intelligence

does anyone else feel this because i feel like out of anyone i know that i'm the dumbest and that i can never be as smart as everyone else and that i won't be able to get a good career because of this. i just feel like my IQ doesn't measure up to others.

  • i feel like out of anyone i know that i'm the dumbest and that i can never be as smart as everyone else

    Totally agree with that, I’m too very high functioning. I struggle to retain information unless it really interests me and generally don’t feel intelligent at all. Don’t think I come across as intelligent either as I struggle to find the right words when I’m in a conversation (that can be hard work depending upon who the person is)

    Don’t be so hard on yourself and know that you will have strengths. You just need to find them. I’m not there yet either. 

  • You make a good point when tests are biased towards people from a particular nationality, (adult) age group, or other background.

    A similar phenomenon happens in the style of education. I'm vaguely aware of a KS3 level maths course from the past that was very successful with white English kids from lower class and less well off backgrounds, and black Jamaican kids, but it fell down badly with south Asian kids.

  • Reminds me of a quiz I took part in at school when I was about 10. I was one of the most successful pupils in the class when it came to tests, exams etc. but I was one of the least successful in the quiz. The reason? A lot of the questions were on Scottish general knowledge, which was fair enough given I was going to school in Glasgow at the time, but I had lived in England until the age of 7.

  • Wow did I write that badly .Should have said "My house master said" instead of "He said". Apologies for the confusion.

  • That was interesting, I thought I’d done ok until I saw other people’s results. I got 116! I wouldn’t mind doing the Mensa test. I remember doing a similar test and I came out just above average on that as well. I’m happy with that but I would be interested to see how I come out on the Mensa test, give what Matt says. 

  • Yes, I would agree to that Arran. Intelligence is multidimensional, like we are. 

  • I’ve got 4 out of the 9, so does that mean I’m nearly half intelligent? 

  • Hah. Think I was put in for one of those scholarship exams and flunked the creative writing as I didn't want to go anyway.

    Cultural bias has long been a criticism of IQ tests. I also recently looked at the 'faux pas' test by Baron-Cohen and another. I though they should really have called it the MCQ or 'how middle-class are you?'  If two bottles of prosecco and and avocado cost...

  • Impressions I get is that there was more emphasis on working hard rather than learning or muddling along rather than high intelligence.

    I was at primary school in the 1970s, and my impression here is the reverse, that nowadays everyone is rewarded for effort and there is less concern with simple progress in reading and arithmetic. Everyone has a place in a comprehensive too. I hope the one-dimensional view of IQ has largely receded.

    The curriculum was generally narrower as not every school taught science, computers, non-Christian religions, or even music with instruments.

    That probably is fair. There were a sample of activities based on teachers' interests, and this was before a national curriculum or mainstream microcomputers. I don't think it was a bad education, but labelling someone identified different as 'high IQ' or 'low IQ' or sometimes alternating between both didn't help.

  • A posh fee paying school had an entrance exam consisting of three papers - English, maths, and general knowledge. There was nothing particularly special about the English and maths papers but the general knowledge paper was interesting because it contained many questions that could only be correctly answered by kids who came from culturally upper middle class backgrounds unless by chance they happened to know the answers. There were even questions relating to opera and varieties of wine.

  • It's interesting that different ethnic groups in Britain have collective strengths and weaknesses when it comes to GCSE grades and subjects taken. South Asians collectively show strength in science and maths but rarely do they take music for GCSE and the few who do tend to come from affluent professional families.

  • I have wondered if certain tests favour or disfavour people from different backgrounds.

    I remember a job interview aptitude test where the maths paper was based around economics scenarios like retail price indices. A person with a foundation level GCSE in maths who had studied economics would almost certainly have done better than a person with an A Level in maths who had never studied economics before.

    The maths was quite easy, mostly just KS2, but the scenarios obfuscated the questions.

  • I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the difference between intelligence and knowing (useless?) facts. This is a recurring subject in both the AS and home education communities. There are a lot of kids out there who are thought of as being clever or intelligent, or referred to as walking encyclopedias, but in reality they just know mountains of facts. More often than not they aren't really much more intelligent than average kids their own age and don't always get good GCSE grades. The internet has devalued such people in the real world because a Google search has reduced the benefits in knowing facts.

  • Some of them were culture specific I had some jumbled letters with a what word does this make Place/City/Country/Ocean and the answer was Pacific. There were also several badly worded questions as, possibly translated or written by someone who didn't have English as a first language. One of the things is that in IQ test language should always be clear and precise as badly worded questions become guesswork not IQ tests.

  • Me too, I can do some of them but I can feel my whole body tingling for want of a better word, just looking at numerical problems. It was ever thus and I was reasonable at maths in school.

  • I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned.

    Never confuse intelligence with familiarity.

    My local AS support group has an article about this making reference to a university professor and a sweet old lady who left school at the age of 14 using buses.

  • When I took my Mensa test at age 23, I was an academic nonce.  I'd failed everything at school.  My mind was still pretty much that of a child.  I knew absolutely nothing outside of my own small world.  I didn't know anything about grammar, algebra, trigonometry, geometry.  I didn't know how to use a slide rule, or even a pocket calculator.  I knew hardly any history.  The sciences were all lost on me.  In many cases, that's still pretty much how it is.  I know what a noun, a verb and an adjective is.  I'm pretty good at mental arithmetic.  I can add, subtract and divide.  I know that pi is 3.14159265 etc.  I know that the Norman conquest was in 1066.  I know the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism.  But there isn't much else.  At 58, my mind is still pretty much a scrapbook.  I know lots about little, and little about lots.  When I took that test, though, I scored 148... and I know that some of the questions would have been easier for me if I'd had something more than basic mathematical, grammatical and scientific knowledge.  So I often wonder just how 'neutral' they really are.

  • Hate numerical challenges!

  • I got 137 too, but the wording was odd on some and I found myself arguing with the questions, also agree that they were very culture specific :•\

  • My local vicar wrote to my house master about it . He said some boys are the type to be bullied as though that justified it.

    Something to bear in mind is that the posh public schools like Eton and Repton are C of E.

    A home educating parent I used to know told me about her life in a C of E secondary school and how church officials seemed to have no problems with bullying by students or injustices dished out by staff and prefects. They definitely favoured a Darwinistic social hierarchy and a might is right environment. She wondered if such attitudes had their origins centuries ago following the Protestant reformation as a result of ideologies of Calvin or even Luther himself.