Defining intelligence
I am continuously amazed at our tendency to associate intelligence with knowledge more than curiosity. When I coach execs and teams who are stuck, their cup is full of knowledge with little room for much new. In every case, they get unstuck with new questions. If educational institutions today reinvented themselves, possibly people could only “graduate” when they could demonstrate as many questions as they have answers.
Then we can take the next step and consider a good leader, doctor, teacher, nurse, architect, accountant, or engineer as one whose capacity for inquiry is as sharp as their capacity for memory.
April 7th, 2005 15:07
Didn’t Einstein himself say that imagination is more important than knowledge? And the education reformer John Holt observed that intelligence is not demonstrated by how much knowledge we have, but how we behave when we have no knowledge about a given situation.
April 7th, 2005 15:22
Wow … these are great references; thanks. Having a boatload of unknowns *is* so often the norm, making whining, blaming, and speechgiving far less valuable and important than honoring the power of the unknowns as questions.
April 8th, 2005 09:36
Bravo, Jack! While this is a signature theme for you, something about the way you captured it in this post is a fresh invitation to see the world through a different lens.
April 13th, 2005 10:28
Thanks Jack.
Counter-intuitive experiment: “The more you know the more there is to know” morphing into the experiment: the more you know the, more mystery ! supposing the imperative: the more you know the more unknowing there is to know.