On my own two feet
Saturday, 12 Apr 08
I’ve always associated intelligence as an intuitive sort of thing. That “intelligent” people do not need every tiny little detail to arrive at a conclusion, because they can reason it out themselves to “fill in the gaps” correctly.
A very simple and dumbed down example: if a wall is 5 meters long, and there is a door 1 meter wide, 2 meters in from the left edge of the wall, then there is 2 meters of wall on the right side of the door. Correct?
It’s a given that standardized testing doesn’t necessarily test intelligence, but I’d assumed there was a given level of intelligence in those who succeed and end up in the top 1% of the state. Turns out I’m wrong. A guy in my cohort who boasts of such credentials cannot seem to get his head around a concept without being given every tiny detail to anything. Why should that bother me? He comes to me for help and so pesters me with all his inane questions that he’d have deduced if he’d just think about it a little more abstractedly.
It seems to me, that the only reason they achieved so well in high school was due to rote learning, and parroting textbooks and the syllabus. They didn’t think for themselves.
There was a similar girl in my high school, and I found her similarly annoying. But it seems that beyond their academic achievements, what fostered this naivety was that they both seem to be coddled by their parents — even at 18. They rely so heavily on their parents — their parents make everything that could be uncertain, certain. And so they never learn to think for themselves, because everything’s been given to them exactly as they need to use it.
How do you find people who can’t think for themselves?
Posted at 8:35 pm in Academia | Respond?