The Fact About Intelligence: it isn’t Simple

Kyle Freitag - Social Studies

UTL-101

2/3/2019

Professor K. Martin
 Often times we view intelligence as a student being able to correctly answer most the

questions a multiple choice quiz or someone who can recite facts about something off the top of

their head. To put it simply, we praise someone as being intelligent when they do not make

mistakes. We strive for only traditional academic excellence which often makes us lose the big

picture of education, which is that its overall purpose is to better oneself. In each presentation I

viewed, the speakers each had a criticism of the education system that we have currently in

place. The ones that stuck out were that education tends to focus on the superficial level of

learning and the failure to understand a student’s creativity.

Howard Gardner stated in his presentation that we are only given a superficial level of

education from school when rather we should focus on gaining valuable skills that could be

learned from truly focusing on a subject. A stellar example he used was that of focusing on the

scientific method rather than knowing a lot of different science subjects. The scientific method

would offer a student the understanding of factual evidence proving something as true, analysing

data, and understatement of the key mechanics of how science works so that they can use this to

benefit them in college. He also points out that a student that does not ask questions, that does

not actively engage in their learning is not going to retain all the information, even if they

perform well, which I think is a large flaw that we must work to acknowledge and fix in our

education system. If we do make a deep understanding of the material then individuals would

learn from it instead of simple memorization.

The value of what Howard Gardner says could tell us that we perhaps need to modify our

education system to not dip into learning a small amount of tons of subjects, rather focus on a

few more in depth, giving a longer time to make sure a student has a deep understanding rather
than a passing one. For example, a student having a great understanding how historical thinking

skills more deeply would benefit them more than making them just memorizing a bunch of facts.

Understanding the context of why something happened, when, and what it caused could be

applied to many aspects of one’s life, not just in understanding history. Public education is truly

meant to educate individuals and if students do not use the skills they learned from school in life,

then it is truly meaningless, so making sure students better understand material is key.

This subject of flaws of the education system is also touched upon by Sir Ken Robinson

who states “I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the

world is to produce university professors. Isn't it?” This quote stood out because people who do

become professors are typically passionate about a school subject in a traditional sense and are

the people who will ask questions/research a subject on their own for a deeper understanding.

Our typical system benefits individuals who are passionate about something and we often do not

give students a reason to be truly passionate about the material we are teaching. This idea was

also touched on by the presentation of Tesia Marshik’s “Learning styles & the importance of

critical self-reflection”. Dr. Marshik stated in order for an individual to have an advantage when

it came to learning or understanding something it has to have meaning to them. The moment the

meaning is taken away, the advantage someone has about knowing something more diminishes.

This idea that something having “meaning” to an individual helps to understand and remember it

due to the significance it has. With knowing this, if we made material mean more to students

then they would be more likely to actually want to learn something and better retain the

information. We need to value the students that do not fit the mold of a perfect student because

their passion can lie somewhere outside of our subject so rather than rejecting it we need to
understand it is valid. This isn’t saying to just go “Oh, this student isn’t passionate about this

subject so why care?” No! Of course not! Offering a sort of understanding and encouraging

subjects that fuel creativity such as music (band/orchestra/choir), dance, theatre arts, etc. In fact,

we do this with sports where we value athletes even when they are not as good in school (more

so once we reach the college level but we tend to value a sports star more than an accomplished

cellist).

To make a student’s time in public education successful, we need to be able to give them

a solid foundation of information that they can use in their everyday lives. This could cleverly be

done by just formulating material to be taught in ways that they can use both the skills to

understand the core subject as well as the utility of the skill in everyday life. If we do that, then

perhaps even a student who cares more about the arts would benefit from a general education.

This also could cause the skills to be seen as more valuable than just the sheer knowledge a

student gained from a class since in reality problem solving skills in a everyday situation is more

important than they are in math to the average individual. Understanding not every student will

be an expert on a subject is key to respect their creativity and giving them a better education.

Isn’t that what we are here for? To make sure students have a proper education? With some

change to the system of public education, we would be able to release a more intelligent,

well-rounded group of individuals into the world.