Intelligence versus Education--some food for thought

 

I heard this on the radio en route to work.

 

Presenter: What’s education got to do with intelligence?

 

Interviewee: Well, if you have a labourer, and someone with a PhD come into your office, well, the labourer may be smart, but there is definitely no way you could have known he is smart, because he doesn’t have education!

 

Having said all that, I know people who stopped school at secondary, yet went on to run successful businesses. Of course, not all were able to go further, but speak with them today, and they will give you insights at the click of the finger that your so-called erudite will not.

 

And then again, when you scan the pool of academics who have adversely contributed to a fairer and just world, you scratch your head in wonderment as to whether they learnt anything from their studies. Think of those academics whose name begin with Francis (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fukuyama.htm) who predicted the “End of History”, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and who now has broken with the Neo-conservatives of the Bush administration (Francis Fukuyama: neo-con friendship comes to an end: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=8417) and ask yourself whether his erstwhile attachment to the Bush doctrine of fighting preventive wars in 2006 is intelligent!

 

Of course, IRAN and its obduracy over IAEA and the UN Security Council over its enrichment of Uranium doesn’t come to mind at all…

 

But if it does, you might want to read this incisive article in the UK’s Prospect magazine here: http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=7366