I’ve been thinking a lot about intellegent people. What perplexes me is the lack of measurement for intellegence. The quantifiable measures found in IQ Tests miss a large part of what I believe defines an intelligent person: the ability to communicate and share your knowledge. It is one thing to posess vast collections of knowledge, but it’s another to be able to impress your knowledge on the world.
This brings about my questioning of our educational system and the focus it put on the retention of knowledge over the abilities to share and access knowledge. As we progress with technologies like the internet, wikis, mobile devices, etc. the need for retention of information diminishes. Anyone with cell phone and cellular service can access answers and information at any time. We have long since surpassed any one person’s ability to retain the quantities of information found on the internet. So this leads me to ask the question, ‘Have we progressed into a need for a new focus and definition of: what it means to be intelligent?’
Surely we have.