UNFIXED: An InvestIgAtIon of HumAn IntellIgence

by Morgan Martin WRIT 1733: Honors Writing | Professor LP Picard

IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN TO THERAPY, YOU’RE PROBABLY familiar with the Notepad.

You know the one. It’s the big yellow legal pad your therapist whips out at your first meeting, the one that keeps you up at night as you wonder whether she wrote that you were beyond help, or that you were a terrible person, or that you might be a sociopath.1 Logically, the Notepad is nothing but a practical tool. Therapists see a lot of clients and need to remember certain key pieces of information about them to do their job. Still, there is something unsettling about watching someone write down their first impression of you before your eyes, particularly when you are at your lowest.

My parents forced me to start going to therapy the winter of my freshman year of high school. In a matter of weeks, I had gone from being a high-achieving student to failing multiple classes, and the most alarming part was that I did not seem to care enough to do anything about it. After a handful of therapy sessions, each of which I was dragged to kicking and screaming, my therapist put down the dreaded Notepad in the middle of one of our many discussions about my problems at school and posed the question that floored me.

“Can you describe yourself without using the word smart?”

1 Okay, this might just be me.

I had no answer. Suddenly I knew what the Notepad said. Straight-A student. Defines herself by intelligence. Has spent her entire life being told she is smart. Does not know anything else about herself.2

My subsequent quest to forge an identity for myself outside of being intelligent has left me with a host of questions. What is this trait that has defined me for so long? Who gets to decide what intelligence is? Who has it? Who does not? How do we—as a society—define, measure, and value intellect? Why do we pit people’s minds against one another? How do some aspects of a person’s identity influence whether others see them as smart?

Historically, there has been some debate over the best ways to measure human intelligence. Some believe it cannot be measured objectively at all. Perhaps the most widely held understanding of the quantification of intellect is that it can be done using an IQ test, grades, and standardized test scores.

One of the most common beliefs regarding the most accurate way to measure intelligence is called the psychometric approach, and it has evolved within the field of psychology over the course of nearly a century and a half. Put simply, the psychometric approach is the empirical measurement of skills associated with intelligence as a measure of a person’s intellect. The psychometric approach first manifested in anthropologist Sir Francis Galton’s psychophysical assessment developed in 1883, which assumed that physical skills were linked to intelligence. The idea was that people who fared better on physical assessments, such as grip strength or vision tests, were of higher intellect because their brains had a greater degree of control over their bodies. After Galton’s theory came the Binet-Simon intelligence scale created by French psychologists Alfred Binet3 and Theodore Simon in 1905. This was the precursor to the modern IQ test.

Interestingly, Binet and Simon themselves did not believe intelligence was measurable in the same way that we measure values like mass or temperature. The inventors of the first IQ test knew that intellectual qualities are not quantitative attributes.4 In Binet’s mind, intellectual attributes were heterogeneous orders, a type of measurement in which there are different variances between degrees.5 However, most modern-day psychometricians do not realize this distinction and regard intelligence tests as scientific instruments that yield accurate measurements.

Simon and Binet designed a “scale of intelligence” to test for attributes such as concentration and memory. Though originally intended to identify

2 Hermione Granger’s boggart—the representation of her worst earthly fear—turns into a professor telling her she’s failed all her exams. To this day, this quintessential genius character’s crippling fear of failure is one of the most relatable things I’ve ever read.

What is a smart kid if she is no longer smart?

3 It should be noted that while he was well versed in the field of philosophy, Alfred Binet had no formal training in psychology and worked for much of his life as an experimental psychologist, conducting his own research but being repeatedly barred from teaching positions. Perhaps Binet had more reason than most people realize to doubt the efficacy of his tests, which are so widely and blindly accepted today.

4 I choose to interpret this piece of information as rendering my SAT score completely meaningless.

5 Psychological researcher Joel Michell best summed this up in an article relating heterogeneous orders to the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. If you add one meter to a length of ten meters or to a thousand meters, the value of that one meter does not change.

Now let’s say you are trying to measure how humans experience heat. If you continually increase the amount of heat you apply to someone’s skin, the sensations they feel at each interval differ qualitatively because not only will the subject’s sensation of heat intensify, so will the pain they feel, so the sensation cannot be measured in a linear way. There are qualitative differences between degrees that are quantitatively the same. This, in essence, is a heterogeneous order.

those who needed academic assistance, this intelligence test was later commandeered by the eugenics movement to identify the “feeble-minded.” The test was designed in accordance with the idea of heterogeneous orders, as most intelligence tests are, even if they are not treated that way by professionals.6 The Simon-Binet scale was later modified by American psychologist Lewis Terman to create the Stanford-Binet IQ test, which to this day is among the most widely used intelligence tests. This test is designed to measure the subject’s memory, reasoning skills, and general knowledge, usually through recognition of patterns.

