Peanutter said 8 years ago:

I’m 15 and a sophomore in high school and I have been really thinking about this for a while. I feel that grades don’t resemble a person’s actual intellect and ability. As there are many geniuses throughout history who have failed tests and some even dropped out of high school.

In fact, isn’t school and college in general just pure memorization? Most of the subjects I study for ends up being discarded in my mind at the end of the year. The only ones that I remember are the subjects that interest me.

Also aren’t there different types of smarts? For example, someone may not be able to do chemistry yet be an excellent programmer. Or be horrid at Trigonometry, but is the greatest, “Relationship Guru,” on the planet?

What do you guys think about this?

OpenTalk said 8 years ago:

Yes and no? The thing I don’t think a lot of high school students understand is that what you’re learning, though not always useful in the real world, is supposed to develop your complex problem solving abilities and your context of the real world.

Life has a lot of complex problems. How will you drive your car out of an ice patch? Where do you not want to go on vacation due to political turbulence? How much in taxes will you have to contribute based on your earnings that year? Should you buy a house with your credit rating?

Whether you think so or not, high school, college, and university help turn you into someone who can actually handle life. It isn’t about memorizing and theorizing. It’s about becoming a well-rounded, thoughtful member of society.

Nazgul said 8 years ago:

The thing is, “intelligence” is something that can truly never be measured. We all know that resourceful friend who has the solution to every problem, yet at the same time that friend (at least mine) fails at maths. Some people tend to understand science much better than others, while others are able to under human nature. In my case, I get good grades mainly because of my memory and guessing ability. This guessing ability is called “Tukka” in my native Urdu, and this is probably a branch of intelligence which allows me to successfully guess my way through entire tests, and this is probably why I am not so good at Maths as most of the time I am trying to *figure* out the formulas rather than *remembering* them. All in all, everyone perhaps excels in a different branches of intelligence. A engineer would not be better at a presentation than a con artist, and a con artist would not be better than the engineer in maths. I think college might the closest we can get to determining a person’s intelligence, although it *is* true that ‘intelligent’ people can have a tendency to get good grades by exploiting the places they excel at, and ‘intelligent’ people in the traditional sense might be forgetful, but they are able to ‘focus’ better at information.

OpenTalk said 8 years ago:

Well, that’s one way of problem solving but it would also highlight a question of morality. The school system is intended to develop minds that would rather earnestly take examinations than copy others.

Peanutter said 8 years ago:

@OpenTalk

I mean I have seen some very sly stuff that I couldn’t have come up myself. For example, my friend told me a story that he cheated by writing notes on the inside wrapper of his water bottle. Another story was that a girl had answers to an upcoming multiple choice test. So she made a necklace of 4-colored beads, A=red, B=blue and so on. That takes creativity and ingenuity.

I don’t believe it’s immoral to cheat on high school tests, and I would even say some college exams. I’m pretty sure if a student was never interested in doing logarithmic functions, chemical equations, etc. I don’t think he/she will suddenly want to go into a field where it requires you to do that. That’s the problem with the education system (in America), they force you to take subjects you’re not interested in, that are irrelevant. What do you hear when people say what job you should have? Do something that interests you and makes you happy.

Allysa said 7 years, 12 months ago:

Albert Einstien once said “Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life feeling stupid.” I do pretty good in school because I memorize things easily but all that’s ever done is make my parents raise their expectations, some occasional cash from my grandpa, and most of the class wanting to use my worksheet when I get done with it.

Catie said 7 years, 11 months ago:

I don’t think grades really determine how smart you are. There’s a bunch of different ways to be “smart”. Also, some of the smartest people did bad in school.

Weeb Trash said 7 years, 10 months ago:

Grades do not equal intelligence. I nearly flunked out of high school, but I have an IQ of 179, and I’m probably the only person with a genius IQ I went to high school with. Go figure.