Being Brilliant has Become the New Average What is the true definition of intelligence? People talk of common sense, “street-smarts,” “book-smarts,” GPA, IQ test, and various other standardized tests to determine their intelligence. In the Oxford Dictionary intelligence is defined as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” Society has limited and labeled ourselves into groups based on a phrase or number and has greatly wounded our possibility for achieving great and limitless innovations. The “we are all winners” society had the unintended consequence of altering the purpose of schools; changing them from places of expression and finding yourself to a place void of individualism and forced perfection. In this paper, I will
…show more content…
During a child’s developmental stages they spend about 50% of their time either at school or carrying out things for school. Somewhere in the recent past the idea of intelligence and creativity going hand-in-hand was lost in translation and the idea of striving for constant perfection became the new schooling system. “Does great innovation come from encouraging creativity in the classroom and hoping it will translate into creativity in the real world? Or does it come from rigorously training our best and brightest minds and then allowing them the freedom to innovate?” (Wai). In simpler terms: can we create beyond what we don’t know? I believe the answer is yes, it has been accomplished to the umpteenth degree. I believe that creativity is a higher form of intelligence because it goes beyond simple recall and extends into knowledge creation. The world has been under a siege of rapid-fire innovation for the past few centuries and has gotten stuck in a rut. Society has forced excellence to be the only acceptable products of the Millennials and Generation Z. In most of the developed world, more people are now in school for longer, and teaching methods have evolved. A reasonable assumption to make would be that education is training people to think better but really, “[o]ver time, students become used to the pressure of tests and they pick up examination-room tactics that improve their performance (Kremer).” Memorization is not
During a child’s developmental stages they spend about 50% of their time either at school or carrying out things for school. Somewhere in the recent past the idea of intelligence and creativity going hand-in-hand was lost in translation and the idea of striving for constant perfection became the new schooling system. “Does great innovation come from encouraging creativity in the classroom and hoping it will translate into creativity in the real world? Or does it come from rigorously training our best and brightest minds and then allowing them the freedom to innovate?” (Wai). In simpler terms: can we create beyond what we don’t know? I believe the answer is yes, it has been accomplished to the umpteenth degree. I believe that creativity is a higher form of intelligence because it goes beyond simple recall and extends into knowledge creation. The world has been under a siege of rapid-fire innovation for the past few centuries and has gotten stuck in a rut. Society has forced excellence to be the only acceptable products of the Millennials and Generation Z. In most of the developed world, more people are now in school for longer, and teaching methods have evolved. A reasonable assumption to make would be that education is training people to think better but really, “[o]ver time, students become used to the pressure of tests and they pick up examination-room tactics that improve their performance (Kremer).” Memorization is not