Success in School (and Life) Probably has Almost Nothing to do with Intelligence

To properly explain my thoughts here, I have to explain the series of thoughts that came to that conclusion.

I’m currently in Colombia, trying very hard to learn Spanish. I took it in high school (and earlier) and even in college, but never really progressed. My first thought was to question why that was.

My immediate answer was that we didn’t utilize our time that efficiently. I remember just pounding away trying to learn grammar rules and would spend an entire class period (or week?) learning how to conjugate one verb in one tense, or learning some other concept that really shouldn’t take that long.

Part of it, too, is that they are teaching at the rate of the kids who need the most time to pick it up. Which, as I’ll get more into in a moment, probably isn’t the dumbest kids, it’s the kids who don’t care and aren’t paying attention.

So I thought: I’m doing about an hour of flashcards per day, which allows me to learn and retain about 40 new cards every single day. In my  case, that’s usually about 8 new verbs, with examples. It’s a fairly rapid rate.

And then, of course, any time spent actually speaking is extremely valuable in getting better.

But then my next thought was, “Well… You learn concepts and whatnot in class, and then you’re expected to actually study and review vocabulary and concepts at home, right?”

Which is fine, but let’s think about this now. Is everybody going to actually study at home? Absolutely not. The kids who consider themselves smart, and who think they are “good” at it probably will, because they feel good about it and believe they can succeed.

And who is not going to study? The kids who think they are dumb, and the kids who don’t care. And, as a side note, I would bet the kids who “don’t care” actually think they aren’t smart or are bad at the subject, and just “don’t care” as a defense mechanism. That’s a separate topic though.

So in a class where it’s expected that you need to study in order to succeed, what happens if one group actually does study, and the other doesn’t? Even if they are just as intelligent, the group that studied is clearly going to do much, much better.

So now the grades come out. The ones who studied scored highly, and they feel good about themselves. They think, “I’m smart, that’s why I succeeded.” Their parents praise them and tell them how smart they are and they truly start to believe it. They continue to take interest in their studies and continue to succeed, creating a virtuous cycle.

But what about the other kids? They get a bad grade. They know they didn’t study, but still… This must be evidence that they are dumb! Their parents punish them. In some households maybe they even call them stupid or had already been doing that.

It wouldn’t take too long before they would feel stupid. The next time, they might put in even less effort, because what’s the point? They believe they won’t succeed anyway so they aren’t going to bother doing everything the ‘smart’ kids are doing.

And in this way, it’s a cycle. The ‘smart’ get ‘smarter’ and the ‘dumb’ get ‘dumber’. And if you’ve been paying attention — to the extent that intelligence is, in any way an actual, quantifiable trait — the so-called ‘dumb’ kids are very likely the exact same intelligence as the rest.

And now they’re going to go through life thinking they are too dumb to succeed. And that seems like a tragedy.

Additionally, in a school-setting, concepts absolutely build off of one another. It’s much easier to grasp something new when you have all of the underlying concepts memorized. Someone who just “instantly gets” something may only do so because they understood all of the preceding material, not because they are “smarter”.

This might be more fit for a totally different conversation, but I think our emphasis on “intelligence” is also way off-base. It’s a terrible predictor of success (at least as measured by IQ), and I think our very focus on it actually leads to poorer results.

If people think that being “smart” leads to success, then they’ll start thinking that their successes are due to their intelligence, and their failures due to their lack thereof.

This is a terrible outcome for two reasons. Firstly, you can’t (really) do anything about your intelligence. It’s more or less inherent and unchanging. So focusing on it cannot possibly improve your life.

Secondly, it completely takes hard work and sacrifice out of the equation. Literally anything that someone has done to get where they are is overwritten by saying that they are just ‘smart’, or even ‘naturally talented’. Research says that ‘natural talent’ is almost entirely a myth, and I don’t think ‘intelligence’ is that far off in the context of explaining success.

So when it comes to school-age children, I think it’s much more important to tell them, “good job, you studied hard and earned that grade!” instead of saying, “you’re so smart!”

One of those things will help them deeply to understand how to succeed, and the other is only helpful as a confidence booster. If people think their success is due to one, inherent and unchanging metric, then they will not take any responsibility for their successes or failures. They won’t truly understand that the actions that they take lead to their outcomes.

Thinking back to when I was in school, I remember always being in the “honors” or “gifted” classes. I think we all genuinely believed that we were much smarter than the kids in the “regular” classes.

My two thoughts on that now are:

  1. We were foolish and wrong for thinking that.
  2. What does it matter? You can’t pay the mortgage with ‘intelligence’.

 

What’s the Point of Traveling?

This is a question that I guess I’ve never really taken the time to think through. What is the point of traveling?

If you don’t put much thought into it, you may think you have the obvious answers. It’s fun. It exposes you to new things, new ideas, new people.

But if you think about it, you can get all of those same things without ever leaving your home state. You can certainly have fun, there are always new things to try and people to meet. And with the internet and books, there is never a shortage of new ideas.

So what exactly is it?

An obvious part of it is that it’s more likely to do well in those categories. You’re more likely to have fun, you’re more likely to meet new people, etc. But I don’t think that’s anywhere near the whole picture, and in fact, I don’t think it’s the right answer at all.

While I don’t claim to know the correct answer for sure (or even that there is one), I have an idea.

I believe it’s the depth and impact of the experiences that makes traveling so worthwhile.

Basically, I think you are very likely to have a variety of experience that are likely to have a lasting impact on you. When you think back to your favorite trips, you think of the ones that changed you. You probably had some incredible experiences, did fun things, saw something beautiful, met amazing people, and potentially faced some serious hardships. But after it all, you came out feeling like you bettered yourself, or at the very least, you’ve learned more about yourself.

And that’s hard to come by. You can’t just hand someone cash and have them improve your self-worth or understanding. It comes from genuine experiences and, usually, effort and hardship.

The right trip definitely changes you, and might even become part of your identity. There’s tremendous value in that.

So with that in mind, how can I improve my traveling?

A focus on depth of experiences is definitely critical. Try new things, get out there!

Generally going outside of my comfort zone I think is also necessary. I’ve talked about that quite a bit in the last couple posts but it really is true. If you aren’t a little scared, you probably aren’t growing.

I think I tend to do this naturally, but seeking out genuine experiences and human connection I think is way better than going for cheap thrills. I’m not a big fan of really touristy things (or places) and I think now I know why. They just aren’t that meaningful to me and don’t lead to life-altering experiences.

Those are my thoughts for the night. With almost the entire two months to go here in Colombia, I think it’s good to think about this ahead of time.