A five-step guide to not being stupid (BBC)
David Robson
If you ever doubt the idea that the very clever can also be very silly, just remember the time the smartest man in America tried to electrocute a turkey. Benjamin Franklin had been attempting to capture electrical fire in glass jars as a primitive battery. Having succeeded, he thought itd be impressive to use the discharge to kill and roast his dinner. Soon it became a regular party trick, as he wowed guests with his magical ability to command this strange force.
During one of these demonstrations, however, Franklin became distracted, and made an elementary mistake he touched one of the live jars while holding a metal chain in the other hand. The company present
say that the flash was very great and the crack as loud as a pistol, he later wrote. I then felt what I know not how well to describe; a universal blow thro'out my whole body from head to foot which seem'd within as well as without; after which the first thing I took notice of was a violent quick shaking of my body.
Clearly, intelligence doesnt mean that you are more rational or sensible a fact that weve explored before on BBC Future. Although it is easy to laugh at Franklins eccentricity, the other examples are sobering. The American surgeon Atul Gawande has written powerfully about a great tragedy in modern medicine. Despite their astonishing skill, surgeons can cause the needless loss of life through sheer carelessness something as simple as forgetting to wash their hands or apply a clean dressing. In business, short-sighted thinking might involve cutting corners that eventually lead to the downfall of a company.
A new way to think
The problem, says Robert Sternberg at Cornell University, is that our education system is not designed to teach us to think in a way that is useful for the rest of life. The tests we use the SATs or A-levels in England are very modest predictors of anything besides school grades, he says. You see people who get very good grades, and then they suck at leadership. They are good technicians with no common sense, and no ethics. They get to be the president or vice-president of corporations and societies and they are massively incompetent.
What can be done? Sternberg and others are now campaigning for a new kind of education that teaches people how to think more effectively, alongside more traditional academic tasks. Their insights could help all of us whatever our intelligence to be a little less stupid:
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more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150422-how-not-to-be-stupid
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Our schools beat the curiosity and genius out of children by insisting that they comply with authority, that they must go to college, that manual labor and crafts and trades are for losers.
I could go on and on.
We need to measure differently, celebrate all the different ways people think and address problems, and allow learners to take a role in the design of their educational experience.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)and all that is measured isn't important".
MindMover
(5,016 posts)lindysalsagal
(20,718 posts)We are cramming whatever gimmick just came down the pike to raise test scores and reduce the achievement gap. More of the same, rinse, repeat. We have no time to discuss history or cause/effect. We don't allow students to stop us and ask, "why?"
Politics are controlling every minute of the week. We just spent 6 days testing crap. The 3rd grade reading test was at a 6th grade level. The kids hate us and hate school and hate learning.