The Arrogance of Bias
Today, I read this piece, http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/arrogant-ignorance-well-educated
While I share his 'contempt' of the type of people that would be most likely to sport such bumper stickers or post such memes on their Facebook, I disagree with him based almost solely on his biases that he allows to bleed into his writing.
Despite his obvious neo-conservative Judea-Christian bias, he's got one thing right, today's education(secular or not, though PUBLIC education is even more heinous) leaves the students assured of what they know and blind to their own ignorance.
However, his bias drove me to respond to this 'idea' that being liberal means you must be more 'intelligent' because you are more likely to be 'well-educated'. Intelligence and education, in the context of today, do not necessarily go together. Being 'well-educated' today does not automatically translate to intelligence. In fact, it more likely translates to easily controlled and gullible. In order to 'succeed' in 'education' today, all one must do is parrot back what a particular 'educator' wishes you to absorb and memorize. Offer a view counter to a teacher's and see how quickly your GPA drops. It is rare, today, to find an educator who encourages and delights in counter views to their own and relishes the opportunity, not only to educate the student in the truest sense, but to have the opportunity to be enlightened by a new view they may not have considered or encountered.
A friend's daughter made the comment that 'today's high school student is as intelligent as the great minds of yesterday(like Ford, Lincoln, et cetera) because we have all this information given to us.'
Essentially, they are taught not how to think, but instead what to memorize and are convinced that THIS is intelligence. They fail to realize that intelligence is marked by four very persistent factors:
- Doubt about one's own 'knowledge'(intelligence recognizes that it may not be so intelligent)
- Questioning everything one knows and is told(intelligence recognizes that no source is infallible)
- Anticipation of opposition for the opportunity to fine tune one's own knowledge of 'truth'(intelligence recognizes that the only way to know anything is to put what it 'knows' to the test)
- Lack of fear in considering that which is counter what one 'knows'(intelligence is not threatened by being proven wrong)
Intelligence is critical, always, first and foremost. Not like a critic of a restaurant or movie, but in the classical sense. Without judgment, only with the desire to determine the 'truth' of what is being presented, no matter where that leads or what it changes for that critical mind.
What you call well-educated, millenia of precedent calls arrogant and willful ignorance and blind acceptance of what you are presented with, provided it is presented by those you view as infallible, ie, authority.
No offense when I say this, but you seem to be endorsing the idea that intelligence can be raised by education. But the classic idea of intelligence is that one is born with all the intelligence one will ever have. When one's IQ seems to rise after education, it is due to the innate bias of those that make IQ tests. They tend to ask questions that educated people will have the answer for, therefore education appears to increase IQ.
But my understanding of the IQ is that a perfect IQ tests should be about logic and problem solving across many levels. However, because a Scientist can't make a perfect IQ test, bias will creep in showing that education somehow makes you smarter.
To illustrate, take a genius level person that has lived in the jungles of South America all his life. He cannot read, cannot write, cannot do math beyond simple addition. Yet he is an absolute master at thriving in the jungle where you and I would die. Now give him a standard IQ test. He will come out with the ability of a sub moron.
This is because he has no need for reading, writing or math. He's never seen a No. 2 pencil and has no idea what a scan-tron, "fill in the bubble" test is. We simply cannot judge his intelligence, because our tests assume one knows how to read, write and do math.
Now take five years and educate him and then you would start to see his intelligence appear on a genius level. The "logical" thing to assume is that education made him smarter and raised his IQ. That is of course, not true. He was always a genius, we simply could not relate to his genius.
In short, it is the fact that IQ tests have been written by people that went to colleges. Therefore, their bias will creep in no matter what they do. We are all somewhat held and influenced to a degree by our past. That's not a bad thing, bias is not an evil. It simply is.
The incorrect attitude towards bias and I would think the evil thing about bias, is your main point however. Going to school, getting good grades and being told what smart little girls and boys we are is corruptive. If we are so smart, with our college educated selves, than why is the world such a screwed up place? Nearly 99% of politicians, police, teachers, nearly every authority figure today has been to college- and yet we are arguably in a worse position today than ever.
None taken.
But, as I understand it based on personal experience and various sources, anecdotal and otherwise, IQ is very much not static. We may wish to try to measure the 'innate' cognitive function of brains. This would be a measure of the brains ability to absorb and categorize information. This could only be done over the course of years. And perhaps if we were to undergo IQ testing as it is over the course of years, we could derive a rough estimate of a 'core' intelligence innate to the subject. However what we are actually measuring is logic and reasoning abilities. The ability to use logic and reason to extrapolate and infer unknown information. Both logic and reasoning can be and are learned over the course of time. For some it comes more 'naturally' but it is still not a measure of an inborn cognitive ability that doesn't change.
A huge part of the reason for the fluctuation in IQ scores, aside from testing bias(which is inevitable) is because as we grow, we have the capacity to improve our logic and reasoning skills(and let them degrade).
By no means am I saying that intelligence is inextricably linked to education(of the modern day, formal variety). What I am saying is that being 'well-educated' is NOT indicative of being intelligent, ie, logical and reasoned. That is something we are no longer teaching and have long been reducing the teaching of. I am 33 and I was fortunate enough to have been able to go to a private school for my elementary years(thanks to school funded grants) and so I was taught to problem solve, extrapolate and infer, ie, to use logic and reason to fill in blanks. I was also taught to verify what I extrapolated when I could. I was taught that often this verification is meeting a challenge to my assertions and seeing if it stands up to scrutiny. Granted, these things weren't taught to me in such vernacular or even in such a methodical way that I can say I took class 'a' and 'b' but that we were taught something akin to the Trivium method. Nearly anyone can learn via this method and if properly learned and applied, it can make the difference between average and 'intelligent' in the context that we think of such.
My whole point is that, the article's author's bias aside, he is very much right. Being 'well-educated' today does NOT mean you are logical and reasoned or rational. Those things can be improved and had through 'proper education' but that is not what we have today. Today it is memorization and accepting what you are told to think about topics lest you 'fail'.
Education today fails all the tests of 'intelligence'.
It teaches you that having good grades means you can be sure of your knowledge and intelligence(intelligence doubts itself).
It teaches you to accept the data you are fed from 'trusted' sources(intelligence casts a critical eye on all sources).
It teaches you to attack and loathe any opposition to what you 'know'(intelligence relishes the opportunity to be proven wrong or to validate itself).
It teaches you to fear even the consideration of what is counter to what you 'know'(intelligence often tests itself by considering other points of view).
It also teaches you to fear being wrong. Another feature of successful intelligence(to mean flexible enough to correct itself but rigid enough to retain what hasn't yet been refuted) is to embrace being wrong. Finding the wrong answer means having one less wrong answer to worry about. It means that the previous 'knowledge' was wrong but now that knowledge is abandoned in favor of more consistent, logical and reasoned knowledge.
But I agree with you about how bad things have gotten and I firmly believe this goes back to 'education'. But I am speaking of today's version of that. Honest education is simply truth seeking. Learning how to seek answers, find them, test them, and even how to abandon them when they are proven wrong.
None of these are features of what is considered 'education' today.