Summary Of Smarter Every Year By Alison Gopnik

Society’s view on intelligence is becoming watered down from the truth. In Rose’s article, “Blue Collar Brilliance” Rose discusses societies outlook on intelligence. Rose explains how society thinks blue collared jobs don’t involve any intelligence, and anyone can do a blue collared job. He explains how society thinks that since you don’t have to have a high education to perform well in blue collared jobs, it takes little to no intelligence. Rose says, “We reinforce this notion by defining intelligence solely on grades in school and numbers on IQ test” (Rose 279). Rose explains that even though most blue collared jobs don’t require a college degree, they still demand many forms of intelligence. Rose also explains how his brother dropped out of school in the ninth grade but eventually became a successful employee of the company General Motors. In Graff’s article, “Hidden Intellectualism” he explains how there are many students in today’s world who have an outstanding amount of “street smarts” but are failing school. He explains

Knowledge isn’t all about what people know or how well they are in school. IQ tests test the intelligence of the person; however they test the pure thinking capacity rather than what people know. This means that intelligence comes from the entire cognitive thinking ability and not what they

In his essay Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff emphasizes the idea that to be an intellectual one does not have to excel in school. Graff argues that a person’s intelligence should not be measured by solely what they learned and how they progressed through school, rather, intelligence should be measured by more secular standards. Throughout the essay, Graff provides many examples on how this biased view of intellectualism affected him and others in his childhood and how he suggests that school curriculum be changed to better reflect the different types of intellectualism.

A child’s abnormally high IQ may trigger thoughts of undoubted success for many of us, but Outliers shows us that many with unbridled promise fail to deliver. This study shows that almost all “geniuses” that fail to complete post-secondary degrees have one glaring trait in common: socioeconomic status. Gladwell presents the case of Chris Langan, a man who’s IQ nears 200 and taught himself to read by age four. Langan spend his adult years as a bouncer and later ran a horse farm. This is hardly dignified work for “the smartest man in America.” Langan’s only mistake was growing up poor. Gladwell compares Langan with Robert Oppenheimer, architect of the atomic bomb. While both were extremely intelligent, only Oppenheimer grew up affluent and gained necessary skills needed to succeed. While Langan had difficultly figuring out the procedures necessary to fill-out financial-aid forms in college, Oppenheimer was raised to learn social niceties. The author goes into great detail explaining how the experiences provided to Oppenheimer through family wealth helped separate him from a fate all-to-often

Passion and determination towards long term goals (otherwise known as ‘grit’) are parts of cognitive development. (Kantrowitz 2016). Grit is seen to be necessary for academic expertise in all fields ranging from sciences to the arts. (Ericsson, Prietula and Cokely 2007). Natural born Intelligence Quotient, also known as ‘IQ’, is described as a person’s ability to complete problems and understand concepts. This is compared across the population to give an average IQ score (Latham 2006). However, can this number accurately measure whether a human will become an expert in a field sooner than a grittier person? The focus of this essay is to evaluate whether grit or IQ has the most positive effect on cognitive development.

Chapter Three The Trouble with Geniuses, part 1 by Malcolm Gladwell. This chapter describes the threshold to intelligence and explains that the domain of intelligence is only good up to a degree by which the author describes. The chapter goes on to discuss a very intelligent person named Christopher Lanagan. It tells how Lanagan was on a television show and earned a lot of money for answering questions.

There is a relationship between intelligence and culture because intelligence is culturally shaped and defined and some cultures support and identify it as very vital in the context of social and ecological aspects. In the early years, there was a bias towards intelligence tests because they used English language and culture. The formation of Wesler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Addition (WAIS,IV) in 2008 by David Wesler was meant to minimise the bias. According to Westen, Burton and Kowalski (2006), intelligence assists human beings to take control of their lives and it varies cross culturally because the power dynamics differ in each society and this leads to differences in behaviour and line of thinking. These authors describe intelligence as multifaceted, functional and can be defined by culture because it is universal and studying intelligence using different culture as a sample that can be used to question Western ideas about intelligence with some emphasis on the assessment of skills and abilities using culturally appropriate methods (Benson, 2003)

