Does education make you more intelligent?

[GHoSToKeR]

I believe that intelligence is something you are born with or without. Intelligence to me is how your brain works, not what it can remember. I consider somebody intelligent not by how they speak or what facts they remember, but how they percieve the world around them and the conclusions they draw from those perceptions.

Education, I think, is different. You can study to the highest level but still not be all that smart.

So my question is do you think education can actually make a person smarter? And do you think it even makes a difference? If a person is born not-so-bright and gets a good level of education, can they be as intelligent as somebody who is born pretty bright but who gets a lower level of education, or no education at all?

I'd like to see (hear, read, smell) what you guys think....

-GHoST-

[flamingskullballs]

i also think people are born as smart as they will ever be...how you accept the world shows a lot of intellect...
schooling has nothing to do with it

[GHoSToKeR]

Then what's schooling for? We all know it serves a purpose. There are loads of things I know because I learnt them in school....

So has it made me more intelligent? Or has it made me more knowledgable? And is there a difference?

[Az.]

oohhh the nature/nuture debate...

it really depends how you are going to tell whether they are intelligant....what they are learning....its a bit late for me to be thinking about this....ive had a BUSY and long day....9.15 - 5 at college....then get home and continuously work untill 11.....im only in my second week and ive fucking worked my ass off.....lol

g-nite all

:)

[kuulbns]

I recently watched a documentary on "feral children", (wild children). While these children can learn to some degree, MRI's and CT scans show marked damage to the brain, areas that never developed because of lack of use. This is permanent damage. Therefore (IMHO) Intelligence has as much to do with nurture as with nature. If parts of the brain are not stimulated they fail to develope the necesary nueron connections to use them. Interesting stuff.

[Az.]

I recently watched a documentary on "feral children", (wild children). While these children can learn to some degree, MRI's and CT scans show marked damage to the brain, areas that never developed because of lack of use. This is permanent damage. Therefore (IMHO) Intelligence has as much to do with nurture as with nature. If parts of the brain are not stimulated they fail to develope the necesary nueron connections to use them. Interesting stuff.

yeah i did a few studys on feral children (the wild boy of avyron ((sp))) and its very interesting...they have a window of oppertunity to learn certain things such as comprhendable language and stuff like manners....other wise they simply dont have any social skills in the slightest.....there was also one i looked at about a girl who was kept in a chicken coop for 7 years and their neibourghs didnt do anything to stop this....but when she came out of the coop she made clucking sounds and didnt use her hands to eat....
but i cant go too deep...i wasnt even going to post this but couldnt resist....i love stuff like this...

[nickx760]

I believe that intelligence is something you are born with or without. Intelligence to me is how your brain works, not what it can remember. I consider somebody intelligent not by how they speak or what facts they remember, but how they percieve the world around them and the conclusions they draw from those perceptions.

Education, I think, is different. You can study to the highest level but still not be all that smart.

So my question is do you think education can actually make a person smarter? And do you think it even makes a difference? If a person is born not-so-bright and gets a good level of education, can they be as intelligent as somebody who is born pretty bright but who gets a lower level of education, or no education at all?

I'd like to see (hear, read, smell) what you guys think....

-GHoST-



^i agree

[RICVAGANAJASMOKER]

Intelligent people will take to education. Ignorant fools will not. Intelligence is ingrained. Not learned. Lessons are learned.

[GHoSToKeR]

Wow, that's really interesting, Az and Kuu! Thanks!

I guess, like you said Az., it depends on what you use to measure intelligence. However, I disagree with the methods we use today; tests, basically. A kid can not learn a damn thing all year and then cram for a test and ace it. Then another kid with a bad memory and bad nerves can fail when he really knows all that stuff.

I think i'd describe intelligence as the power to understand. Like, when I was 16 at school I would fail certain maths tests because the tests relied heavily on remembering the tables we had been taught (you know, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4). Pretty basic stuff, but people don't realise that you don't have to be good at maths to remember what 7x9 is. Kids who were bad at math but had okay memories would obviously be considered good at math. Where as I couldn't tell you what anything times anything is without having to stop for a second and think, and I would feel dumb, but then for the rest of the lesson i'd be studying stuff that the rest of the class wouldn't learn for a few years, and i'd soak it all up.

I'm just curious to what people actually consider intelligence. What actually makes somebody clever? The ability to remember facts and figures? Because if so then education really does make people smarter. But if intelligence is just the ability to understand, to comprehend, then no, I don't think you can learn that.

As to those children you guys mentioned; I think it was mainly the lack of social interactions that had such a drastic effect on their brains. But the subject sounds fascinating.. i'll look in to it some time. Oh and good point, RICVAGANAJASMOKER! :)

I wonder... we've all heard that humans only actually use a small percentage of their brains and therefore only utilise a small portion of their possible brain capacity. I wonder what it is that we're missing in our day-to-day lives that is stopping these parts of the brain from being activated? And what would happen if they were activated?