Binet is, in a way, the father of intelligence tests, but he admits the assessment he created has limitations. Aside from his doubts that intelligence could ever truly be quantitatively measured, Binet thought his test could only be accurate when applied to children with similar backgrounds. He believed intelligence to be unfixed.7 Evidence to support Binet’s supposition that IQ is unfixed comes in the form of the Flynn Effect, first discovered by psychologist and philosopher James Flynn. The Flynn Effect is the worldwide phenomenon of a fifteen-point average increase in IQ over generations beginning in at least 1930.8 Some possible explanations for this effect include increased schooling over the generations, better nutrition, less childhood disease, and greater parental attention to children. Flynn believes the phenomenon indicates a change in the way people in successive generations approach problem-solving. Regardless of the cause, the existence of the Flynn Effect merely reinforces Binet’s concerns about his own intelligence assessments. It calls into question the sanctity of a test created in the early 1900s as a measure of intelligence in a changing world and indicates that IQ is not fixed over generations or in populations and may not be fixed in individuals.

Today, there are three main types of intelligence tests. The most common type is a static test in which the subject solves a set of problems without feedback, and a score is determined based on the number of correctly answered questions. These include assessments like the IQ test or the SAT.9 They may be designed to measure fluid intelligence, which is the ability to solve problems using logic without the use of pre-existing knowledge, or crystallized intelligence, or the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge.

In a dynamic test, on the other hand, the subject learns as they go, receiving guided feedback when they answer a question incorrectly until they either get the correct answer or the examiner runs out of clues to give them. Dynamic tests are based on the idea that cognitive abilities are modifiable, and as such, they likely provide a greater measure of fluid intelligence than static tests. They measure not only an individual’s cemented ability, but their ability to develop a skill. Dynamic tests are not yet considered very reliable in the field of psychometrics as there are not many fully developed and formalized dynamic tests in use.

A third type of intelligence test is a typical performance test, which is similar to a personality test. These assessments are designed to measure a subject’s intellectual engagement and openness to learning rather than intellectual ability. During a typical performance test, a subject may be asked how strongly they agree that certain statements describe them, such as, “I enjoy work that requires conscientious, exacting skills.”

The psychometric approach certainly has some merit, and it is popular among professionals in the

6 For example, one might view a math test as an assessment of one’s math ability. However, there is qualitative variation between degrees of measurement on a math test, because as the test progresses, the questions do not vary uniformly. They vary both in difficulty and in the skills required to complete them. If you look at a person’s score on a particular math test, you can make inferences about their mathematical ability. A math test yields qualitative data about a person’s math skills rather than quantitative data.

This is what Binet envisioned for his intelligence tests. One could make inferences about someone’s mental abilities from the items on a test. In short, any attempt to assign a single number to someone’s intelligence is somewhat inaccurate.

7 Well then, I guess I’m writing this paper for a reason.

8 See Sternberg and Kaufman (2002) for more about the Flynn Effect.

9 The SAT and other standardized tests may be a more accurate measure of a student’s socioeconomic status and their school’s financial resources than of intelligence, since it costs money for students to take them and for schools to provide necessary prep.

fields of psychology and education. Its main flaws are that there is no way of knowing whether intelligence can be accurately quantified. Maybe a person’s intelligence can be measured based on their adherence to a set of fixed attributes, but it seems unlikely that it can be summarized by a number or set of numbers, given the concerns of psychologists like Binet and the changes in the implementation and results of intelligence assessments throughout history.

Think of the smartest book, movie, or TV characters you can. You may be picturing Hermione Granger,10 or perhaps Dexter Morgan, Lisa Simpson, Sherlock Holmes, Sheldon Cooper, Annabeth Chase, or Spock. While there are no hard-and-fast rules for the genius character archetype, all these characters tend to show their intelligence in similar ways. They are book smart. They are excellent problem-solvers, often using their intellect to bail other characters out of danger. They are often social pariahs, and they may use unnecessarily complex language to answer simple questions, prompting the other characters to demand they “say it in English.” The genius trope begs the question of whether intelligence is defined by someone’s ability to memorize facts out of books and use big words. Some researchers feel there is more to intelligence than the way it is commonly represented.

