Intellectuality
Different people think differently. To measure intellect on one standard and then assign a number to it is akin to testing people to see if they are Sanguine, and then assigning a number to how Sanguine they are. Can a person only be accepted in our culture based on their Sanguinity? What if they’re Phlegmatic; do they, because of their personality type, have a low SQ (Sanguinity Quotient) simply because they’re not Sanguine? Well, yes, it is true that they’re not Sanguine, but that doesn’t mean they are incompetent, uneducated or unwelcome. We would rightly shout, “This is preposterous!” to such an allegation.
Yet our modern system of testing for one’s Intelligence Quotient is just like this. We test all of our students with the same test and we look for the same credentials in an attempt to meet the same criteria. This act is archaic and not unlike the times when personalities were thought to be directly connected to disease. The four personality types of that day were referred to as the four “humors” because the men who thought of the system associated the personality types with four fluids in the body. This means a Choleric personality is prone to certain diseases and ailments. But let me ask you, can a person be perfectly well and emotionally stable, and yet be introverted? Can he also be considered Sanguine, and still come down with the flu? These questions seem ridiculous nowadays, but this is not unlike our modern view on intellect.
The current system takes the pupil through a series of problems that he must solve. The more he gets right on the test, the higher his IQ. Each question has a different weight or value, so it is very accurate for determining how well he can figure out how to solve these individual problems. But what about the person who is red/green colorblind; when given the test, he will score low because he can’t tell the difference between the two colors on a problem that requires this ability. Does this make him ignorant? No. And what of the person who gets nervous in a classroom setting and can’t concentrate on the test; is he any less intelligent? Of course not; he simply works best in a different environment.
Burn this feed.
