Education = Intelligence? Hardly.

[Maveroid]

Fact is, education is not something you can show. Sure, you can say you have a degree in being God-Like or something but you could have accumulated more knowledge at home by informing yourself through books or the internet, yet nobody would recognize that as some form of education (at least officially).

One could say that the topics that one adresses or simply the way you handle conversations would show how intelligent you are, but there is still a problem with that.
Talk about art and people think you are either an artist or just pretentious, for example.
I met a guy who always seemed to break out with the most random facts and start talking about them. Is he educated? Well, he certainly knows a lot, but he misses one thing that the IQ test actually does consider - Emotional Intelligence.

If someone manages to know 'everything', for example, is he still considered smart after he talks about 'everything' during coffee-break with his co-workers? No, he would not be. If you don't have emotional intelligence you are most likely either egocentric or just inverted which automatically makes it impossible to apply most of the knowledge that you can gain. (not so much inverted behavior, but egocentrism most definitely)

Imagine a wizard like Gandalf who would just go around and spam people about the existence of whatever-book and whatever-demon and whatever-magic; we would not say that he is smart, we would make fun of him (mostly).
Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter movies is also a good example. She is a smart girl at heart, which we find out as the story progresses, but her inability to express herself normally makes her seem rather weird. ( I still love her and I wish I would meet someone 'weird' like her, hrrr )

 

[Dastardly]

What do you think? Do you really think you're more "intelligent" than the average, or are you just better educated? And if you are more "intelligent" than average, what proof do you have of it? Do you even know how to empirically test such a thing?

I think education leads to increased intelligence, or at least being better equipped to access your intelligence.

If you want a quick-and-dirty way of thinking of it, education tends to focus on imparting knowledge and skills. Intelligence tends to be about a person's ability to apply knowledge and skills to novel situations. An "educated" person might know how to do multiplication problems. An "intelligent" person would be able to figure out that a particular real-life problem would be best solved by multiplication.

Shorter: Education is how much knowledge you have. Intelligence is how quickly you navigate and connect knowledge.

There are plenty of people who can be quite intelligent. However, lacking a lot of information, they aren't as able to demonstrate that intelligence. Someone that is very mechanically-minded might be able to figure out pretty quickly how an engine works... but without "education" (meaning exposure to diagrams, part names, and hands-on experience) they might not be able to demonstrate that intelligence.

Education is what allows people to turn the "potential energy" of intelligence into "kinetic energy." We certainly shouldn't make the mistake of believing "education" exclusively means "school." However, we also shouldn't discount the value of school -- daily experiences, led by an expert, that focus specifically on imparting knowledge.

Analogy time: Intelligence could be seen as a gold vein under your house. Education could be seen as the equipment you use to dig it up and refine it. All the education in the world can't put gold where there is none, and all the gold in the world is meaningless unless you can get to it.

 

[Sandytimeman]

After all, we talk about some animals being 'more intelligent' than others. Do we think that dolphins go around in schools? Do we think rats hang out in science labs? Wait... you know what I mean!

Clever...(!) -_-

OT: Now, there seems to be some confusion between 'intellect' and 'intelligence'...

IMO, what should be viewed as intelligence is rather... adaptability, being able to fit into new circumstances (by that I mean professions etc.).

e.g. in terms of brute 'intellect', I am head and shoulders above my old man (except in physical chemistry... ¬_¬ ), but I still regard him as being far more intelligent, since he has worked as the following: (medical) theatre attendant; city trader; spectroscopic technician; gas engineer; telecoms forecaster; civil servant; statistical analyst; and a couple others (and to top it off, his half-serious ambition is to be a bloody mortuary attendant...(!)). So, in the context of 'now', this required/s a hideous level of transferable skills that seem sorely lacking in most now... myself included, so it would seem...

Besides, there's 'knowing' something, but 'intelligence' would be applying said thing and using it to interpret new knowledge...

/mental derp, not sure why...

