Defining Intelligence
Intelligence is a word that is around us all of our lives. We hear all the time about how intelligent some are and how not others are. Parents always want their kids to be intelligent. I think though, measuring intelligence is hard. Everyone is so different and so we all have different intelligence in different things. So really we are all intelligent, just not in the same things.
The definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary is “the ability to learn or to understand or to deal with new or trying situations.” Another definition from the Merriam- Webster is “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests).” These definitions to me are saying that intelligence only applies to school. That you are only intelligent if your grades are up and if you can get high test scores. In my opinion, there is much more to intelligence than that.
An intelligent person is not someone who is ignorant. Someone who thinks that they the smartest. An intelligent person isn’t someone who uses their knowledge for a bad thing. If they hurt people, they are far from intelligent. A person that has intelligence is able to use it in a responsible way that doesn’t cause any harm to anyone.
A person is most definitely intelligent if they do well in school. It takes a special person to be able to get good grades. They are dedicated and are able to sacrifice for a decent education. They work hard during school hours and yet still do homework all night for nine months of the year. They gain intelligence by listening to the teachers, doing homework, and studying for tests. Students who are intelligent in school can do almost any sort of math problem with little thought. They have the ability to do things without much thought because of all the studying and information that they have memorized. They are very intelligent.
There is more to intelligence than school, though.
People that do bad in school, are Almost always intelligent people; school just wasn’t their thing. Don’t get me wrong, school is very important but, to some people it just doesn’t interest them. Those people are smart in other areas. Maybe it's hunting or fishing, fixing cars, building things, or music. They know things that school educated people have most likely never heard of. They are usually smarter than they get credit for. They have different knowledge. Both school smart and “street” smart people are intelligent, it's just that the information that they know is completely different.
My brother Tyler never got the best grades. He passed and graduated, but he was not a 4.00 student. I remember my parents getting mad because he wouldn’t get good report card grades. It would make them so frustrated. He is now older and out of school. I have come to realize how intelligent he actually is. Tyler is so quick witted and$ jokes around like a comedian, always trying to get a laugh. He knows all about history and word definitions and can fix all sorts of car problems. His knowledge of the outdoors is huge. Tyler can also build things and fix all sorts of issues in his house. Truly, if there is something that needs to be done, he can fix it or build it or help you with it.
Tyler’s grades were far from a measure of his intelligence. Looking at them would make him seem not very bright. Seeing what he knows in things that come up in everyday life shows that he really is extremely smart. Intelligence doesn’t only deal with school. Just because he got bad grades doesn’t mean anything. He is honestly one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.
My intelligence is far from my brothers. I do think that I have more “school smarts” than him. He beats me in all the outdoors, cars, and fixing things categories, though. I would still consider myself intelligent. I know a lot about different sports and athletes while Tyler doesn’t. We have different interests and so we are going to have different intelligence. We both are very intelligent and that is why I think it's hard to measure. There are so many things to take into account before someone can be called unintelligent. It’s just such a hard thing to define.
Intelligence is a sort of measure of how smart someone is, and every person has different intelligence. Its being bright and insightful about really anything. It’s all the knowledge that they have inside of them. Things they have learned from work, books, teachers, people that they spend time with. Intelligence is how much that they know about things that they like or enjoy to do.
It needs to be realized that book smart isn’t the only smart that there is. Intelligence is a word that seems to get used only with those 4.00 students when in reality it's not just them. Yes, they are very intelligent, but so are those who do things that don’t involve homework. It’s just a different type but it doesn’t mean one intelligence is more important than the other.