-GHoST-

[Lily420]

Im confused...but i belive education will educate you. But i do agree that your either born intelligent and witty or not.

[kuulbns]

So, If you adopt a child,.. it will have the limit of whatever inate intelligence it was born with? OR,.. Said child can become more intelligent because of the nurturing, care, and education it recieves (Therefore stimulating those parts of the brain)? Hard question. You could take Identical twins (or clones, lol) put them into diverse situations, The child that recieves more stimulation and imput will develope more nueron connections, more usable parts of the brain. Hmmmmmm, very interesting.

[GHoSToKeR]

Well, I suppose if you think of your brain as a muscle (I dunno if that's what it is or not.. lol), then the more you use it the stronger it'll become. And if you use it for different things (as you can use one muscle in a variety of ways) then it will become stronger in that way too. I mean, we all know that practicing your vocabulary (by posting here for example) will help you to improve it. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe education literally does make you more intelligent, by actually exercising your brain. Hmm... We need an expert, I think! :D

[3 Sheets To The Wind]

I heard from a mate a few years ago that supposedly, school is there to get people to socialize, to find out if they are a leader, or a follower, to give you some direction as to what you want to do. It is all set up to get us to make friends and learn how life works, not to be taught things.
I don't really believe what my friend told me (it was years ago, and thought he was just talking nonesense as per usual) as the details are very hazy as to what he said exactly.

I truely think that schooling does educate us and make us smarter, if we were smart to begin with and didn't need to be taught anything, we couldn't read, write or talk along with many other things we take for granted everyday

..Josh

[thcbongman]

A lot of people who are "book smart" sometimes lack common sense.

It depends on how one defines intelligence. All humans have strengths and weaknesses and we may each be "smarter" in one way or another.

No book in the world can teach you the experiences we face through life, and how we learn to deal with those situations, if we don't learn it ourselves....

[3 Sheets To The Wind]

Someone might have said what i just did, but i didn't read all posts lol, sorry

[GHoSToKeR]

Nope, nobody already said it! Cool post! Thanks man! :)

[3 Sheets To The Wind]

No worries, yeah i think about what i posted about all the time nowadays, i thought it was all bullshit before, but now i'm like "damn, he kinda made sense" lol

[GHoSToKeR]

Well yeah, school is as much about teaching us life and social skills as much as teaching us facts and figures. Nowadays it is, anyway. I mean, I remember a lesson (can't remember the name of the subject it's been a while! The subject where they teach you about sex and drugs and stuff...) where we were talking about condoms and the chick I was dating at the time had to demonstrate how to put a condom on. I volunteered to let her demonstrate on me, of course, but alas, she used a prop. Damn, she was hot. I haven't seen her in ages.. I wonder what happened to her? I wonder if she's still hot...

Anyway, uhhhhh, yeah, so school is all about preparing us for the big bad world, man. That's why we have sex education and religious studies and stuff.

[3 Sheets To The Wind]

Ghost, she's here, in my bed;) haha

Yeah, a guy in our class had to put a condom (he was a chav, trying to keep his rep) on a dildo, haha.. Since then, the school nurse has been known as "The dildo lady" hehe, good times.. good times!:D

[FunkyMonkey]

I look at it this way:
Your brain is your computer. You are born with a specific configuration and that is what you have to work with. Learning is the same as storing info on your hard drive. It doesnt make you smarter , it just makes you have quicker access to information. Adding info to your pc doesnt make it a better machine. It wont be a better machine than you bought simply because you have x amount of gigs of info stored. It will be just more useful to you.
Same with the brain. Its not a better brain after storing things in it, just more useful to you when you need to access info.
Now software is a different thing. Installing specific software on your computer will determine how it runs, how well it runs and how you can use the info. Our software is all installed as children with limited capacity to upgrade as we are older. The first 7 years or so determines our software environment in out minds. After that its storage and manipulation.

Much of what you learn in school is temporary.
What you learn from life experiences is permanent. The process of weeding out useless info is ongoing and we defrag and clean up on a nightly basis.
Does this make sense to anyone else but me?

[Mojavpa]

school can possibly hinder your intelligence. It teaches you to conform, to not question authority, and to accept popular opinion. Becoming a robot isnt the same as being intelligent. Of course this depends on where you go to school. :)

[GHoSToKeR]

It makes perfect sense, FunkyMonkey! Excellent post, man! I totally agree! Thanks!!