In his book Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice, psychologist Howard Gardner asked readers to expand their view of what constitutes intellect by pitching them a scenario: [S]uspend the usual judgement of what constitutes intelligence, and let your thoughts run freely over the capabilities of humans—perhaps those that would be picked out by the proverbial visitor from Mars.11 Your mind may turn to the brilliant chess player, the worldclass violinist, and the champion athlete…

Are the chess player, violinist, and athlete

‘intelligent’ in these pursuits? If they are, then why do our tests of ‘intelligence’ fail to identify them? […] In general, why does the contemporary construct ‘intelligence’ fail to take into account large areas of human endeavor? To answer these questions, Gardner proposed his theory of multiple intelligences in his 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. He separated human intelligence into eight different modalities: 1) visual-spatial, 2) linguistic-verbal, 3) logical-mathematical, 4) bodily-kinesthetic, 5) musical, 6) interpersonal, 7) intrapersonal, and 8) naturalistic12 in order to create a more

10 My nerdy, angry-feminist heart will always harbor a soft spot for Hermione, as will, I imagine, the heart of any girl who was ever picked on for being a bossy know-it-all.

11 The fact that Gardner feels the need to ask the reader to pretend they are not human in order to gain a more neutral view of human intelligence says something about the skewed nature of the societal messages surrounding it.

12 One website I found had this quiz the reader could take to find out their intelligence type. For anyone wondering, I got musical.

Maybe it’s a sign I’m pushing past my focus on academics and spending more time on things that make me happy, like singing and playing the guitar. Or maybe it’s because I indicated in one of the questions that I used to watch The Voice. I choose to believe the former.

holistic model of human intellect.

The theory has faced criticism from psychologists and educators who claim that the various “intelligences” merely represent personality traits or abilities, and there is little empirical research supporting it. It can be—and has been—argued that the abilities Gardner references above are simply talents or personality traits and that intelligence is an altogether separate concept. On the other hand, perhaps we only think of intelligence as being related to the subjects on which we are graded in school because that is what we have been taught.13 Society places a heavy emphasis on certain “modalities” of intelligence, as Gardner would put it, especially those that it considers to be most useful for the greatest number of people. Additionally, while Gardner’s claim that each type of intelligence engages a different region of the brain is not scientifically accurate, strictly speaking, the theory of multiple intelligences can be integrated into neuroscience.

In order to support the case for the plurality of intelligences, teacher and educational neuroscientist Carlo Cerruti attempted to adapt the theory of multiple intelligences for use in the field of educational neuroscience.14 He examined how certain areas of the brain are engaged when someone is asked to complete activities targeted at different types of intelligence. Integrating neuroscience into the psychological theory of multiple intelligences will hopefully provide educators with a more detailed understanding of how children’s minds work and how best to implement this theory in education.15 Over time, research like Cerruti’s will provide them with a solid foundation with which to practice multiple intelligences instruction.

The theory of multiple intelligences is also useful beyond the field of education; it can be applied to processes like second language acquisition, according to a study featured in the Journal of Language Teaching and Research. People who are learning their second language can apply the eight modalities to their studies and strengthen their language skills while also strengthening their different modes of intelligence. For example, students wishing to develop their musical intelligence within language learning could sing or listen to music in their second language, while students looking to

13 Also, if human beings had yet come up with a concrete answer to what intelligence is, I would not be writing this paper.

14 According to Cerruti, this is a relatively new field of study. Its basic purpose is to provide a body of research for the learning process that will help educators address students’ needs more effectively.

15 The use of the multiple intelligences theory is gaining traction in education, though every program has a different interpretation of how it can be applied to instruction. The Harvard Graduate School of Education, for example, encourages educators to implement multiple intelligences theory-based instruction. The idea behind this type of instruction is that students should not ask

“How smart am I?” but rather “How am I smart?”

implement interpersonal intelligence could join a club or meet with people who speak their second language. Regardless of whether the multiple intelligences theory is scientifically accurate or an effective representation of human intelligence, it can be applied to the acquisition of skills. The theory of multiple intelligences represents a more holistic and inclusive view of human intelligence than the psychometric approach.

When I was in second grade, I became deeply obsessed with the movie Akeelah and the Bee. Upon first viewing, I was thrilled to find that I could spell some of the words. I used to sit in the backseat of the car and beg my mother to throw words at me while we drove so that I could impress her with my linguistic skills. When the Scripps spelling bee circuit finally came to my school, I was the first student to sprint across the classroom and sign up for it. I would go on to best my classmates in school spelling bees and place in the top ten at regional competitions a few times over the next several years. Spelling became an obsession.

