Ignition for Education

If, today, you met a genius, would you be able to tell? Would you know by their conversation? Or would you need more information, perhaps about their achievements, reading habits, or IQ?

All of those approaches—evaluating a person’s intellectual ability by their oral expression, other kinds of output, interaction with the intellectual world, psychometric measurements—are valid, because intelligence is simply the ability to handle complexity. If you conclude, on the basis of a person’s conversation, that they are intelligent, you do so because they discuss complex things (anything from philosophy to sports statistics) in a capable way. If you do so on the basis of their achievements, you judge that those achievements required deft handling of complexity in some form. If on the basis of their reading, you judge that they read (and understand) complex material.

IQ testing requires its subjects to engage in a number of complex tasks. It generates a number of scores, each of which represents a subject’s ability to handle a different kind of complex task. Most people think that the average of these scores, “overall” IQ, is the most important number. But it is the variety of scores that go into the average that really represents a person’s intellectual capacity.

Rather than saying that an intelligent person is one with a high overall IQ, or with high scores on the SAT or some other standardized test, a college degree, advanced conversation or reading habits, or professional achievements, it makes more sense to say that an intelligent person is one who can manage complexity–any complexity, whether found in obvious intellectual pursuits like science, literature, or politics, or in sports, or creation or appreciation of the arts, or technical know-how, or the handling of social situations. If it’s complicated, and they do it well, they’re smart. Never mind their overall IQ or their educational or professional accomplishments. Never mind whether there are other complicated things that they’re bad at. Because, let’s face it, that’s all of us.

This is not the same idea as “multiple intelligences.” I’m not positing varieties of intelligence. I’m offering a unitary concept. Intelligence is one thing, and one thing only—the ability to handle complexity. It takes different forms in different people, based on their background, opportunities, and preferences.

This is important for teachers because it allows us to see intelligence in a larger number of our students than we otherwise would, including in students who may not achieve very much academically. Do they achieve in a sport that involves complicated tactics and strategy? Or in music or drama or art? Are they able to negotiate complicated peer social dynamics? Or, bearing in mind that intelligence is not always well used, are they skilled manipulators of adults?

They’re intelligent.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, on the basis of the Creation Paradigm, it’s important to give students opportunities to excel in as many ways as possible, not just the obvious academic and artistic fields and the obvious sports. Doing so will allow their intelligence to manifest, and to lead them towards achievement and creativity.

It may also break them out of the rut of self-identification as “average kids,” or, worse, “dumb kids.”