Day 55-What is your IQ?
What is that one thing that differentiates one human from another-one child from another-one employee from another-one business from another?
What is it that we are continuously assessing children on-in and out of schools?
What is it that we constantly strive to prove to people around us all the time?
Why is one person paid more than another?
Why do very few qualify to be studying at the Ivy League schools?
Why do we trust tuitions and coaching centres more than schools?
The answer is that word called "Intelligence" which some of us believe is something one must be blessed with through "DNA" while few others think that constant practice and rigorous training is capable of achieving.
There are dozens of IQ assessments online which quantify one's intelligence, the results of most of them prove that most of us are BELOW AVERAGE...so depressing !
What is this intelligence? How do we define it and what is it dependent upon? How can we nurture it in an individual?
My grandmother would be able to smell the curry cooking in the stove and point out that it needs more salt. She could calculate how much money the milkman owed her at any point in time using express fast mental arithmetic. She could look at a piece of cloth and say if it was possible to stitch a blouse out of it for her. Se would use scraps of material to make rugs or curtains. She had her own travel kit -the pouch she got from some Zero B water filter that we used to buy those days (when water purifiers like the Kent or the Aquagurard were unheard of) which housed her own DIY sewing kit made from bobby pins and scrap pieces of cloth(to store needles).
My mother uses old dishwashing liquid bottles to store oil for Pooja (there wouldn't be a single drop of oil dripping or messing up the place).
I consider these women far far more intelligent than me who would run to amazon.com to buy everything that I could possibly want and use the mobile phone to calculate how much change I owe to the shopkeeper.
Is intelligence merely an acquisition of information as most of our school assessment systems make believe?Or is it just genetic? I always used to wonder .
By chance I happened to watch a show on National Geographic about octopuses. A study conducted by human beings reveals that the octopus has the ability to store a certain information and use it appropriately. They placed opaque barrels in the water tank, one of them with a sign and in it were small fishes-food for the octopus. Overtime they placed the barrel with that particular sign, the octopus would try to attack it while the other barrels , it would even bother with.
After all isn't that what intelligence is?
The ability to acquire information and to use the information to one's benefit -that must be the accurate definition of intelligence. Don't you think?
Our schools test children on the acquisition of information partially(because this information is available to children readymade and is grilled into them over a period of time). So basically all that we are testing children for is the retention of limited information. That doesn't define the intelligence of the child.No?
If I were to give the child a real world problem and ask them HOW he would solve it, that probably would be a better test. Don't you think?
But do we show children HOW TO ACQUIRE INFORMATION? I doubt it.
Open book tests are not practiced anymore. Problems with application to daily life are never discussed nor posed. We train children to believe that resources are abundantly available and need not be respected. Is that the case though?
Lets go back to my mother and my grandmother. How is it that they are able to use information to their benefit? One cannot deny that they have the advantage of the "experience"-sensorial and intellectual.
Examples :
To look at a vessel and say if it will hold a certain quantity of milk.
To instinctively mix or not mix some materials in certain foods foreseeing a chemical reaction in it
Making the most of limited space in the cupboard(instead of buying a new cupboard)
Well..you get it.
So if children be given the tools to acquire information and experience to use this information appropriately, can we safely conclude that they can be called intelligent human beings who are ready to live life and tackle problems posed by it?
Are we doing this to our children?
Ready for the IQ test now??
What is it that we are continuously assessing children on-in and out of schools?
What is it that we constantly strive to prove to people around us all the time?
Why is one person paid more than another?
Why do very few qualify to be studying at the Ivy League schools?
Why do we trust tuitions and coaching centres more than schools?
The answer is that word called "Intelligence" which some of us believe is something one must be blessed with through "DNA" while few others think that constant practice and rigorous training is capable of achieving.
There are dozens of IQ assessments online which quantify one's intelligence, the results of most of them prove that most of us are BELOW AVERAGE...so depressing !
What is this intelligence? How do we define it and what is it dependent upon? How can we nurture it in an individual?
My grandmother would be able to smell the curry cooking in the stove and point out that it needs more salt. She could calculate how much money the milkman owed her at any point in time using express fast mental arithmetic. She could look at a piece of cloth and say if it was possible to stitch a blouse out of it for her. Se would use scraps of material to make rugs or curtains. She had her own travel kit -the pouch she got from some Zero B water filter that we used to buy those days (when water purifiers like the Kent or the Aquagurard were unheard of) which housed her own DIY sewing kit made from bobby pins and scrap pieces of cloth(to store needles).
My mother uses old dishwashing liquid bottles to store oil for Pooja (there wouldn't be a single drop of oil dripping or messing up the place).
I consider these women far far more intelligent than me who would run to amazon.com to buy everything that I could possibly want and use the mobile phone to calculate how much change I owe to the shopkeeper.
Is intelligence merely an acquisition of information as most of our school assessment systems make believe?Or is it just genetic? I always used to wonder .
By chance I happened to watch a show on National Geographic about octopuses. A study conducted by human beings reveals that the octopus has the ability to store a certain information and use it appropriately. They placed opaque barrels in the water tank, one of them with a sign and in it were small fishes-food for the octopus. Overtime they placed the barrel with that particular sign, the octopus would try to attack it while the other barrels , it would even bother with.
After all isn't that what intelligence is?
The ability to acquire information and to use the information to one's benefit -that must be the accurate definition of intelligence. Don't you think?
Our schools test children on the acquisition of information partially(because this information is available to children readymade and is grilled into them over a period of time). So basically all that we are testing children for is the retention of limited information. That doesn't define the intelligence of the child.No?
If I were to give the child a real world problem and ask them HOW he would solve it, that probably would be a better test. Don't you think?
But do we show children HOW TO ACQUIRE INFORMATION? I doubt it.
Open book tests are not practiced anymore. Problems with application to daily life are never discussed nor posed. We train children to believe that resources are abundantly available and need not be respected. Is that the case though?
Lets go back to my mother and my grandmother. How is it that they are able to use information to their benefit? One cannot deny that they have the advantage of the "experience"-sensorial and intellectual.
Examples :
To look at a vessel and say if it will hold a certain quantity of milk.
To instinctively mix or not mix some materials in certain foods foreseeing a chemical reaction in it
Making the most of limited space in the cupboard(instead of buying a new cupboard)
Well..you get it.
So if children be given the tools to acquire information and experience to use this information appropriately, can we safely conclude that they can be called intelligent human beings who are ready to live life and tackle problems posed by it?
Are we doing this to our children?
Ready for the IQ test now??
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