, an industry, political ammunition, and as an suitable form of discrimination, but not for what it was intended: a means of enriching one's character and life straight through learning.
What we value as a society, are athletes and the entertainment they offer. The fact that a expert athlete makes more money in one season, than most teachers in any region will make in their careers, is abominable. There's all the time money to build new sports stadiums, but not adequate 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 assuredly good instructor 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 midpoint of three years.
At the high school level, where I got my start, the emphasis is not on how to educate the students to put in order them for life, or even college (all high schools should be college-prep schools, right?), it was about making ready them to excel on their standardized tests. Then the controversial "exit" exams were implemented and literally, many high schools were transformed into testing centers. Studying has practically come to be secondary.
This mentality carries over into college, which of procedure 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 Studying from it. They are focused on getting "A's" and degrees, instead of becoming degreed thinkers. The latter of which are in greater request by employers and consist of 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 delineate 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 associated to that?"), supposition ("How might things have been otherwise?"), and relevance ("Why is this important?").
Kohn writes: It's only the capability to raise and talk those questions that matters, though, but also the Disposition to do so. For that matter, any set of intellectual objectives, any report 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 Studying never ends...
History And Purpose Of Iq
We've all the time wanted to measure 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 citizen to various forms of torture to see what their threshold for pain was (the longer you could withstand wincing, the more thoughprovoking you were believed to be), or testing your capability to detect a high pitch sound that others could not hear.
Things have changed...or have they?
No conference of brain or Iq can be unblemished 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 Studying disabilities of students in France. The test results were then used to put in order extra programs to help students overcome their educational difficulties.
It was never intended to be used as an absolute measure of one's intellectual capabilities.
According to Binet, brain could not be described as a singular score. He said that the use of the brain Quotient (Iq) as a definite statement of a child's intellectual capability 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 instruction and livelihood.
The original interest was in the estimation of 'mental age' -- the midpoint level of brain for a someone of a given age. His creation, the Binet-Simon test (originally called a "scale"), formed the archetype for time to come tests of intelligence.
H. H. Goddard, director of explore 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 determined brain 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 revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of brain (also known as the Stanford-Binet), became the suitable brain 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 during the procedure of one's lifetime. It does not mean that you come to be more, or less intelligent, it merely means that you tested best 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 involved 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 feel 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 strangeness passing them?
Lewis Terman advanced the original thought of Iq and proposed this scale for classifying Iq scores:
000 - 070: definite feeble-mindedness
070 - 079: Borderline scantness
080 - 089: Dullness
090 - 109: general or midpoint brain
110 - 119: excellent intelligence
115 - 124: Above midpoint (e.g., university students)
125 - 134: Gifted (e.g., post-graduate students)
135 - 144: extremely 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 commonly determined to begin around 140 to 145, representing only 25% of the citizen (1 in 400).
*Einstein was determined to "only" have an Iq of about 160.
Defining Intelligence
Diane F. Halpern, a psychologist and past-president of the American Psychological relationship (Apa), wrote in her essay offering to Why Smart citizen Can Be So Stupid that in general, we identify citizen as thoughprovoking if they have some mixture of these achievements (1) good grades in school; (2) a high level of education; (3) a responsible, involved job; (4) some other recognition of being intelligent, such as winning prestigious awards or earning a large salary; (5) the capability to read involved text with good comprehension; (6) solve difficult and novel problems.
Throughout my explore and in the early phases of this article, I came across 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 capability 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 brain adapt to it - and the citizen who occupy it - in order to survive and succeed within it.
There are also many different forms of intelligence. Most notably those created by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of instruction 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 extremely allege or logical citizen 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 thought of intelligence, based on Iq testing, was far too miniature and created the Theories Of many Intelligences in 1983 to account for a broader range of human inherent in children and adults.
These intelligences are:
Linguistic brain ("word smart")
Logical-mathematical brain ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial brain ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic brain ("body smart")
Musical brain ("music smart")
Interpersonal brain ("people smart")
Intrapersonal brain ("self smart")
Naturalist brain ("nature smart")
Not associated 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 brain and additional advanced the theory with John Horn. The Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized brain suggests that brain is composed of a whole of different abilities that interact and work together to produce extensive private intelligence.
