Education matters

I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine within which the topic of intelligence was raised. The question was, how do you define intelligence, what are the parameters and who actually has the right to define what those parameters are?

The discussion came about when we were considering children returning to school and the groups they would undoubtedly be put in based on their ‘intelligence’. 

Is it fair to do that my friend asked, shouldn’t all children be given the same opportunities and doesn’t grouping them like this just label children, making those who are in the ‘lower’ groups feel less important as those in the higher groups?

I told him that, in my opinion he was absolutely right, children can easily be made to feel inferior if schools allow that to happen and in my experience they often do, shuffling children with specific learning difficulties off to secret little rooms where learning support helpers ‘teach’ them at a level deemed suitable to their needs, meaning that they miss out on the classroom experiences of their classmates is just one stand out example I’ve seen in Bahrain.  

Another great example of how schools can make children feel inferior are the undoubted recent experiences of many parents whose children did not gain access to their schools of choice because they didn’t fit the academic blueprint that would allow them access to the education on offer. 

How do you think those students felt when they were turned away because there was no room for such children who didn’t make the grade? Not great if it wasn’t handled well which it usually isn’t. Children pigeonholed in this way are the ones who dread the start of the new school year.

The thing is, intelligence cannot truly be measured by the number of exam passes you have or the number of degree certificates you hold. This often just implies that you have a good memory or you know how to pass exams. What it doesn’t truly measure is how intelligent you actually are.

This is because intelligence comes in many shapes and forms. For example, let’s start with social intelligence. 

I have known many people that don’t have an exam pass to their name but are successful as a result of their ability to talk to anyone, making them feel welcome and valuing their time. 

Socially intelligent people are in my opinion one of the most valuable in society of all because they see the best in everyone and consequently excel in positions that require that particular skill set. 

There aren’t exams to measure social intelligence though.

Schools operate within system of examinations and assessments because to some extent they have to. Schools are judged on the number of students that pass exams or annual assessments at a standard deemed appropriate by an external assessor. This works for two reasons:

1) There is a standard measurement by which all children are judged which in turn gives an outside view of student’s ‘general’ academic intelligence.

2) In the higher years of school, exams results can give prospective employers or universities an insight into a young person’s ability to follow a more advanced line of study or to complete tasks within a job description.

We all know that exams are important for this reason because basically they are set up to serve society’s system, but society’s system falls short if everything is measured by a student’s ability to pass an exam and no credence is given to the countless other skills that are far more valuable for succeeding in life.

It seems to me that a school’s success should not be judged by the number of students who pass at the acceptable level, rather it should be judged by the future successes of its alumni and how they adapted themselves to succeed in life in spite of the number of exams they passed at school.