Saturday, April 07, 2012

Testing Intelligence

In my personal opinion, I do not like to test, especially in the intelligence test. Human Intelligence facets many areas of a person's ability, as God grants a different gift to each human being. In the bible, Paul had mentioned the gifts of message of wisdom, message of knowledge, healing, prophecy, distinguishing, speaking different tongues, and interpretation of tongues. How do a person know which gift (s)he might have? Once upon a time, in a group study, the leader gave the group member a test, where each one fills a form by answering questions. the results would tell if you have the gift of teaching, caring, passion, or etc. Most member laughed after got the result. In the same way, when a school wants to know if a student is capable of accomplishing school work, it will require the student do some test. The popularly tests are the academic intelligence tests such as the SAT/ACT for admission into college, and the GRE/GMAT for administration of college students into graduate school. Some company designed test to measure a person's intelligence, such as IQ and the EQ test. These tests might help recognizing what the students had learned, but not the student's ability to learn.
The results of the tests might be affected by how many times a person practices; the more someone practiced and the more familiar (s)he is with the test, the higher the score (s)he will have.  Someone with a PH.D degree told me that she took the IQ test,  and in the beginning, her IQ was about 120, after took it several times, she got the score of about 140. She said that if she practiced more, she would have scored higher. so this test means nothing. Stephen Hawking said about IQ: "People who boast about their IQ are losers".
People do have intelligence or gift as God granted.  A person might have a gift area and  might have another disability area. for example, "Jacob, who has been diagnosed with mild autism, now 12 years old, mildly autistic and with an IQ of 170 – higher than Stephen Hawkings and Albert Einstein."   Dr. Hawkings "was small and slow to learn to read" (Journey throught the galaxy) and has physical disability, He was assumed an extrmem high IQ.((it was funny that Dr. Hawkings hisself said he did not know what his IQ was.) Albert Einstein, who had difficulty time to learn how to talk. "His elementary school teachers thought that he was a foolish dreamer, and one teacher had even asked him to drop out of his class." was assumed that he had extreme high IQ too. Another factor is "human can be modeled (like plastic), a child who need special education in an early grade might later be above average, or even gifted."(Berger K. S. 2009). A person's IQ might change in the life span. Testing intelligence migh have its limit.


Reference
Anonymous,Stephen Hawking
Anonymous, The Legend of the Dull-Witted Child Who Grew Up to Be a Genius
Anonymous,Early life
Journey throught the galaxy,Albert Einstein

ZEE, Meet the 12 year old with an IQ highre than Stephen Hawking's
Dan Clloway,Boy Genius, Jacob Barnett, Seeks to Disprove the Big Bang Theory

2 comments:

  1. Sara, i also do not believe in traditional ways to test for intelligence. in fact i wrote my blog on accessing health of young chikldren, I think that is more important than intelligence. Sometimes children with common sense come across more intelligent that a "smart child". Children have many different talents and an IQ test does not determine this.

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  2. Sara,
    I am working ahead due to the fact that my son turns one next week!:o) I would like to thank-you for your insights and questions. I have seen growth in you from the start of January!! I would like to wish you luck on your next class.
    Beth

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