I agree with this so hard. My old man is an US Army Warrent Officer, Computer Programmer, Web Designer, Mechanic, Carpenter, Bee Keeper, Wheat/Hay Farmer, and has a Bach in Mathematics, Masters in Astro Physics.

Fuck I'm 26 and I'm still working on my Bach >.<

 

[wooty]

In my experience, people who are very "intelligent" or can tell you the absolute mass of a cobalt atom suspended in the interior of a black hole about to reach criticality while systematically being fired on by a high velocity field of......magic, often have no common sense or clue as to the real world.

Case in point, I lived with a materials engineering master (he was doing his doctorate at the time), he knew all about materials, resistances, corrosions, weights, techno-blah, but when it came to washing the plastic shower curtain, he put it in the machine......on a 60 degree C wash and an hours drying cycle, then wondered what had gone wrong.

 

[Mayonegg]

I agree.

Intelligence is your ability to effectively and efficiently assimilate, order and apply the knowledge you do have to each scenario that may befall you.

It has little, if anything to do with your knowledge and education directly, but it does have a great deal to do with your ability to expand your knowledge, and piece information you discover into the tapestry of your mind, thereby making it useful knowledge rather than trivial facts.

 

[Gyrohelix]

This cannot be solved with more gun, as this falls under the conundrums of philosophy.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I for one believe that an education doesn't necessarily make someone intelligent. Certainly an education can help, but it still comes down to the individuals ability to analyze, apply knowledge and think critically.

Also, didn't Einstein drop out of school and became one of the smartest men in history?

To quote Confucious: "He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

 

[MetalMagpie]

Surely this is just an argument of semantics?

Oxford English Dictionary:
intelligence
[mass noun]
1. the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
intelligence
(1) the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)

Which is fairly vague. Worse, all sorts of people mean all sorts of different things when they actually use the word. This makes it unsuitable for serious discussion without clarification of what we mean by "intelligence" in this context.

For many people, the definition of "intelligence" really is "how well you score in an IQ test". For others, it's your level of knowledge. Or you can talk about intelligence in reference to a particular skill. ("he's very intelligent when it comes to maths.")

 

[surg3n]

I don't believe IQ tests accurately measure anything other than the ability to do IQ tests. I mean, I can see how the pattern recognition stuff might reveal good problem solving intellect, but the number stuff is all superficial. What goes next in this sequence? 1, 4 ,7, 9, 14, 25... type questions rely on the participants skill at answering these pointless questions. I would say that on paper I'm above average, I do well on IQ tests, and a lot of people would classify me as smart.

But my writing isn't very good, it takes me ages to learn math techniques, in fact it takes me ages to learn anything through standard means. For instance I only have a standard grade maths education, yet I taught myself to program before I even knew what algebra was. I think that part of it might be that I don't see the point in learning what everyone else knows, I'd rather teach myself something unique than learn a valuable skill that 100,000 people already have.

Really, I would say that the more learned someone is, the less able they are to learn something completely new - if it doesn't fit into their ruleset, then they deny it as much as I can deny un-proven physics theories, for instance. Higher education is largely about teaching more effective problem solving techniques, but if you already know how to solve a problem, then it stops being a problem... and people stop being problem solvers, and start being robots. No offense to people with or in, higher education - but my point is that it seems these days that a degree is something you work towards, put in enough time and it's yours. It doesn't necesserily denote intellect, and in my opinion it falls short of highlighting good problem solvers, just good problem solving techniques.

Consider a real genius, like Hawkings, or Einstein - now in that sort of ball park, name 1 genius who is comparable, even remotely. I'm not talking about some 8 year old with a degree and a mind conditioned to solve one particular type of problem. I'm more intruiged by the trailblazers myself - people who solved problems before the problem solving techniques were established. There aren't any new geniuses, just a lot of paper-clever people using standard systems, that anyone could learn given enough time.

Personally, I think education as a whole has to change, it has to start revealing people with more to offer the world, a degree is not enough when every other person has one. We need to find inventive and truly smart people, not just people who can stick in college/uni for 4 years. What can we possibly learn about the future, by regurgitating the past.

