cmhardw
Premium Member
Hi everyone,
We seem to have this debate all the time in other threads, and I too am interested in it. So let's stop cluttering up other threads, and discuss it here and here only.
I am fascinated with the idea of "smart" or "intelligent" and for two reasons. I find it funny when people see me speedsolve a cube and say "you are a genius." I always tell them how wrong they are, and how they simply haven't seen the countless hours of practicing I've done leading up to the point where they asked me to do a speedsolve.
I also am the assistant manager at an after school math tutoring center, and have been in a tutor capacity with the same center before that as well, total time tutoring there is now almost 2 years. I have seen many instances where the parents say "My child is not that smart, compared to the really smart people." Or "My child just doesn't get math, no matter how hard we try." Most of the time with positive reenforcement, and connecting with the child in a fun way and being friendly is enough to break down their fear of math, and then after showing them trained techniques to approach problems they show significant improvement.
Students in this category people usually classify as "dumb" or "not smart" or "not intelligent" when in fact they have only a lack of trained techniques to approach the language and system that is mathematics. Often, when the child does show improvement, again from gaining a repertoire of trained techniques, the parents reclassify them as "my child is smart now!"
I also see students who refuse to show their full potential. They may pretend that they don't understand a problem, just to waste time so they don't have to do any work. Students like this are also classified as "dumb" or "not smart" by their schools and report cards when in reality they simply don't care about the subject, and lack a motivation to practice.
I have worked also with students who have a "learning disability" as diagnosed by a doctor. I actually enjoy working with these students, and I find they are great people and have really fun and interesting personalities. However they are also classified as "dumb" or "not smart" by their schools and sometimes to a lesser extent by their own parents.
I have found, again this is only my own personal experience, that of all the students I have worked with who have learning disabilities they simply learn at a slower rate than what can be considered "average", whatever "average" means in this context. However, with positive reenforcement and connecting with the student and being friendly they still learn the same concepts as other students, just not at a comparable rate.
In short I don't believe in an idea of a fixed intelligence, or really in the idea of "intelligence" at all. Let me explain. The idea that you get some amount of "smarts" and that's it, if you want more you're screwed, seems ludicrous to me. From working in my field I've come to believe that people have roughly the same capacity to retain information, as far as trained techniques to solve problems, to memorize facts, etc. However, people learn at different rates. Also people have different motivations, which is a factor as well.
So really I think someone who people typically classify as smart, is really just someone with strong motivation to learn the subject matter in question, and also an ability to learn at a relatively quick pace.
Someone people would usually classify as "dumb" or "not intelligent" could often be either:
1) Someone who learns at an "average" pace, but has simply not learned any techniques or memorized facts related to the subject matter in the first place.
2) Someone who learns at an average rate but lacks motivation to apply themselves to learn the subject matter at hand, thus resulting in a lack of training for the technique. This comes across as an aparrent lack of knowledge.
3) Someone who learns at a slightly slower rate than what can be considered "average" and this is classified as "not intelligent" when in fact they probably have the same capacity for knowledge, it would only take them an "above average" amount of practice to gain this knowledge.
Again I realize this post is long, but I find this topic fascinating.
Any more thoughts?
Chris
We seem to have this debate all the time in other threads, and I too am interested in it. So let's stop cluttering up other threads, and discuss it here and here only.
I am fascinated with the idea of "smart" or "intelligent" and for two reasons. I find it funny when people see me speedsolve a cube and say "you are a genius." I always tell them how wrong they are, and how they simply haven't seen the countless hours of practicing I've done leading up to the point where they asked me to do a speedsolve.
I also am the assistant manager at an after school math tutoring center, and have been in a tutor capacity with the same center before that as well, total time tutoring there is now almost 2 years. I have seen many instances where the parents say "My child is not that smart, compared to the really smart people." Or "My child just doesn't get math, no matter how hard we try." Most of the time with positive reenforcement, and connecting with the child in a fun way and being friendly is enough to break down their fear of math, and then after showing them trained techniques to approach problems they show significant improvement.
Students in this category people usually classify as "dumb" or "not smart" or "not intelligent" when in fact they have only a lack of trained techniques to approach the language and system that is mathematics. Often, when the child does show improvement, again from gaining a repertoire of trained techniques, the parents reclassify them as "my child is smart now!"
I also see students who refuse to show their full potential. They may pretend that they don't understand a problem, just to waste time so they don't have to do any work. Students like this are also classified as "dumb" or "not smart" by their schools and report cards when in reality they simply don't care about the subject, and lack a motivation to practice.
I have worked also with students who have a "learning disability" as diagnosed by a doctor. I actually enjoy working with these students, and I find they are great people and have really fun and interesting personalities. However they are also classified as "dumb" or "not smart" by their schools and sometimes to a lesser extent by their own parents.
I have found, again this is only my own personal experience, that of all the students I have worked with who have learning disabilities they simply learn at a slower rate than what can be considered "average", whatever "average" means in this context. However, with positive reenforcement and connecting with the student and being friendly they still learn the same concepts as other students, just not at a comparable rate.
In short I don't believe in an idea of a fixed intelligence, or really in the idea of "intelligence" at all. Let me explain. The idea that you get some amount of "smarts" and that's it, if you want more you're screwed, seems ludicrous to me. From working in my field I've come to believe that people have roughly the same capacity to retain information, as far as trained techniques to solve problems, to memorize facts, etc. However, people learn at different rates. Also people have different motivations, which is a factor as well.
So really I think someone who people typically classify as smart, is really just someone with strong motivation to learn the subject matter in question, and also an ability to learn at a relatively quick pace.
Someone people would usually classify as "dumb" or "not intelligent" could often be either:
1) Someone who learns at an "average" pace, but has simply not learned any techniques or memorized facts related to the subject matter in the first place.
2) Someone who learns at an average rate but lacks motivation to apply themselves to learn the subject matter at hand, thus resulting in a lack of training for the technique. This comes across as an aparrent lack of knowledge.
3) Someone who learns at a slightly slower rate than what can be considered "average" and this is classified as "not intelligent" when in fact they probably have the same capacity for knowledge, it would only take them an "above average" amount of practice to gain this knowledge.
Again I realize this post is long, but I find this topic fascinating.
Any more thoughts?
Chris
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