Are You Smarter than…?

Do you see yourself as smart, average, or somewhere on the short end of the intelligence stick? Or is being smart far more complicated than easy slogans like smart as a whip or dumb as a post infer? Do we sit in dumbfounded awe when we watch Jeopardy, and are we intimidated by the prospect of being compared to a 5th grader on another popular television IQ show? As parents we like to boast about the intelligence of our children, perhaps receiving some derivative benefit from what that must say about us. And why shouldn’t we feel this way? If knowledge is power, and translates into educational and professional success, then being smart is an attribute we’d like to own and for which we’d want to our children to be known as well.

But what does it mean to be smart? Smart in comparison to what? As humans we like to think we sit on the top of the intellectual pyramid, well above animals, plants, and inanimate objects (excluding computers and phones, of course). All kidding aside, isn’t smartness a judgment always measured in relation to other people? Don’t we all carry inside a sense of how we stack up in brain power to our spouse, our friends, those in our families, colleagues at work, classmates in school, and the folks who live in our neighborhood? And we have an idea about whether our intelligence is greater than or lesser than our peers, our elders, and those much younger? I suspect we’ve all known smart people who seemed to lack common sense, and others of more modest intellect who were quite successful. Is being smart always a good thing, or is there really more wisdom (and bliss) in wearing a mantle of ignorance?  

Those of us who’ve had children and who’ve worked with kids in schools tend to think a lot about human intelligence. We look for it, spend a lot of energy trying to stimulate and develop it, and, where it seems to be lacking or labored, we go to great lengths to coax and inspire it within our students and offspring. But what is it that we are trying to further and improve in ourselves or in others?

I have long believed that what distinguishes those whom we judge to be smart and those we regard as less so is quite complex and varies with our age and the era in which we live. A smart Neanderthal would be assessed with different criteria than a smart M.I.T. grad (let’s hope so anyway). Yet for both the bottom line about intelligence would be determined by how well they managed to survive, and thrive in their respective eras. As I have come to appraise intelligence—my own and that of others--it seems to depend on three qualities or factors that all of us possess to a certain degree:   

·      Aptitude--the ability to do something well

·      Recollection--the ability to recall information one needs

·      Synthesis--the ability to apply or connect information and/or skills to solving problems and in facing the needs and challenges that life presents to us each day.

This conclusion is largely based on my personal experiences with the people I’ve encountered in growing up, in my schooling, and in a professional life spanning many decades. While I have become familiar with cognitive theory over the years, admittedly I haven’t studied neuropsychology at any great depth. I have, however, observed people, taken mental notes, and tested this idea about intelligence on both them and myself. 

Aptitude: Most of us can recognize and appreciate when people display an aptitude that sets them apart from the ordinary. They may appear more quick witted, insightful or intellectual in the way they speak or write. Or they impress us with their skill level as an artist, technician, handyman (“he knows how to fix everything!”) or athlete. To survive we all have developed some aptitudes that make life easier or give us an edge in solving, creating, building or repairing. And those with the most advanced aptitudes we dignify with superlatives like master, expert, gifted, phenom, virtuoso or all-star. People who can do things well above what the average man or woman can pull off have earned the right to be called smart.

Recollection: A person will often appear smart if he or she has a good memory. For preachers, politicians, teachers, marketers and those in the business of influencing people, the ability to remember names is truly an asset. Those who can recall formulas, abstract mathematical concepts, and the details of history or law will have an advantage in scientific and legal pursuits. In almost any field of endeavor, from education to art, philosophy to music, the recollection of facts, dates, names, axioms--even trivia--makes one appear more knowledgeable and smarter than those with shorter or fleeting memories. When students tell their teachers they don’t remember what they read for homework last night, it casts doubt on whether they actually did the work or paid attention, rendering the assignment a waste of time. No two of us remembers the same things or to the same level of accuracy and minutia. Yet the ability to remember—at least what is important to one’s daily existence—is one of the most important survival mechanisms all of us possess.  The better we are at this, the smarter we look to others.  

Synthesis: All of us have an aptitude for something, from cooking to making friends to being able to catch or hit a moving projectile. And all of us remember some things as part of the cognitive equipment with which we are born. But when we can take what we know how to do, and what we remember, and then apply it to solving problems, formulating new ideas, or creating original artistic expressions—it will strike others as a sign of genius. I like to call this third attribute of being smart as a synthetic capacity, or synthesis for short. Remember being taught that photosynthesis is the process by which sunlight facilitates the joining together of water and carbon dioxide to create oxygen? It is one of, if not the most important, building blocks of life on this planet. Synthesis describes our bringing together different abilities or ideas to forge something new, something original and often greater than its component parts.  It is a fancy way of saying that we can apply what we know from one realm of our knowledge to explain or understand something else. People who can do this with data, information, words, concepts or creative inspirations stand apart from those who mostly regurgitate what they’ve already committed to memory or repeat as a habit.

I believe that the smartest among us express these three attributes in ways that others do with less frequency or control. No two of us is born with the same mental endowments or potentials. Yet all of us can utilize these three attributes in furthering our own intelligence if given the requisite opportunities, guidance, and incentives. Good parents understand this in creating home environments where children can become smart. Good teachers model this in facilitating how children can grow in intelligence.  And since learning can be a life-long endeavor, each of us may continue to become smarter as we age providing we keep developing our aptitudes, keep using and stretching our memories, and keep working at synthesizing what we know in tackling real-life problems or creating new ideas, inventions or artistic expressions.

I’d like to continue thinking out loud about what it means to be smart in next week’s Twilight Reflections essay. And I’d like to draw upon the insights of Howard Gardner, one of the world’s most highly regarded developmental psychologists and educational theorists, whose comment, “It is not how smart you are that matters; what really counts is how you are smart,” inspires me to further explore the many ways you and I can be smarter than….