Intelligence?
This morning I was sitting in my easy chair, drinking a cup of coffee, going through the first e-mails of the day, and thinking about going to work. When an iChat window popped up from Becky. The chat read, “When did Wichita State University make the final four in basketball?” I quickly opened a new tab in Firefox and Googled, “Wichita State University in the final four.” I scanned the results of the search, clicked on a link to Wikipedia, and found that Wichita State had been in the final four in 1965. Now, I was aware that Wichita State had made the final four sometime in the 60s but I wasn’t exactly sure what year.
So I quickly typed into the chat window, “1965″ and hit the return key. I knew why Becky was asking, she watches the morning news, and each day they have a trivia question. Occasionally, she will call in and win a gift of some sort. Let’s face it, you can only use so many rain gauges 
. Anyway, a few minutes later, she returned my chat and tells me, “you’re so smart!” after they had given the answer.
So I wonder, was I smarter because I could use Google successfully, or would I have been smarter if I had known the answer from memory? This is an interesting educational question. You see in schools today we reward kids for what they remember. So if a student is blessed with an excellent memory they are considered to be “smarter” than other kids. But how much stuff can you remember and recall on the spot? Should we, on the other hand, reward kids who know how to use tools wisely and find the information they need, when they need it, and then use it?
I’ve yet to see the standardized test that measures how well students can use 21st-century tools. What I have seen are the test scores on standardized tests, by school building, and by school district, in the local newspaper. And in fact I could see comparisons of standardized test scores in newspapers all across the state in country. I guess they must think that intelligence is measured by how much you can remember.
Each semester I have the pleasure of speaking to students in the College of Education at the University of Kansas. Most of them are freshmen and one year removed from high school. So I always ask them, “did you take a test in high school last year that you got an “A” on? But if you took the test today, you couldn’t pass it.” Every hand in the room goes up. That’s almost 200 students each semester who in essence are telling me they were considered to be smart because they can remember something for one specific day, and one specific test.
I then always asked them, “Then did you really learn that stuff? If you can’t remember it, and you can’t use it in a different context, did learning really occur?” After I’ve asked these questions I always let them visit with each other and talk about their responses to my questions. The room is always a buzz with excited conversation.
So I guess my point is, I believe I was a lot smarter for being able to use Google to find the answer to the question than if I just remembered the answer to the question. What do you think? Which do you think represents being smarter? I look forward to your comments.
