Intelligence and Class

Posted on | May 23, 2008 | Comments Off

Dr Bruce Charlton, reader in evolutionary psychiatry at Newcastle University, evidently has a very clear idea of what it means to be intelligent. Lucky man! Or should that be, clever man?

Your IQ is hardly more a measure of your intelligence than the size of our ears is a measure of your ability to hear. It is merely one measure of one very narrow definition of intelligence, but one that is part of that self-fulfilling cycle that regards university as the pinnacle of intelligent aspiration and ‘intelligence’ as the basic currency that determines your right or otherwise to get to university. It is also, unfortunately, part of that same cycle that has for so long reduced our systems of schooling to the role of filling up our universities with ‘intelligent’ people. All the other kinds of intelligence that we should be endeavouring to nurture through education take a distant second place to the ‘one true intelligence’ as defined by most variants on the notion of IQ.

Interestingly, Dr Charlton penned a paper a couple of years ago – The Paradox of the Modern Mass Media – in which he wrote:

“Doctors and scientists in liberal democracies will be familiar with the experience of mass media reporting of their subjects being selective, distorted, and sensational.”

Maybe he can tell us if the BBC is guilty of that sin in this case.

Postscript – You can catch a flavour of the wider debate sparked by Dr Charlton’s thoughts on Wikio.

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