Intelligent vs Educated

Freundel Stuart has a degree.

From the time I was a youngster I always remembered my grandmother saying “book sense ain’t common sense.” Today of all the lessons that she may have taught me I can say without an unquestionable doubt that this is an unchallengeable fact of life. I’ve also come to realise that common sense may be a much more proficient indicator of that thing we call intelligence. As it stands we look for a name followed by letters to denote a degree as an indicator of intelligence. I’m a believer that a degree does nothing to indicate how intelligent someone is.

Take a look at some of the most revered and idolized minds in history. Vincent van Gogh, Albert Einstein, George Washington, Sir Isaac Newton, Ted Turner, Walt Disney, Bill Gates and a never ending list of other individuals were not stand out students or were considered slow or failures early in life. Some of these were dyslexic and it is believed that others may have had ADD/ADHD and as such were unable to grasp concepts the way most others were. Yet these are amongst the greatest media moguls, computer giants, artist, leader, scientist and inventors in history.

Today to be considered intelligent you need to excel in the stereotypical academic fields and go on to work in an office or be a doctor or lawyer. To ascertain success in these fields you need to get a few certificates and a degree or two to show you are superior mentally to others. However, to me, these degrees more often than not just prove that you are capable of regurgitating and nothing more. They are many persons out there today with a degree whom cannot cope with anything outside the prescribed norm because they have not developed the ability to think for themselves. In short if it does not fall under the A+B=C rule then it must be incorrect. Also there are many of us who don’t care for the relationship between mass and acceleration or the effects of acids on litmus paper but this makes us stupid in the stereotypical eyes. The love for jobs outside the office, medicinal or law worlds is unheard of and should be left for the unintelligent.

To me true intelligence falls in the ability to think for you even if it means challenging the status quo and doing daring to be different. In the past they said that the earth was flat and the scientist, cartographers and explorers who discussed this were thought to be intelligent and the best in their fields. Then along came some weirdos even before the time of Galileo that dare to say that the earth was round and revolved around the sun and that it wasn’t in a fixed location as was common belief. These men refused to swallow what was fed to them as facts and instead examined and challenged the world for themselves.

There are some of us out there who if our lecturers had taught us that the sky was green and the grass blue would sit and repeat this in an exam even if it challenged our beliefs. We would have passed this course and gone out into the world believing that the sky is green and the grass is blue but we would have our degrees. The intellects amongst us would look up and say that there is no way the sky is green but it is in fact blue.

Again I say: Freundel Stuart has a degree.