Hmmm Mojavpa... what if that robot is Hal? Or Marvin? Or Tweaky? Or Bender!?!? :p Does anybody even know who i'm talking about? lol

[Mojavpa]

It makes perfect sense, FunkyMonkey! Excellent post, man! I totally agree! Thanks!!

Hmmm Mojavpa... what if that robot is Hal? Or Marvin? Or Tweaky? Or Bender!?!? :p Does anybody even know who i'm talking about? lol

Bender is cooler than a school-educated nerd. :)

[mrdevious]

I believe some types of intelligence you are born with and stuck with, for instance critical thinking skills. however, the brain does become more proficient at skills when those skills are excercised, so some areas of intelligence capable of being enhanced. for instance, if you take somebody who lives in the jungle from birth with no education, and ask "what's 7 x7", they'd have to get out a bunch of rocks or something and count them up. but through excercising the mathematic parts of the brain, even if we don't remember "7x7=49", our brains are more used to adding up the numbers in your head.

or perhapse a clearer example. My dad is very intelligent, but can't play video games at all. because I've played video games all my life, when I play a new game with completely unfamiliar controls, I'm able to figure out the controls considerably faster and easier than my dad, even if it's on a new system that I've never played on. it was only 2 years ago that I played my first RPG (morrowind, then knights of the old republic), and it was the first time I ever played an xbox. I managed to learn the games very fast, because my brain had learned how to addapt from previous experience with the N64, even though I only played shooters.

[KronicKing]

intelligentce is from you life expiriance i think,all are boor on a certain leve;l and compete with those on their level to determine who is the best,educated and intelligent are two differnt things,to be intelligent you must have knowlege,logic,and wisdom,but to be educated you must know when a book was writen and it's content.sorry if this doesnt make sence but i'l VERY drunk and cant artticulate normaly,and sorry for any misspelled words,i tried to correct them as i went but,once again.i'm drunk so i cant really tell witch glyphs mean what :)

[NowhereMan]

thinking .....

i dont fucking think so
i just hope fucking not
becuase i slept thru english class
stoned on my ass on pot


well we see some of the smartest people do some stupid things dont they?

ol' sigmon the coke head froid' would say we all have a weak area, or at least as i understand the stoned mad doctor's work,

i classify intelligence as the ability To Learn,
not measured in quantity
but quality plays a part of it.

if you can do algebra you are more educated than me now,
couldnt multiply a fraction now used to make 'C's at least in that class.
forget any them complicated things i did in drafting class.

im proof of the use it or lose it theory.its a fact.
but that still dont mean u R more intelligent.

or does it?
lets ask the 8 ball :)

[mrdevious]

intelligentce is from you life expiriance i think,all are boor on a certain leve;l and compete with those on their level to determine who is the best,educated and intelligent are two differnt things,to be intelligent you must have knowlege,logic,and wisdom,but to be educated you must know when a book was writen and it's content.sorry if this doesnt make sence but i'l VERY drunk and cant artticulate normaly,and sorry for any misspelled words,i tried to correct them as i went but,once again.i'm drunk so i cant really tell witch glyphs mean what :)

don't worry, you're doing much better than I would if I was drunk ;) .

[GHoSToKeR]

Exactly, Z! That's the point I was trying to make, too! There's crap loads of stuff I've forgotten since school, but we also learn stuff after leaving school too. Alot of what we learn is school is pointless trivia, but like somebody said earlier school is to excercise your brain, get it working in different ways.

I agree that intelligence should be classified your ability to understand and to comprehend. And I agree that it's not really quantifiable, either.

In todays society it's almost as if your amount of money and material possessions dictates how clever you are. A poor person is looked down upon, and a rich person is looked up to. If you can do well in todays society than your opinion counts for more... so does that mean by todays standards intelligence is measured in material wealth?

[ArtRollins]

You guys actually went to school?

I think I have an 8th grade diploma somewhere buried. Did you really need what they teach in those prisons? They always looked like bad factories to me. The one I was supposed to go to had barb wire around it and was dark and dingy, it was public school in Chicago called Morgan Park, and it was nothing to do with a park. You had to carry a knife to make sure you could walk around it.

I drove trucks and motorcycles instead.

[Euphoric]

Humans were not always so destructive. We only have that impression because written history is the history of the West. What changed? How did the West de-evolve? The answer goes back to the history of ancient Greece. What was the philosopher Socrates sentenced to death for? Socrates was sentenced to death for heresy; he taught that the Immortal Principles, which could be either MEASURED, or PROVED mathematically, were above the Gods. This was the beginning of both EMPIRICISM, defined in Webster's as "the theory that sensory experience is the only source of knowledge," and the opposite but equally dangerous theory of RATIONALISM; "that reason, or intellect is the true source of knowledge, rather than the senses."