I chewed through list after list of words from different origins, memorized hundreds of Greek and Latin roots. For me, nothing rivaled the fluttering feeling of anticipation as I stepped up to the microphone and awaited my next word, or the thrill I received from slowly and deliberately rattling off the correct letters followed by the smattering of applause that scored my shaky walk back to my seat. For me, and for many other word-loving kids, the beauty of the bee went beyond the satisfying way the letters of a familiar word clicked together, the harsh rhythm of the tangled mess of consonants that characterizes German-derived words or the melodious string of vowels that composes French-derived ones. There is something magical about the pronouncer praising your skills with a simple, “That’s correct.”16

The National Spelling Bee has been held annually since 192517 (being cancelled only during WWII and in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic), steadily growing in coverage and popularity. A contest that first earned recognition with nine participants in 1925 now draws over five hundred spellers who earn their spots in the national bee by competing in school, regional, and statewide bees. Spelling bees have become something of a sport for elementary and middle school kids.18 An article in The Atlantic posits that part of the growing American obsession with spelling bees in popular culture is due to the fact that because English is a melting pot of linguistic rules borrowed from other languages, spelling in English requires a higher

level of skill and memory, a deeper understanding of different languages than spelling in any other tongue. In other words, we love to watch spelling bees because the words can really challenge the spellers. They can come out of nowhere, consist of a mesh of archaic languages, and take down even the most prepared, experienced speller on stage. And when the pronouncer throws out a word you know

16 The word that took me down in my final regional spelling bee was “hallux,” which is medical jargon for “big toe.” (Perhaps this prophesied my future as a biology major?) Alas, I never got a shot at the national bee, but my word habit is still deeply ingrained in me. Sometimes, when I’m anxious, I still spell some of my favorite words under my breath.

17 The 1925 bee organized by The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, in which eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser won with the word “gladiolus,” is commonly believed to have been the first-ever national spelling competition in the U.S. I myself believed this until I ran across this article. It turns out, the true first national spelling bee, was organized by the National Education Association in 1908. Victory was claimed by fourteen-year-old African American student Marie Bolden, whose victory has been swept under the rug.

18 The Scripps National Spelling Bee finals air annually on ESPN, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers each year. Furthermore, the spectacle of spelling bees has inspired movies like Akeelah and the Bee and the Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, and even a Broadway musical entitled The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

and you can piece together the letters along with the contestant as you watch from your living room, well—even better.

If you know some of the words in the bee, it means you have the mental capacity to spell in one of the most illogical hodge-podge languages in the world. The first year I tuned in to the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN, I was struck by how many of the spellers had the same or a similar story to my own about how they had been pulled into the world of competitive spelling. Almost all the kids interviewed said some variation of “I watched the bee on TV when I was younger, and I could spell some of the words, and I thought, I can do that.”

Spelling bees are hardly only contest in which Americans pit people’s intelligences against each other. The wildly popular general knowledge game show Jeopardy draws 10 million viewers each week. Interestingly, according to an Inside Hook article, the show improves dramatically in ratings and viewership when a contestant is on a winning streak. University of Toronto adjunct professor Shaun Young, who in 2012 edited the anthology Jeopardy! And Philosophy: What is Knowledge in the Form of a Question? attributes the show’s popularity to the fact that “it allows people to engage in a competition of intellect, from the comfort of their own home... And I think there’s probably an element in many of us, if not all of us, about testing our own level of knowledge and intellect.”19 Another aspect of the quiz show that contributes to its acclaim is the variation of its topics, ensuring that almost every contestant and viewer will be able to answer questions in some area.20 Common categories include things like history, literature, science, sports, and colleges and universities. Young adds that one of the show’s largest draws is that as viewers follow along with the questions, they can envision themselves on the show, answering them in person, going on winning streaks just like their favorite contestants. As Young points out, “many viewers undoubtedly at some point think ‘Well, you know, I could do that.’”

Journalist and USA Memory Championship winner Joshua Foer observed and entered yet another type of intelligence contest: memory competitions. In his TED Talk, Foer described how he became entrenched in the world of competitive memorizing after discovering that most of the contestants had average memories; rather than relying on innate skill, as most believe they do, they implement ages-old techniques to memorize random sequences of numbers, the order of shuffled decks of cards, and more. A study conducted by University College London confirmed that these seemingly prodigious mental athletes possess average intellect and that there is nothing anomalous about the structure of their brains. Much like Foer himself, the other contestants at the USA Memory Championship were drawn to the competition because they realized that anyone could succeed at it with time and practice.