 

[Booze Zombie]

To me, intelligentce refers to ability to contemplate, reflect and simply think. Oddly, I've met few devoid of this ability...

 

[Griffolion]

"Intelligence" is quite a mercurial concept, and IQ tests do anything BUT measure it. There are seven major intelligences that we all have in different measures based on our genetics and upbringing. But I generally think it's pointless trying to get a general "intelligence" measure anyway as it really says nothing because it's so broad.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I made a point to point out in the other thread that education and intelligence were seperate! Just look at some of the guys and girls coming out of oxbridge... Some of them really do have no ommon sense what so ever... They over think simple things, and lack the capability to complete anything that doesn't require reading a book and reproducing it on paper!

 

[Rallus]

I have no need to prove myself. I haven't taken an IQ test so I might be "Unintelligent", but that's who I am and I'm fine with that. I don't understand how people find the need to try to prove themselves more intelligent than others and some who will spout their grades/IQ score at every argument to further prove their facts of questionable status. You are who you are, nothing will change that, so why compare yourself to others when they are nowhere near as important in your life as you are?

 

[The Abhorrent]

In my experience, people who are very "intelligent" or can tell you the absolute mass of a cobalt atom suspended in the interior of a black hole about to reach criticality while systematically being fired on by a high velocity field of......magic, often have no common sense or clue as to the real world.

I can certainly confirm the fact that many who are deeply entrenched in their field of study can be surprisingly ignorant about everyday issues, and to be quite honest I'm a fairly terrible offender when it comes to that. But at least I'm not too proud to deny that I make any mistakes, which seems to give me a bit of an edge when it comes to learning. As many have stated already, what makes a person "smart" isn't so much having knowledge as it is the ability to acquire and apply it.

Case in point, I lived with a materials engineering master (he was doing his doctorate at the time), he knew all about materials, resistances, corrosions, weights, techno-blah, but when it came to washing the plastic shower curtain, he put it in the machine......on a 60 degree C wash and an hours drying cycle, then wondered what had gone wrong.

And this example is downright hilarious, especially once the guy's field of study is taken into account.... well, if my guess about the plastic melting is correct. The melting point is a basic property of the material, nothing too complicated. Come to think of it, I don't recall if plastics (aside from synthetic fibers) ever being machine washed; I'm not entirely sure for the reason that is, but again the guess is it melts in the heat (or something else no pretty). Making the mistake in the first place is one thing (sometimes one has to learn the hard way), but he should've been able to figure out what that mistake was by simple observation... or maybe he was just in shock at what had happened, and his brain had yet to "restart".

Either way, I would suspect this particular individual was one who had minimal field experience (if any at all) before going onto his post-graduate degrees. I'm studying civil engineering myself, and one of the most basic lessons I've gained in the little bit of field experience I got through various summer jobs is that practicality needs to be taken into account; simple problems have simple solutions, and quite often the precision you need in the real world is far less than what you can get in the theory.

Which brings me to a critical point -- overcomplicating something does NOT make you smart. If anything, it implies the opposite. In many advanced fields, a high degree of complexity may be required; but any more complexity than is necessary is counter-productive. Just as a basic example, my structural design professor gave the class a list "tips" for how to design connections between steel members in a building; one of the first was to never have more than two different types of bolts on a project. Using a lot of different bolts may make the project more efficient, but everything can break down (perhaps even literally) when the guy who actually places the bolts (often an average joe) is staring at 50 different bolts and has no idea about which one he should be using. Mistakes are going to happen (both technical and non-technical), so you have to take measures to minimize the chances of that happening; and almost always, complicating the matter is not the solution.

It's actually kinda funny how many of the principles of engineering design can actually be summarized as "idiot-proofing", in regards to both for the engineer and the general populace.

 

[basksl]

The tests that require education are just cheap quick tests for the public, real IQ tests test your capabilities. Wich are more about how well you can learn and examine things.

 

[surg3n]

Consider a real genius, like Hawkings, or Einstein - now in that sort of ball park, name 1 genius who is comparable, even remotely.