While both sides can make a strong case for the value of IQ in modern day society, without an understanding of the experiments and design structure of the tests used to collect data on the subject, both arguments should seem unconvincing. Arguing about IQ is a very sensitive subject, and to be able to do so in a beneficial way the arguments used to discuss the topic should utilize an understanding of principals learned in CBE

In the twenty first century it’s apparent that in every aspect of life is the most competitive it has ever been. While every aspect of life has become more competitive it is impossible to ignore the correlation of the heighten of IQ over this past century. People are becoming smarter and smarter which has led me to question where exactly the foundation of this process started. The competitively I have been led to believe comes from the fact that people are become not only smarter, but also more independent. According to Entertainment Close - Up “NeighborWorks America Survey Reports Student Debt, Mortgage Market Confusion, and a Declining Marriage Rate Are Weights Holding Back the Housing Market” we can see “…because the median age at first

If we should compare baby boomers with the millennial babies, one would say that millennial babies are smarter. However, are people truly getting smarter? According to James Flynn, an American researcher in New Zealand in 980s found that individuals who took IQ test in 1970s did better than those who took it in 1940s. (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 63). Since IQ score is an average set to 100, Flynn noticed that the average increase of over three IQ points per decade. This became known as the Flynn effect (Heylighen, 2000). Flynn in is findings concluded that IQ test does not measure intelligence but makes us more modern since “we are not getting better at everything.”

In this paper, I will argue that IQ increases aren’t solely due to the increase in abstract thinking.

What will end the world as we know it? It could be climate change, disease, famine, or global war. If none of those come to pass there is always the truth that we are breeding our IQ into the basement. It’s called dysgeneic fertilization, and it has been happening for as long as we’ve been recording intelligence. Although this decline can be seen across the board, not everyone is affected the same way or to the same extent. With each generation that passes a gap widens between those retaining intelligence and those hemorrhaging intelligence. Action must be taken to prevent the gap from widening in order to stem a social divide and dystopia from forming.

Even before the technology that is so easily accessible today, there has been a rise with IQ scores. Studies have shown that IQ scores have been on the rise since the 1930s, way before the internet and smartphones were created, (Source 2). IQ scores are determined by thinking capacity rather than general knowledge which means that people’s ability to think critically have been improving. The lack of general knowledge on certain topics that older generations think are important, does not necessarily reflect the lack of intuition of this generation. Rather it reveals their choices of what information to retain. This rise in intelligence can also be linked to technology as the people of today have a large sum of resources that allow them to access a vast amount of information. Mizuko Ito Et Al states that

Over the last 30 years, IQ levels have risen dramatically and continue to rise each generation. Along with rising IQ levels, technological advancement is rising more than it ever was before. Let’s think back to the time of cavemen. They started the invention of “technology” as we know it today, making tools out of anything they can find such as bones, stone, and wood. Cavemen are seen as uneducated and savage. During 3500 BCE, the wheel is invented. Humans are seen as a little more advanced and educated during this time period as more devices are innovated. Fast forward to the 17th century when Galileo and Isaac Newton show their discoveries. Because of these improvements in science and technology, Galileo and Newton are seen as geniuses that revolutionize the way humans learn about information. Today’s inventors and innovators are constantly teaching us new ways to go about life and showing us how to take advantage of it. Technology has not only increased our overall intelligence, but has helped society advance successfully.

Dreary, Whiteman, Starr, Whalley, and Fox (2004) conducted a study on the impact of childhood intelligence on later life by following up with the participants in the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947 (Constandi, 2017). The purpose of the Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 (SMS1932) was to test the intelligence of all 11-year-olds attending Scottish schools that year to obtain general information about the intelligence distributed throughout the younger population (Dreary et al., 2004). The Scottish Mental Survey of 1947 (SMS1947) was administered to all 1936-born children due to a concern that the nation’s IQ was dropping (Dreary