Well, there is a difference between being smart and being enlightened.
We just might just have different experiences?
I think the best are smarter, and better grounded, but not necessarily the group.
I saw in my 20's that the growing existential behavior, supplanting social dogma, would cause some to do better, but many might fail without the anchor of traditional rules, norms and mores..
"We tend to assume that our intelligence is simply a matter of nature and nurture – but as the celebrated psychologist James Flynn explains to BBC Future, many other factors can stunt or boost your IQ, right down to the person you choose to marry.
J
James Flynn is worried about leaving the world to millennials. As a professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, he regularly meets bright students with enormous potential, only to find that many of them aren’t engaging with the complex past of the world around them.
“They have all these modern skills and yet they come out of university no different than the medieval peasant who is anchored in his own little world,” he tells me mid-way through our conversation. “Well, actually they are anchored in a much bigger world – the world of the present – but with no historical dimension.” The result, he thinks, is that we have overly simplistic views of current issues, leaving us open to manipulation by politicians and the media.
We are talking in the living room of his son Victor, who is a mathematician at the University of Oxford, during a flying visit from his home in New Zealand. Open on the sofa is his latest reading, Alice Munro’s Runaway, the result of a recent foray into literary criticism – again, with the hope that he can encourage younger people to look beyond their smartphone screens. “I have a second book out this year that says to young people ‘for god’s sake, you are educated, why don’t you read!’” he tells me. When he was young, he says, “girls wouldn’t date you if you hadn’t read the recent novels”.
Our IQs have never been higher – but it hasn’t made us smart - BBC Future
<
As a teacher of over 30 years I can attest to you being dead wrong on what you think goes on in schools.
I once looked at tests I had given in the 80s and the responses from students and then compared similar work in 2008 - 2010. The work done in the 80s was far superior. In the 80s I never had to watch a kid masturbate in class, I also did not have to deal with administration changing marks in an effort to show steady mark improvement in the school.
University profs have to deal with parents going to administration and complaining about their kids marks.
Grade creep is now a factor and the marks are not creeping up due to increased intelligence - it is a simple case of avoid the hassle and keep your job. |
|
