The myth of ‘dumb’ scholastic intelligence

For millions of years, people had lived in Africa and life was perfect before our friends from the western world came around. The coming of white people into the continent was accompanied a lot of revolutions in the way black people lived among themselves some of which were positive and others which were not too good for our own kind of civilization. Our mode of dressing, our way of speaking, public behavior and our indigenous African lifestyle in general were heavily influenced through one major legacy that the white people left us with, and that is western education. The advent of western education in Africa though positive, has left us with a seemingly indelible mark of reducing intelligence to numbers. We suddenly begun to quantify intelligence by way of what they called intelligence quotient as we were taught by our colonial masters.

The purpose of this paper is to look into how elusive we have been with our definition of intelligence over the years and perhaps to draw our attention taking a second look at this trend which is harmful to our contemporary Ghanaian society. The Merriam-webster dictionary defines intelligence as ‘the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations’.

The definition therefore implies that, anybody who is able to acquire information, understand and apply it in dealing with new or difficult situations is an intelligent person. I cant find it anywhere in this definition or any in any other that I have come across, that intelligence is limited to classroom performance. However, we have managed to narrow down the whole concept of intelligence to the ability of a student to memorise and reproduce what has been taught in the classroom like some sort of a homogeneous drone. This is particualarly a bane to learning and child development in Africa at large. Many children lack the drive to continue school till the end because people including teachers, have branded them as non-intelligent. We vilify some of these people and make them feel as though they are not fit to be a part of our society. Back in my high school days, I had some colleagues who did not do so well with class tests and examinations, but are doing really well now in trade. They are exceptionally good market women and businessmen who can account better for the products they sell than most of the well known ‘intelligent’ business students back in school. So would you say that the one who abandoned school for trading is not an intelligent person? Think about that woman or man who has never been to school but is able to take care of his or her family even more than people who are well to do? Is this kind of person not intelligent enough?

Weait a minute….have you ever taking keen interest in the skill and swiftness with which street hawkers are able to quickly calculate whatever you bought from them in traffic and get your change ready even before you take money out of your pocket? At times I go to the market to buy a few groceries and just when I reach for my phone to calculate the total amount, this market woman would have already made the calculations and told me how much my I am supposed to pay. It’s amazing sometimes. That fifteen year old girl child of yours does not do so well with examinations at school but when she sells ware for you at the market, the account is always on point. Yet you still regard her as being inferior to her older brother , just because the other one is always first in class. We are killing dreams day in and out through some of the words we say to people who are not scholarly inclined. There are photographers who do so well with taking pictures than others who hold a PhD in graphic designing. Yet we never appreciate any form of intelligence besides what goes on in the classroom. Your cleaner at work does not hold a master’s degree like you do. But he or she is always wise enough to turn off your fan before sweeping the floor. I think it takes intelligence to perform that kind of action, while anticipating the impact of having the fan on the job at hand. One core component of every human being which determines his or her confidence level at any point in time is self-esteem. We have reduced people who do not have classroom intelligence to nothing and we are gradually getting to the point where people who are not classroom inclined would fold their arms and develop a false perception that they are not good enough. One of the most powerful professionals in our society are musicians. Their lyrics have the power to shape people’s lives either for good or bad. Though most musicians in Africa and the world at large scarcely have advanced education it is interesting how they come up with all those sweet melodies in such a way that though thousands of songs are released on a daily basis, each one of them has its unique melody and lyrics. It often baffles me as to how musicians are able to carefully arrange their lyrics to make such sweet sounds. That is definitely a mark of intelligence. But we hardly mention musicians when we talk about intelligence. Instead of calling a musician intelligent, we would rather say ‘ he/she has deep lyrics’. We have to understand that one does not need to have won an award at a speech and prize giving ceremony to demonstrate their intelligence. Rather if we paid a bit more attention to the petty routines that we perform day in and out, we would discover that there are a lot of uncelebrated geniuses in the world than we are aware of. You brand your staff as intelligent people whenever they deliver a good business presentation or prepare a good business report. But what about your errand boy who you send to buy lunch for everybody in the office during break? Have you ever appreciated the skill with which he is able to memorise all your preferences for more than ten people and brings in everybody’s food just as you want it? If this is not intelligence to you enough, then what else is? So I sit back and I wonder why we have allowed western education to reduce our perception of intelligence to numbers like GPA and intelligence quotient. Contemporary Ghanaian mothers want their kids to start speaking fine English by age 2, while the kids can hardly construct one correct sentence in the local dialect. It is amazing. If only we know what harm we were doing our children, we would encourage them to learn a lot more things than just speaking English.

People, especially children stand at a higher advantage if they are multi-lingual. The implication of this idea of scholastic intelligence is that we begin to mold people who would fit in, rather than stand out. The current situation where there are a lot more graduates than there are jobs can be attributed directly to this problem. Everybody wants to go to school these days, because that is the trend. If you do not go to school and hold a white collar job, nobody even respects you. Once you fail to further your education, people begin to brand you as a non-intelligent person. We have refused to look at what people can do beyond western education so that we can encourage them to follow their talents. Parents have shattered so many careers in the name of schooling. Floyd Mayweather is a master of his trade not because he is a strong fighter, but because he is an intelligent boxer. Opponents who have fought him say that he is quick as a flash. But have we ever been interested in examining his IQ? No. What about the Cristiano Ronaldos and Messi’s and the sort of things they do on the ball? Marvelous. The point is that, we need a paradigm shift in measuring intelligence. Let us quash the current trend of limiting intelligence to the classroom and rather look at what people do in general. Let us begin to identify what people can do beyond reading and memorizing books. Book intelligence is the reason Africa is the least developed continent in the world. All we know is book. Nobody is thinking outside the box. We have so many Professors in various disciplines and yet, we always import foreign experts to help us do one thing or another, because we only study for good grades. Go to every secondary school and find out how many home economics and visual arts students are recognized as intelligent. We give all the awards to the science, general arts and other courses which follow the norm of reading and reproducing what is taught. Our school system doesn’t seem to recognize things like cooking, drawing and sculpture and activities that require mental effort. Let us begin to retrace our steps. Let us provide an enabling environment for people to unearth their potential, harness and use it towards personal and national development in the long run. Everybody is intelligent at something. All we need is a chance to show it to the world. Do not ever allow anybody to plant into you, an idea that you are not intelligent enough because your GPA is below a certain number. Yes, western education might not be working for you because perhaps you are not designed to sit in a room and memorize things. Your hands may probably be more inclined towards craft than writing. Go get it. #iMaginedteam
Nathan Qarboo Tetteh (Motivational Speaker/ Life Coach- iMagined) +233244903748 gracyboonathan@gmail.com