Cattell defined fluid brain as "...the capability to realize relationships independent of former definite custom or instruction regarding those relationships." Fluid brain is the capability to think and conjecture abstractly and solve problems. This capability is determined independent of learning, experience, and education. Examples of the use of fluid brain consist of solving puzzles and coming up with problem solving strategies.
Crystallized brain is learning from past experiences and learning. Situations that need crystallized brain consist of reading comprehension and vocabulary exams. This type of brain is based upon facts and rooted in experiences. This type of brain becomes stronger as we age and acquire new knowledge and understanding.
Both types of brain increase throughout childhood and adolescence. Fluid brain peaks in adolescence and begins to decline progressively beginning around age 30 or 40. Crystallized brain continues to grow throughout adulthood.
Successful Intelligence
Then there's Successful Intelligence, which is authored by brain psychologist and Yale professor, Robert J. Sternberg, who believes that the whole thought of relating Iq to life achievement is misguided, because he believes that Iq is a pretty miserable predictor of life achievement.
His prosperous brain theory focuses on 3 types of brain which are combined to contribute to one's extensive success: Analytical Intelligence; thinking steps or components used to solve problems; Creative Intelligence: the use of caress in ways that bring up comprehension (creativity/divergent thinking); and Practical Intelligence: the capability to read and adapt to the contexts of everyday life.
With regard to environment, Mr. Sternberg writes in his book Successful Intelligence: Successfully thoughprovoking citizen realize 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 prosperous work, but make a difference. They originate opportunities rather than let opportunities be miniature by circumstances in which they happen to find themselves.
As an educator, I subscribe to Mr. Sternberg's prosperous brain arrival to teaching. It has proven to be a extremely efficient tool and mindset for my college students. Using prosperous brain as the backbone of my context-driven curriculum assuredly inspires students to see how instruction makes their life goals more attainable, and motivates them to additional fabricate 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 explore shows that approved measures of brain - Iq - only account for 20% of a person's success in life. For example, explore on Iq and instruction shows that high Iq predicts 10 to 25% of grades in college. The division 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 brain (also called Eq or Ei) refers to the capability to perceive, control, and value emotions. Many corporations now have mandatory Eq training for their managers in an endeavor to enhance laborer
relations and increase productivity.
Tacit Knowledge aka "Street Smarts"
You've heard the phrase, "Experience is the most teacher..."
In psychology circles knowledge gained from everyday caress is called tacit knowledge. The colloquial term is "street smarts," which implies that formal, classroom instruction (aka "book smarts") has nothing to do with it. The private is not directly instructed as to what he or she should learn, but rather must extract the important lesson from the caress even when Studying is not the original objective.
Tacit knowledge is intimately associated to base sense, which is sound and thrifty judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. As you know, base sense is not all that common.
Tacit knowledge, or the lessons obtained from it, seems to "stick" both faster and best when the lessons have direct relevance to the individual's goals. Knowledge that is based on one's own practical caress will likely be more instrumental to achieving one's goals than will be knowledge that is based on someone else's experience, or that is overly generic and abstract.
Being Both Smart And Stupid
Yes, it's inherent to be both smart and stupid. I'm sure someone you know comes to mind at this correct moment. But the goal here is not to ridicule, but to understand how some seemingly extremely intelligent, or extremely 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 talk in Why Smart citizen 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 base especially when it comes to what we desire. A shared characteristic among those who are smart and stupid, is the strangeness in delaying gratification.
Olem Ayduk & Walter Mischel who wrote the lesson summarized: Sometimes brainless behavior in smart citizen 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 associated with them that leads to brainless and self-defeating behavior.
The central character in this book who many of these lessons regarding being smart and brainless revolve around is Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinksky.
Wisdom & Conclusion
My great grandmother, Leola Cecil, maybe had an 8th grade instruction at the most. By no stretch of the imagination was she extremely educated, but she had what seemed like infinite wisdom. She was very observant and could "read" citizen with incredible 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 social 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 adequate 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 thoughprovoking 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 capability to look straight through a person, when others can only look at them. Wisdom slows down the thinking process and makes it more organic; synchronizing it with intuition. Wisdom helps you make best judgments regarding 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 citizen are of the utmost importance to you. Wisdom is both a beginning point, and a final conclusion.
