Our concepts of what intelligence is, and about who is intelligent, have changed over time, especially in the time of modern education. In this article we expose that there have been drip-fed changes to our definitions of intelligence that have occurred almost exclusively to address changes within society. When it comes to what we consider intelligence to be, who has it and to what extent they have it, it has actually been a case of ‘necessity is the mother of invention!’
This immediately calls into question our definitions of intelligence, because if intelligence has this fluid quality, then it cannot be as rigidly defined as we have been led to believe.
Regardless of the historical timeframe, what we have deemed ‘intelligence’ to be has always had the construct of those who have more of it and those who ‘naturally’ have less of it. The changing definitions of intelligence have always had in-built constructs of superiority and inferiority. This has justified concepts of differential access to intelligence and to the relative educability of people born into different strata in society.
Our modern education systems and understanding of intelligence were birthed during the Industrial Revolution (1833 Factory Act). There was a need to provide a literate and numerate workforce to support the needs and demands of industry in the wake of the mechanisation and the increasing complexity of the emerging modern world. Although the required levels of literacy and numeracy were relatively low compared to what we consider the educational standard today, metaphorically overnight, the lower classes and the poor were attributed with enough intelligence to be educable to basic levels of literacy and numeracy in order to fuel the industrial machine.
The Europe prior to this period implicitly held intelligence as an innate attribute that was conferred on a select few according to birth within a social rank and hence, conferred not at all on the majority. For centuries this concept justified the European caste system, from the many layered aristocracy, the war lords and through to the merchants and peasants. Intelligence as an innate attribute, particularly in terms of its more ‘cultured’ aspects, was reserved for the upper classes. The arts, the ability to order and to manage large groups of people, a sense of societally endorsed refinement, were all allegedly the domain of the upper classes. The lower classes were held as being inferior and capable of mastering at best a basic skillset, enough to manage their allocated subservient station in life, or the ability to work the land.
This system itself carried echoes of the caste system of Ancient Rome, which was similarly based on social ranking from the emperor down to ‘the mob’ and to the slaves. It is also embedded in the attitudes of colonialism and policies of ‘assimilating inferior cultures’ into the dominant, invading one.
Historically then, there has been a clear differentiation of intelligence by social grouping and rank. This belief system caved in under the broad sweeping demands of the Industrial Revolution and the emerging complex society.
Whilst the long-term outcome of the Industrial Revolution was an extensive discarding of this definition by social rank, what took its place was equally heinous in its demonstrable effects. We are referring here to the ‘scientifically endorsed’ concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and its twin, Psychometry, or the measuring of this quotient of intelligence.
IQ was often used to re-assert the original paradigm that intelligence was fixed at birth and, according to some, could be used to justify the notion that naturally superior people should breed together to improve the gene pool. (1) Conversely, this was then applied to justify that inferior individuals, groups and races should not be allowed to breed – at all.
So both the American and Nazi regimes’ horrors of racial vilification and ethnic cleansing had roots in these scientifically endorsed definitions of intelligence. (2)(3)
Initially, the measuring of this Intelligence Quotient was through pen and paper testing devised by Binet (1905) as a screener to identify children at risk of failing in the education system. Terman transformed this rudimentary screener into the Stanford Binet in 1916, when the relationship between chronological age and mental age gave one’s Intelligence Quotient – a quotient that was fixed at birth and resistant to change. (4) Raven’s Matrices (1936), a nonverbal IQ test, was designed to introduce a ‘culturally fair’ measure of intelligence. It presented the idea that intelligence could be more fluid and was related to one’s educability.
In 1955, the Wechsler IQ test measured four aspects of intelligence, positioning children on a verbal comprehension scale, a perceptual reasoning scale, a working memory scale and a processing speed scale. The WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) remains in use in schools today, the most recent version being formulated in 2014, consisting of 21 subsets and 15 composite scores.
In the UK for many years, the 11+ examination based on these constructs determined the level of High School education one could access, hence predetermining to a large degree children’s future employment and lifestyle prospects. Other similar intelligence tests and tests of student academic progress (SATS, NAPLAN) still form the bedrock of our current education system.
Through this focus on testing, the beliefs about inferiority and superiority are perpetuated; it is only the names and the labels that have changed.
Today, children and adults can be ranked as being of average intelligence, below average intelligence or above average intelligence. Whilst this could be seen as an improved labelling system over the earlier official labels like ‘retarded,’ ‘mentally deficient,’ ‘educationally subnormal,’ are any of these concepts truly intelligent in and of themselves?
Or does the education system require labels like these to validate the programmes and pedagogies that justify its own modus operandum?