Perhaps the popularity of things like bees, quiz shows, and memory contests owes not only to our desire to be blown away by others’ intelligence, but to our tendency to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the contestants. Put simply, we do not watch intelligence competitions to see that other people are smart; we watch because they make us feel like we could be as well.

In December 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act passed through Congress with bipartisan support. It was designed to reinforce governmental regulation of schools by allocating more resources to special education and increasing the amount of federally mandated standardized tests. Differences in test scores from the beginning and end of each school year could then be used to judge the effectiveness of teachers.21

This law included a special education provision

19 See Bleier (2019) for the full Inside Hook article, including quotes from Young.

20 My mom and I obsessively play the Jeopardy game on our Amazon Echo. The division of categories between us is something of an art form. We have taken to shushing one another aggressively when Alexa announces a category one of us knows they can answer.

Whether this game is actually good for our relationship remains to be seen.

21 For information on why this policy has been a failure, check out this episode of Last Week Tonight.

that required U.S. schools to identify gifted and talented students and tailor the curriculum to them. Both the metrics used to identify gifted students and the implementation of this accelerated curriculum vary between states and often between school districts as neither of these things are explained by federal laws. However they choose to do it, American schools are tasked with separating their students into two groups: the smart kids, and everyone else.

While it is crucial for intelligent students to be challenged by their curriculum,22 the metric used to identify these kids points to a definition of intelligence ingrained in the American education system that is disturbingly narrow and may lead schools to neglect to foster every student’s unique intellectual strengths. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, the process of identifying gifted and talented students in schools that implement accelerated programs23 generally begins with the nomination of a student by a teacher, administrator, or family member. The student completes assessments that may include an IQ test. The student’s academic record is considered, as are observations made by the student’s teachers, often taking the form of a checklist of attributes associated with gifted students. Modified curricula for gifted students vary dramatically between regions, but it is usually some version of the curriculum for a given grade level delivered at a faster pace, sometimes supplemented with extra activities to cement academic and life skills.24

Inevitably, using the same metric on every student in a given school will allow some to slip through the cracks and miss out on the educational support they need. Many schools rely on IQ tests to single out intelligent students, the merits of which are debated among psychologists as a true measure of intelligence. The identification of talented students is also partly based on academic record and observation of students in the classroom. However, not every type of intelligence shows up on a student’s report card.

When Howard Gardner first developed his theory of multiple intelligences in the early 1980s, his exigence grew out of a concern that society’s definition of intelligence, particularly within the American education system, was far too restrictive. Among the eight types of intelligence he believes human beings to have, he felt that only logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligence were prescribed any value by the school system.

22 According to a report made to Congress by the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1972, when above-average students are not sufficiently challenged by their curriculum, they are prone to feelings of boredom and frustration. Those that go unidentified may suffer social and psychological consequences and fail to excel in school.

23 A recent Purdue study revealed that while around 3 million students were identified as gifted during the 2015-16 school year, an estimated 2-3.6 million students who could be identified as gifted were not, either because they attended schools without access to identification resources or because they were members of an underrepresented group. Groups that are underrepresented in gifted programs all over the country are comprised overwhelmingly of students of color.

24 For example, in my hometown of Boulder, CO, gifted and talented students are identified based on cognitive assessments, academic record, and parent- and teacher-surveys. These students are then given an advanced learning plan that at many schools involves placement into separate accelerated classes that integrate standards from higher grade levels. They are also encouraged to participate in district-wide events such as the Boulder Valley spelling bee and the regional science fair.

Gardner observed that the result of this narrow view of intelligence within the education system was the emergence of what he dubbed “uniform schools,” which he described thusly in Multiple Intelligences:

A uniform school features a core curriculum—a set of facts everybody should know— and very few electives…In the uniform school, there are regular assessments, using paper and pencil instruments, of the IQ or SAT variety…

The uniform school picks out and is addressed to a certain kind of mind—we might call it provisionally the IQ or SAT mind. I sometimes call it the mind of the future law professor…[T]o the extent that your mind works differently—and not that many of us are cut out to be law professors—school is certainly not fair to you. In proposing his theory of multiple intelligences, Gardner envisioned an education system in which the facets of human intelligence that are often prescribed less value and attention were placed on the same level of importance as their more widely valued counterparts. In his mind, students were more likely to succeed if society expanded its definition of intelligence to acknowledge that feats of the young mind do not only take place when a student can read at a college level or complete a sheet of multiplication problems in under a minute. Labeling certain children as “gifted” by the metrics most commonly used may neglect students who are intelligent in other ways, such as those whose minds are built to understand and produce music or those with an exceptionally developed understanding of social cues and interpersonal relationships.25

As it turns out, Gardner might have been onto something regarding his concerns about education. A meta-analysis of educational practices in Turkey that concluded in 2016 found that the implementation of the multiple intelligences theory in the classroom had a positive effect on students’ academic achievement. Multiple intelligences theory translates into instruction mainly through activities designed to strengthen students’ different modalities of intelligence. Research into the use of this model in education reinforces a simple truth: when schools expand their view of what makes a person smart by placing importance on skills outside of logic and linguistics, students benefit.

