Are we getting smarter, and if we are, what are the implications for education?
New Zealand political scientist James Flynn says in his new book Are We Getting Smarter that from 1900 to 2012, the IQ of the general population of North America rose nearly 30 points, which means the average person in 2012 had a higher IQ than 95 per cent of the population in 1900.
Flynn’s data, which he later expanded to samples from 30 countries, is based on commonly used IQ tests such as the Stanford-Binet, the Weschler and the Raven’s Matrices.
Interesting, but more interesting is the work being done by neuroscientists who are increasingly certain that intelligence is not static and fixed at birth, as was once believed, but is actually flexible.
The previous notion that IQ is fixed created a rationale for instructional practices such as tracking students according to high and low aptitude, the bell curve, drill and practice, competition, frequent testing, ability grouping, IQ scores as a basis for special education and reinforcement of learning by rewards and external motivations.
This was all based on the notion that when it came to IQ and subsequent school success, you either had it or you did not. Your cards in the luck of the genetic draw, if you will.
Now, in the light of brain research by people such as Arthur Whimbey, David Perkins and others, neuroscientists and educators have been forced to reconsider the basic concepts of intelligence.
They draw distinctions between neural intelligence, the “genetically determined, hard-wired original equipment,” experiential intelligence, accumulated through experience, and reflective intelligence, which Perkins describes as “good use of the mind; the artful deployment of our faculties of thinking.”
Whimbey, a major player in the critical-thinking skills movement and author of many books on the subject, has always argued that intelligence could be taught.
Through instruction in problem-solving, metacognition (thinking about thinking) and strategic thinking, Whimbey’s students not only increased their IQ scores but also displayed more effective approaches to their academic work.
For modern curriculum designers, this proposition has significant implications, not so much about what content is taught but how content is taught.
Current brain research prefers a definition of intelligence that is as attentive to active habits of mind as it is to content knowledge structures.
This research suggest that curriculum, and especially instruction, should focus on developing learning goals that reflect the belief that intellectual ability comprises a continuously expandable repertoire of skills, and that through a person’s efforts, intelligence grows incrementally.
In a recent TED talk, neuroscientist Sandrine Thuret challenged the belief that adult brains simply don’t grow new brain cells and that what we developed as children was all we would ever have.
This, she says, is a fallacy.
Thuret asks two big questions: How can we help our healthy brains create new nerve cells throughout our lives through diet and behaviour changes, and how can we understand and control the effects of mood change, stress and depression on our brains’ ability to grow?
She says maintaining a physically and intellectually active lifestyle, will, by the time we turn 50, assist our brains to exchange the neurons we were born with for healthy age-
resistant, adult-developed neurons.
Thomas Edison knew a thing or two about thinking and active life. In 1930, a year before his death at 85, he was at the throttle of the first electric multiple-unit train, an advancement he championed, and drove the train for the first mile through the
Hoboken, New Jersey, rail yard.
A prolific inventor all his life, Edison said: “The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
