QTC # 10 Free Response on Intelligence
As I was reflecting on my intelligence project for Monday, I
was actually thinking of how we construct intelligence as educators. It seems
in society today, to be a very elusive term. We have talked about the IQ test
in class and how the education system started its assessment process, only
selecting a few to move on to college. When I was in school, there were certain
characteristics that would define you as intelligent. If you paid attention and
got good grades, then you were smart. As I think about children today, there
are other intelligent people that don't have those characteristics at all. Some
people are extremely common sense or “street smart”. There are students who are
great at interacting with others. There are also students that have wonderful
technology skills or can identify a musical note without any prompting at all.
By only selecting a few traits that identify students as smart, we neglect the
other students’ abilities. More importantly, we send the message that their
skills aren’t valued or needed. This breaks down their self-esteem and cannot
be conducive to learning. Moving forward, we should consider other types of
intelligence and value students for what they bring to the table as “good
enough”, but also equally as important.
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