Gardner’s exigence was echoed over twenty years later in a TED Talk in which educator Ken Robinson wondered whether schools are killing creativity in students by placing more weight on subjects widely considered to be the most useful to students later in life. Worried the education system was too focused on churning out one type of

25 Incidentally, a 2019 meta-analysis in the Psychological Bulletin found a positive correlation between students’ emotional intelligence and their academic achievement. Students whose schools devote resources to developing their social and emotional skills generally achieve good results academically.

scholar, Robinson mused, “If you were to visit education as an alien and say, ‘What’s public education for?’ I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output...the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors.”

While it could be argued that both these experts raised concerns about the education system a long time ago, I should point out that ten years after Ken Robinson gave this talk, I saw many of these same issues within the education system. National standardized testing for elementary and middle school students focuses exclusively on math and reading, and schools that do have arts programs do not devote nearly as much time or as many resources to the arts that they do to the supposedly more important areas of study. Moreover, the accomplishments that prompt adults to praise a student’s intellect are overwhelmingly grades, standardized test scores, and participation in additional academic activities—the things which also happen to comprise the bulk of college applications.

Standardized testing is a manifestation of both Gardner’s and Robinson’s fear that schools focus too heavily on creating a single type of student by applying the same narrow metric to everyone. Gardner voiced concerns about one of the most common standardized tests in the country, the SAT, in Multiple Intelligences, pointing out that “if you add up a person’s verbal and math scores, as is often done, you can rate him or her along a single intellectual dimension.” Standardized testing has been around for centuries, starting in Imperial China as a way to test applicants’ fitness to enter government positions and slowly invading the field of education over the intervening years. The introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core Standards Initiative in recent decades dramatically increased the number of federally mandated standardized tests. Although the Internet is rife with opinion pieces that passionately support or bash the efficacy of standardized tests as a measure of intelligence, there is very little empirical data supporting either side of the debate.26

However, an increasing number of colleges across the country27 are abandoning the SAT and ACT requirements that were once staples of the college admissions process, opting instead for test-optional policies that allow applicants to choose whether or not they submit their standardized test scores for consideration. Perhaps the surge of test-optional policies reflects a cultural shift away from “a narrow assessment of human potential,” as suggested by a 2018 study on the application and effects of test-optional policies at U.S. colleges. Indeed, though there is no way to know whether standardized tests really quantify a person’s intelligence, the study found they at least have little to no bearing on a student’s academic achievement, as students who did not submit their test scores to the universities evaluated had a higher enrollment rate and an equivalent—and sometimes slightly higher graduation rate than students who did submit their scores.28

Going by the definition of intelligence set by American schools—that is to say, skilled linguistically and/or mathematically, high IQ, high scores on standardized tests, excellence in a classroom setting, able to learn information above grade level at a fast pace—I am what most would consider an intelligent student. Granted, I am no prodigy, and odds are I am probably not “gifted” (my elementary

26 I spent a ridiculous amount of time scouring the web for research on whether standardized tests measure intelligence and was unable to find many sources that were not tinged with the author’s opinion. I imagine it’s hard to figure out whether standardized tests actually measure someone’s intelligence because, as I’ve discussed, it can be argued that humans do not have a way to measure intellect. Certainly, tests like the SAT test your short-term memory, your focus, and how quickly you can perform certain tasks—not to mention how long you can wait to drink water or go to the bathroom—but do these things really constitute intelligence? And should College Board be the entity we allow to answer that question?.

27 Including DU, which adopted the test-optional policy the year after I applied. Someone remind me why I spent so much time preparing for the SAT?!

28 According to the same study, test-optional schools also received significantly more applications from Black and Latinx students, and students from underrepresented racial minority groups were less likely to submit their scores than white applicants. By abandoning standardized testing as a measure of student potential, colleges not only expand their views of what indicates intelligence and potential in applicants, but they also take a step towards more even race representation in higher education.

school did not have an identification program), but I did not have too much trouble doing well in school because I conformed to the traditional standards of intelligence set by the education system. I did not slip through the cracks as I have learned, so many do. However, just as my label of “smart kid” has stuck with me, the experience of being barred from this label sticks with people too.