Moreover, our penchant for testing and measuring intelligence and its alleged aberrations do not stop there. Today, we also measure children with neuro diversity in the form of screeners and more socially acceptable labelling systems for dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD. Softer variations on this theme include the application (although not necessarily the author’s intent) of Gardner’s multiple intelligence to the education system. (5) This concept allocates an equal quotient of intelligence to everyone. One’s intelligence is seen as comprised of around eight types, which vary from person to person in their nature and expression. However, in terms of educational application and practice, the range of intelligences are often held to have highly differential social weightings and values and so the academically valued mathematical and linguistic intelligences remain superior, whilst the intelligence of nature or art is viewed as inferior.
Hence, little to nothing changed with the application of these ideals to education.
The re-branding and re-emerging popularisation of MENSA, particularly for children, is a clear indicator of the intransigence of our collective beliefs about intelligence. (6)(7)
What else lies in the future of this incessant drive to glorify and label or address and fix one’s cognitive processing so that it aligns to a fixed and narrow definition of intelligence that positions one along a relative scale of inferiority and superiority?
People have literally been sacrificed to support this narrow concept of intelligence and to justify this perpetual, never ending scale of superiority and inferiority, of the higher and the lower, where we reward and offer the highest accolades to those in the upper ranges and assign the lower ranges to their social fate.
Nothing has changed since the time of Ancient Rome…
We have normalised the concept of intelligence as a quotient – an allocated, pre-determined, fixed measure of capability and academic prowess. According to some, this fixity is occasionally affected by social factors like parenting. Yet history clearly shows how we adjust, change and modify our ideas on the global quotient of intelligence across social groups according to society’s needs and demands.
The core concept of superiority and inferiority always remains
the unwavering constant.
To use the vernacular, we will always have those who are smart and those who are dumb under these definitions; those who are favoured and those who are not.
This polarisation has been used to justify an unconscionable range and number of widespread atrocities, from eugenics to supporting the divided social structure in which each has their ‘predestined’ role.
With such a history and divisive foundation, how can we continue to promote and idealise this as our preferred and only type and measure of intelligence each and every day, each hour, each minute with our children in classrooms across our world?
Moreover, are those who do attempt to interrogate and call to account this type of intelligence doing so from within the same mindset of the prevailing paradigm of intelligence? So, whilst innovative definitions are periodically adopted that ostensibly offer change, what actually occurs is that only the number of categories of this type of intelligence are elaborated upon. Hence, these innovative ideals are fathered by the same source of mental intelligence and so have the same, identical foundation.
Is this really our true or only form of intelligence?
Our worldwide education systems are entirely based on this mental functionality-based intelligence. Under the democratisation of education, we work very hard to support everyone to reach a certain academic standard that appears to be higher than at any other time in our modern history. Those of us who work in education are kept very busy ensuring that all attain an acceptable level of academic achievement; that each student reaches their ‘predestined potential’. However, rarely do we look back at our history to the roots of this intelligence and how our concepts of what is our ‘predestined potential’ have played out in other historical and social contexts to justify and support whatever the social structure of each period demands.
Rather this intelligence is accepted as absolutely normal – you are either smart or dumb – that is how it is.
Rarely are these definitions of intelligence questioned and the few of us that have attempted to do so, have been so completely conditioned by it that we end up using the same intelligence to interrogate what we know is a flawed intelligence. So, no one ever really leaves the same conceptual box. We may create different flavours of intelligence, but the understanding remains ingrained.
Even the term ‘quotient’ and the notion that there is only ever a fixed quantity of intelligence is hugely restrictive when we consider the ever-expanding nature of the universe and all that we observe around us in nature and in life. Are we, the most evolved species on this planet, really the only creatures who are not constantly offered the opportunity to expand? Can we consider that there could be another form of intelligence that encompasses the whole body? Or that there is yet another intelligence that is beyond even this – an intelligence forsaken by us and yet ever accessible, should we choose to turn back to it?
The current concept of intelligence is indubitably flawed and has been the demonstrable cause of so much social ruin. We continue with that impress today. Is it not now the time to consider what else is available to us, especially if these other intelligences are actually not only our true intelligence, but are also entirely free from the harm and the suffering directly caused by the current model?
Are these not the quintessential ethical questions for we educators to be discussing at this point in our history?
(1) Human Intelligence: Francis Galton. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.intelltheory.com/galton.shtml
(2) Nazi IQ testing to justify sterilisation & murder IQ Testing and Nazi Eugenics - Stephen Murdoch. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37qrLGhXch0
(3) Chapter 1 | The Eugenics Crusade. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JcYEXeK0g8
(4) Why Alfred Binet Developed IQ Testing for Students. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.verywellmind.com/history-of-intelligence-testing-2795581#stanford-binet-intelligence-test
(5) Multiple Intelligences Go to School: Educational Implications of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Author(s): Howard Gardner and Thomas Hatch
Source: Educational Researcher, Vol. 18, No. 8 (Nov., 1989), pp. 4-10
Published by: American Educational Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1176460
Accessed: 08/10/2010 18:01
(6) Mensa for Kids. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.mensaforkids.org/
(7) Gifted Children - Australian Mensa Inc. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.mensa.org.au/giftedchildren