In what ways are you smart?

"If you judge how smart a fish is by its ability to climb a tree, it will appear to be stupid." (This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein. He never said it. But whoever said it was pretty doggone smart.)

Perhaps one of the greatest things any good teacher can do for a student is to help them discover “in what ways they are smart”.

When I went back to school in my early thirties to become a teacher, my Reading professor at ETSU, Dr. John Taylor, told me, “Ben, you’re not dumb. I can tell you think you are. It’s the way you talk. A lot of people in this neck of the woods think we’re dumb because of our hillibilly dialect. I want you to take a qualified IQ test for me this Saturday here at ETSU. I predict you will qualify for Mensa or above.”

I did NOT want to take an IQ test. What if I scored “below” average? I felt dumb enough already - as I had for much of my life.

I went ahead and took the test, but only because I respected Dr. Taylor so much - certainly not because I really wanted to know my IQ. On my drive down to ETSU that day, I kept reminding myself that an IQ score has nothing to do with how good and moral and ethical a person is (something I have reminded myself all the more ever since - and something I went on to preach consistently to every student I ever taught).

My IQ, derived from the officially administered Wechsler IQ test I took that day, was measured to be 145.

To put it in perspective; relative to the general population only about 1 in every 1000 people will score as high as I did.

By the way, that fact and about three dollars will buy me a big ol’ 20 oz. Mountain Dew most places.

The value of scoring high on an IQ test can be greatly overrated, indeed.

One should neither gloat nor feel ashamed about whatever one’s measured IQ may be. We all to well to remember that our so-called IQ has absolutely nothing in all the wide world to do with how good a person we are (which I dare say matters infinitely more than our capacity for what we deem to call intelligence).

I said “so-called IQ”, because even the brightest scientists among us have yet to totally agree on what “intelligence” actually is.

Heck, we now know there are many types of intelligence (and therefore, many ways for each of us “to be smart”), and not just the specific type of intelligence that is routinely measured by the most valid and reliable standard IQ tests.

Indeed, Howard Gardner's highly respected theory of multiple intelligences describes at least eight types of intelligence that humans have (often in remarkably varying degrees). Here they are: 

• Verbal-linguistic

  The ability to understand and effectively explain concepts or solve problems through the use of language and words (This is one of the two “types” of intelligence that primarily helped elevate my personal IQ test score so much. And I very much like using language to create ideas and solve complex problems, particularly the “written” form of language.)

• Logical-mathematical

  The ability to think logically, to reason, and to work with numbers and mathematical concepts. (This type of intelligence is also highly “weighted” on a standard IQ test. I have this type. The thing is…I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in doing such things. I never wanted to become a rocket scientist. As far as feeling happy and fulfilled, there’s no use spending your life doing something you don’t like - even if you’re good at it. It’s great if we can find out “in what ways we are smart” - and tie at least one of those ways to a career we enjoy. For instance, I taught a child who was pretty far out on the autistic spectrum. This child “lived in his own little world”. Yet a very bright world it was - IF you let him be who he was, tapping into the “ways he was smart”. He didn’t do standard language well. He didn’t even enjoy trying to communicate - unless you switched the language to mathematics. He is now a work-from-home statistician and risk analysis manager for a major insurance company, living quite happily and meaningfully in his own little world.)

(Before going further I should emphasize that the two types of intelligence discussed thus far are primarily the types measured on most standard IQ tests, such as the one I took and referenced above. Yet below are listed several other “ways of being smart”, each which can be of equal or even more importance to us as individuals, depending on what vocation or career we are most interested in.)

• Spatial-visual

  The ability to think in images, visualize, and recognize patterns in space. (I taught a child who could scarcely read a word in fourth grade. He was labeled as having a severe reading disability. Yet when I taught him to “see” words as “pictures” he was reading on grade level within a month. If we measured him by his ability to master phonics, he was a failure (much like the fish in the example referenced earlier). But when he learned how to properly apply his unique spatial-visual type of intelligence, the young man learned to see words (and the whole world) in a completely different light.

• Bodily-kinesthetic

  The ability to use the body to solve problems, express ideas, and master physical skills - it is also known as "learning with the hands" or physical learning. (My father was “very smart” here, no doubt. Most anything you can name - a typewriter, a lawnmower, an air conditioner, a car - he could take it apart and put it back together again. Yet if you told him to read the written manual on any of them, he would look like the fish trying to climb a tree. Speaking of that, I could likely come close to virtually memorizing the written part of the manual in no time, but I couldn’t hold a candle to my dad in putting it all together mechanically in “the real world”. Even with all my “book smarts”, I still feel like a fish trying to climb a tree when you put a wrench in my hands. Dad was perfectly fit for his profession, as a typewriter and cash register repairman, and as a great salesman of both, because he also had a whole lot of one of the types of intelligence listed below - interpersonal intelligence.)