In his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, humanistic psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman recounts his experience of not being one of those lucky students singled out by the education system as gifted. He points out that “the concept of intelligence has no fixed meaning. Scientists, indeed all of us, interpret behaviors according to our own beliefs and experiences. Therefore, it is worth taking a very close look at the meaning we give the word ‘intelligence,’ for it has an immense impact on millions of lives.” Kaufman himself was relegated to special education due to his apparent lack of academic prowess. Yet today, as a successful adult, the label that was placed on him at a young age has stuck with him even as he disproved it. Kaufman’s sentiment is perhaps best summed up in a quote often (mis)attributed to Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”29 Perhaps when we expand our definition of intelligence in how we label and educate students, we will give them the chance to achieve. After all, if I am learning anything from this project, it is that no one really knows what intelligence is. I’m starting to think it does not mean anything at all.30

My relationship with intelligence will probably always be complicated. I have learned over the past several weeks that this thing I have allowed to define me, this thing I cling to as a means of making me worthwhile, is more complex than I originally thought. I do not believe a person’s intelligence can be measured by a number or a grade or summed up on an application. During my research I have stripped away the concrete nature of the measurements, perception, and value of intelligence, and doing so has made me realize that behind the immense concept of intelligence, there are only human beings. Like Dorothy pulling back the curtain and realizing the Wizard was just a man, I have realized that the IQ test was invented by a mere person a hundred years ago, that the standards for what makes a person gifted or average or challenged were created by people, that our view of whether we or others are intelligent can be influenced by all kinds of arbitrary factors.

I still don’t really have an answer to my therapist’s question. I am smart, and I can describe myself as smart even though I recognize that this means something different to everyone. I would answer that I am stubborn, curious, and passionate. I don’t give up on things. I love to sing and write and play with my dog. I bake when I am stressed. I am a woman in science. I am a terrible driver. I’m hearing impaired. Maybe I don’t have to have an answer to the “Who are you besides your brains?” question yet. Maybe I won’t ever need an answer. Maybe, like intelligence, who I am is unfixed.

29 This quote is so often misattributed to Einstein that History.com listed it in an article entitled, “Here Are 6 Things Albert Einstein Never Said.” The site may be fighting a losing battle on this front; at this point, pretty much anything can be turned into an

Einstein quote if it’s slapped over a dramatic black-and-white photo of him in a fancy font. But I digress.

30 Honest to god, this feature kept me up at night. I would literally lie in bed staring at the ceiling trying to figure out how best to get the point across. In truth, there are a million reasons why someone might struggle in school and a million ways in which a student can be smart. How does one sum up a systemic neglect of the broad meaning of intelligence and the lasting damage this can have on millions of students in one (albeit obscenely long) feature?

WORKS CITED

Baş, Gökhan. “The Effect of Multiple Intelligences Theory-Based Education on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, vol. 16, no. 6, 2016, p. 1833, doi:10.12738/estp.2016.6.0015. Bleier, Evan. “The Psychology Behind America’s Love Affair With ‘Jeopardy.’” InsideHook, 17 May 2019, www.insidehook.com/article/television/why-america-loves-jeopardy-james-holzhauer-ken-jennings-alex-trebek. Cerruti, Carlo. “Building a Functional Multiple Intelligences Theory to Advance Educational Neuroscience.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4, 2013, p. 950, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00950. Cherry, Kendra. “Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 17 July 2019, www. verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161. Cherry, Kendra. “How Alfred Binet Helped Develop Modern Intelligence Tests.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 9

Apr. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/alfred-binet-biography-2795503. “Do Standardized Tests Accurately Show Students’ Abilities?: Resilient Educator.” ResilientEducator.com, 5 May 2018, resilienteducator.com/news/do-standardized-test-show-an-accurate-view-of-students-abilities/. Flynn, James. “Why Our IQ Levels Are Higher Than Our Grandparents’.” TED, Mar. 2013, www.ted.com/talks/ james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents. Foer, Joshua. “Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do.” TED, Feb. 2012, www.ted.com/talks/ joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en#t-658684. Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 3rd ed., BasicBooks, 2011. Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. Basic Books, 2008. Gentry, Marcia, et al. “Gifted Education in the United States: Laws, Access, Equity, and Missingness Across the

Country by Locale, Title I School Status, and Race.” Purdue University College of Education, 2019, www.education.purdue.edu/geri/new-publications/gifted-education-in-the-united-states. “Identification.” Identification | National Association for Gifted Children, www.nagc.org/resources-publications/ gifted-education-practices/identification. MacCann, Carolyn, et al. “Emotional Intelligence Predicts Academic Performance: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological

Bulletin, vol. 146, no. 2, 2020, pp. 150–186. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/bul0000219.supp (Supplemental). Maftoon, Parviz, and Saeid Najafi Sarem. “The Realization of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MI) Theory in Second

Language Acquisition (SLA).” Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 3, no. 6, 2012, p. 1233, doi:10.4304/ jltr.3.6.1233-1241. Marland, S. P., and Office of Education, Washington, DC. Education of the Gifted and Talented - Volume 1: Report to the

Congress of the United States by the U. S. Commissioner of Education / S. P. Marland, Jr. 1971. Michell, Joel. “Alfred Binet and the Concept of Heterogeneous Orders.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 3, 2012, p. 261, doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261.

WORKS CITED (CONT’D)

Robinson, Ken. “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” TED, Feb. 2006, www.ted.com/talks/ sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?referrer=playlist-re_imagining_school#t-184110. Ross, Terrance F. “The Spelling-Bee Obsession.” The Atlantic, 29 May 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2015/05/the-spelling-bee-obsession/394394/. Shafer, Leah. “How We’re Smart.” Harvard Graduate School of Education, 12 Oct. 2017, www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ uk/17/10/how-smart. Silberman, Hannah. “A Brief History of Spelling Bees in America.” Fords Theatre, 2014, www.fords.org/blog/ post/a-brief-history-of-spelling-bees-in-america/. Sternberg, Robert J. and Kaufman, James C. “Iv. Psychometric Approaches to Intelligence.” Encyclopedia of the

Human Brain, V. S. Ramachandran, Elsevier Science & Technology, 1st edition, 2002. Credo Reference, 24

May 2020. http://du.idm.oclc.org/loginurl=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/esthumanbrain/ iv_psychometric_approaches_to_intelligence/0?institutionId=1676. Syverson, Steven T, et al. “Defining Access: How Test-Optional Works.” National Association for College Admission

Counseling, 2018, https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf. Venable, Nick. “The 10 Most Common Jeopardy! Categories.” CINEMABLEND, CINEMABLEND, 8 Oct. 2018, www.cinemablend.com/television/10-Most-Common-Jeopardy-Categories-70856.html.

Hyperlinked Information:

• pg. 21: https://search-credoreference-com.du.idm.oclc.org/content/entry/esthumanbrain/ iv_psychometric_approaches_to_intelligence/0 • pg. 21: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a • pg. 21 footnotes: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a • pg. 22: https://www.verywellmind.com/alfred-binet-biography-2795503 • pg. 22: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents#t-1670 • pg. 23 footnotes: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-kind-of-intelligence-do-you-have-3867398 • pg. 24: http://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161 • pg. 24: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867685/ • pg. 24: http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol03/06/23.pdf • pg. 25: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-spelling-bee-obsession/394394/ • pg. 25 footnotes: https://www.fords.org/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-spelling-bees-in-america/ • pg. 26: https://www.insidehook.com/article/television/why-america-loves-jeopardy-james-holzhauer-ken-jennings-alex-trebek • pg. 26: https://www.cinemablend.com/television/10-Most-Common-Jeopardy-Categories-70856.html • pg. 26: https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en#t-658684 • pg. 26 footnotes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k

Morgan Martin is a second-year student majoring in molecular biology with minors in chemistry, Spanish, and leadership studies. She wants to work in medicine. She is from Boulder, Colorado. In her free time, she likes to read, write, play the guitar, and spend time with her dog and cats.

This paper is part of a project for my freshman honors writing class, which tasked students with exploring a complex topic from many points of view. My experiences in the education system drove me to explore the concept of human intelligence. I wanted to find out how people measure and value intelligence and who gets to decide who has it and who does not. This project gave me a new, broadened perspective on intelligence.

image provided by author

Hyperlinked Information (cont’d):

• pg. 27: https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-education-practices/identification • pg. 27: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a • pg. 27 footnotes: https://www.valdosta.edu/colleges/education/human-services/document /marland-report.pdf • pg. 27 footnotes: https://www.education.purdue.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/access-denied-abstract.pdf • pg. 28: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1130745.pdf • pg. 28: https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?referrer=playlist-re_imagining_ school#t-184110. • pg. 28 footnotes: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000219.pdf • pg. 29: https://resilienteducator.com/news/do-standardized-test-show-an-accurate-view-of-students-abilities/ • pg. 29: https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf • pg. 30 footnotes: https://www.history.com/news/here-are-6-things-albert-einstein-never-said