Preface: It's been a long time, and truthfully, I figured I'd take a few minutes to put out this quick thought. And though I've held this idea for years, I thought it useful to put it down on 'paper',
The word 'smart' is thrown around quite a lot. Smart: Acute, adept, brainy, bright, brilliant, clever, genius, good, intelligent, keen, on the ball, sharp, shrewd, whiz, wise. What really does it mean?
An analogy will help elucidate where I'm coming from. Think of a person's degree of smartness as a tools as a function of how they solve/fix problems. The more tools you have in the toolbox, the better your chances that when you encounter life's many challenges, you will have the correct or best-fit solution. But, one must know how to use the tools. It's great if a person has a shed filled with thousands of high tech gadgets, but if a person does not know how to use them, it contains little relevance to life. You might have a person with few tools, but know hows to use those tools really well that the particular person is more able to solve issues.
We often hear "street-smarts versus book-smarts". Street-smarts is knowing how to use the tools and book-smarts is the number of tools a person has.
Someone may know a lot of let us say, biology, but how is that person applying the knowledge to every day life? When a person has a problem, how effectively can s/he utilize there storehouse of knowledge?
Sadly, is learning often compartmentalized into classic institutional educational systems. That is to say that when a person learns a particular fact that goes into the 'need to know for school' bins in a person's mind, rather than 'important to know because either A) it may one day come in handy B) it develops new connections in the brain that leads to creativity and new ideas C) Any other particular reason the person may have at the moment. But if a person cannot come up with a reason except that which is for the strict purpose of a GPA or grad school, one must reevaluate their position in the institution.
Benjamin Franklin was a pioneer of pragmatism - knowledge was useful insofar as it produced practical gains in society. What tends to occur in modern day institutions is we don't see the relevance in the material for practical purposes and it gets stored away and we end up with a shed full of tools. These stowed-away tools is coupled with not only a lack of understanding of how to use the tools, but with no realization that it should be used.
Final point, and my most important: Smartness is acquired. Yes, some people may seem to be at a disadvantage, but what it comes down to is the acquiring of ideas with the experiences of an open-minded approach to life that teaches you how to use them. There is no one 'smart gene'. So though a particular person may not have a so called genetic-disposition to the acquiring of history facts, if the person has the allows his/herself to make connections, if the person dedicates his/herself to rigorous study (for a purpose!) then a seemingly genetic handicap can be overcome. Look no further than 5'3" basketball star Muggsy Bogues.
Once one truly works on those pathways in the brains, the remarkable plasticity in the brain will show that there's no real genetic disposition to being smart, and if there is, it's irrelevant. What's important is what you do with it in life.
Life is too short to let it go by without giving back to world. It is our duty as human beings on this earth to make the most of our brains, and through that the most of life, regardless of the particular code our DNA may have.
