Defining Intelligence

CHAPTER 10 i MZ Defining Intelligence All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. —Immanuel Kant What is school for? A common answer is, to make people more knowl- edgeable. Another is, to socialize them and prepare them for living with others. Another is, to make them ready for work. (This last one seems almost laughable because it is clearly untrue in the modern world, but people do seem to still believe it.) Another is, to prepare them for more school. (People take this one very seriously.) My answer is: School should make people more intelligent. Really? Can we make people more intelligent? There are those who would argue, and I am quite sure they are right, that intelligence is genetic: It can’t be altered by school, one way or the other. Nevertheless, I think that school should make students more intelligent. How can I believe both things? It all depends on how you define intelligence. Let’s think about in- telligence the way ordinary people define it when they say that some- one seems dumb or that someone seems to be very smart. There is a lot to be learned by considering seriously the folk view of intelligence as opposed to the classical school/testing view. In the 2007 Miss Teen USA contest, Miss South Carolina responded to this question: “Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?” 137 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023883