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The Interesting Real World
[ 6 minute read ] - 280 words per minute
Opinion
In Simply Psychology, by Michael Eysenck, published by Psychology Press Ltd (1996), there is this, under Intelligence testing: 'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'
I won't pretend to know much on this subject; anything I did know has melted away or atrophied from lack of use, or I suppose lack of revision and maintenance. However, I do have an opinion that I allowed to come to my fore-mind during a conversation with a chap replacing my window panes yesterday. It is an old opinion yet it is based on something I read a long time ago, and I hold that opinion as being true for me today.
I am the youngest of three. That means that for a short period each day I was an only child while my siblings were at school, except that I had an advantage that an only child can not usually have; I had a mother to myself who had experience of caring for two other infants. I also had the opportunity to learn from my two older siblings who were trained to exhibit at least a modicum of discipline in an environment of their infant peers. In other words, they were no longer the 'bee's knees' or the favoured ones such as they might have been at home and this affected their approach to their young lives, you know, putting their hand up to ask to go to the toilet and such. I don't recall learning anything remotely academic or interesting from my brother and sister at any time throughout our schooling; no maths or English grammar or French. You know, what happens in school stays in school?
The important point I am trying to make is something I have so far failed to provide any basis for. There are two premises I need to introduce that by themselves are insufficient for a conclusion to be made yet are monumentally relevant in my leap to a supposition. I did not attend nursery school while my later infant classmates did. Apparently, there were no places local enough for me to be placed in one. Consequently, I was educated at home by my mum for that year. My mum had no realistic idea as to how much I needed to learn to be on par with my later infant classmates. This ultimately meant that I could read and write beyond the capability of my classmates in the infant class of my primary school. The important thing to remember is that there were no distractions from my older siblings, who were at school during the day. I distinctly remember reading, 'Here is Peter' and 'Here is Jane' in a Ladybird book. During those days I also spent a lot of time amusing myself, but not in the house; I had a three acre garden to play in with a whole bunch of scary goats to avoid and friendly chicks and ducks to draw. I became fairly good at drawing. Before I attended primary school I drew a picture of some scuba divers with a fish swimming towards the viewer and another fish partially obscuring one of the divers. This, I heard, is unusual for a four year old.
It doesn't take much of a leap of thinking to recognise that I may have been considered to be 'gifted', but I am not. My intellectual abilities were 'switched on' by the stimuli both my mother provided in 'one to one' supervision and my interesting home environment in the garden. In being 'switched on' I probably learnt stuff from my siblings that I otherwise might not have done. I have no idea what that might have entailed but surely I didn't ignore their attitudes or characters. I went on to secondary school and flew through the annual exams every year without any revision. However, by the age of eleven I had had an emotional breakdown and was what I call, emotionally catatonic, but psychologists say is 'detached emotions'. The upshot of this is that I had no emotional distractions at secondary school. By year 9 I was only attending school about two-thirds of the time I should have been there, yet I still kept up with my classmates. Whatever the teachers said, I encoded without extraneous information, stored it in a healthy and nutritionally well-fed brain, and accessed with no superfluous additions to the code.
After I left school, I didn't use my intellect for any work purposes and worked as a labourer. I later went to night school to study A level law because I wanted to provide for my young family by late gaining a degree in law, but I was not stimulated. I studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering but I wasn't stimulated. Years passed and I found myself divorced and living alone. I studied marketing, logistics and the supply chain and I was revitalised. The courses, although valid in their circumscription still gave me scope to explore the subjects, and the internet was at my fingertips. My vocabulary improved and people I met remarked, seemingly in wonder, that I present as 'well educated'.
My intelligence or intellect, I propose, never changed from when I was four throughout all my compulsory schooling and the night schooling and college education. It is the same now, I suggest, as it has ever been. However, now I once again have no emotional distractions, and I have the internet, instead of a large garden to explore.
If I look deep into myself I think I can detect some deterioration in my focus towards study and my ability to recall information. I put this down to constraining myself to complying with The Open University requirements for study; to whit; write an essay on 'this' with 'this' amount of words. It is definitely hampering my intellectual stability. I am not studying a subject that has real-time applications. Experiencing my chosen subject area is done almost exclusively from books. I regard this form of studying as somewhat linear. However, at the same time I recognise that I am learning to use convergent thinking over divergent thinking; and I think it is that which I find dull.
The pace at which I am required to produce assignments is such that I cannot really disengage from the OU study sufficiently long enough to have my interest piqued by real-time surprises that I might otherwise be inclined to follow with a consequent journey of discovery and final satisfaction. The pace is also determined by my peers, in that I cannot submit Tutor Marked Assignments until I have demonstrated within those assignments, or by my presence on the subject or topic forums, that I have adequately interacted with other students through referencing what i have learnt within the modules. This causes me to be distracted since my impatience is triggered. This, in turn, affects not my intellect, but my ability to access it to a level that I have previously been able to do with independent study.
Here is the quote from Simply Psychology again:
'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'
Having looked a little bit inside myself I feel confident that I can give some form of an answer that addresses the thrust of the overall question.
I think intelligence should be measured in an environment that excludes any distraction. It is no good giving someone an appointment for an IQ test that may be the day after an emotional event; falling in love; birth of a child; losing a job or anything at all that causes any emotion to be prevalent.
I think that intelligence comes from dedicated attendance to a fertile bed of redundant opportunities. In other words, the human brain has to be fed, but first, like any fire, it has to be lit. I saw animals grow up at home before I went to school. I heard and smelt foxes, tractors and bonfires. Sometimes I even saw them. I heard the clock strike in the village square a mile away. I walked to school past an orange bull and smelt the pub as I passed it and I knew that my parents sometimes went inside this mysterious building, while my siblings and I drank delicious Coca-Cola outside.
The question above, from the Simply Psychology book, is asking if intelligence comes from nature or nurture. It is an elementary question for psychology students and it is still widely disputed. Of course, it is both. But I strongly believe that we must be stimulated at almost any cost to other opportunities we might otherwise choose. We should not, I believe, choose to metaphorically sleep, or cruise through life, simply because it is comfortable. However, in saying that, throwing myself into danger has never had a lasting effect on my interest in my environment because it has not fed my intellect, it has only used it.