Leonardo Da Vinci.

Yup, don't get much more trailblazing than Da Vinci... I should really have said 'in modern times' though.

 

[michael87cn]

I'm getting rather sick of the "Do you think you are more intelligent than the average?"-topics that pop up every now and then. How do you people measure intelligence? Is it IQ tests? I doubt it, especially since IQ-tests seem to point more at "you're good at IQ-tests" than "You're intelligent!".
No, what people assume is "intelligence", and what they mean when they say so, is most often education.
That's right. We have very few ways of effectively measuring how smart someone is, especially when you've only encountered them a few times, so education, or how "smart" they sound, is what we say when we mean "He's intelligent".
Or, that's how I see it.

What do you think? Do you really think you're more "intelligent" than the average, or are you just better educated? And if you are more "intelligent" than average, what proof do you have of it? Do you even know how to empirically test such a thing?

Edit:

There are a few different words that are pretty much used as synonyms for each other because of the connotations they draw.

There are different kinds of intelligence, there is no one definition of it and everyone has some measure of intellect that they find an affinity with. Whether it be for building a car engine to crunching mad maths to unravel the secrets of the universe.

You are right that the most common understanding of intelligence could probably be more aptly referred to as being learned.

Often a natural aptitude for acquiring knowledge and being learned go hand in hand. That's when you get insightful and sharp individuals like Christopher Hitchens. I would call him both intelligent and learned.

Then you get people like Hawking and Einstein. And although neither did poorly in school, their intelligence doesn't necessarily come from an aptitude for picking up facts in books or even have insightful opinions about the inner workings of politics etc. It comes directly from how their mind works. How they solve puzzles.

But like I said, intelligence isn't restricted to a few things. You can be a good puzzle solver, astute with numbers. You might take one look at a clump of metal and understand how it can make 4 wheels and a body do 200mph. It might be that you can pick up a brush and some slap some colour on a canvas leaving behind a masterpiece. Intelligence isn't solely judged by the words you know or the piece of paper you got for memorising facts. Even if people mostly assume it is.

Obviously not everybody is equally intelligent. Even within their own speciality. The world simply isn't that fair. But I do believer everybody has intelligence in some form or another.

I'v quoted this man in an Edit because he had a nice synopsis of my point, which spares me the energy of writing it myself.


Thanks for the input, Abandon.

On that note, I'm quite tired of Jobs that don't require diplomas, requiring diplomas. For example, you have to pay good money and attend years of college to become a kindergarten teacher, even though a 10 year old could teach a class of 5 year olds the alphabet. It's a ridiculous system that is being used as a means to PROFIT from the rich and unfortunately keep the poor working in "their" jobs.

When a person is born without willing or able parents, they have to struggle from the bottom wrung of this world, and steps are in place that KEEP said people on the bottom wrung.

If you aren't born into a household that OWNS a paid off home, you are stuck paying extremely high mortgage/rent bills every month that keep you living paycheck to paycheck for eternity. You can go out and get even further into debt, securing the fact that you'll always be hassled and owe people money, in effect gambling your life away for a CHANCE at becoming successful by getting loans for 'college education'. . . BUT its a gamble. Who wants to gamble with their life? No one does... but many have to, and even far more people choose not to, and simply have to accept that they are impoverished and poor.

Even the most uneducated human being on the planet could do MANY of the jobs requiring money-sucking-diplomas, if they were just shown how to perform the job.

What a horrible world we live in, where money is the only important thing to anybody but the ones who don't have it.

What a horrible world no longer sustaining life to those who cannot produce green paper and copper coins. The cold, dead streets suck the life from the homeless as the prosperous people walk by, their chins in the air and their heads in the clouds.

 

[latiasracer]

I agree with this.

One of my friends *ahem* is in all top classes, Pulling strait A's pretty much everytime.

Im....Average. Mostly c's, but sometimes B's if its' a good day.
And my oh my, he's as thick as shit. Ive no idea how he manages to do so well, but he really isn't that bright.


Trying to explain how a lightbulb works was agony.