Did the most intelligent kid in your class achieve success?

Did the most intelligent kid in your class achieve success?

I wonder how many of you have even thought about what happened to the student that got the highest grades in your graduating class. Why don’t you find out? It might be quite a surprise besides satisfying your curiosity.

The old assumptions that intelligence and creativity are 100% innate, that the learning process is strictly logical, objective and linear and basically dependent on how much time you spend in class are wrong. The technology of pen, paper and textbooks as the only means of learning is also wrong.

I admit that academic success involves for the most part independent study, focused work, concentration on the subject at hand and a lot of writing. But entrepreneurial success, which depends quite a bit on intelligence also, involves discernment, reason, understanding in many different disciplines such as interpersonal skills, working with others, how to handle constant distractions and interruptions, leadership, verbal skills and many others.

I totally agree with the words of professor Ken Robinson, an educational reformer and a lecturer in TED: “Employers are already saying that a degree is not enough, and that many graduates do not have the qualities they are looking for: the ability to communicate, work in teams, adapt to change, to innovate and be creative. This is not surprising…The traditional academic curriculum is not designed to promote creativity. Complaining that the system does not produce creative people is like complaining that a car doesn’t fly…it was never intended to. The stark message is that the answer to the future is not simply to increase the amount of education, but to educate people differently”

Even more dramatically, Professor Robert Sylwester expressed it this way: “Get rid of that damn machine model. It is wrong. The brain is a biological system, not a machine. Currently we are putting children with biologically shaped brains into machine-orientated schools. The two just don’t mix. We bog the school down in a curriculum that is not biologically feasible...

What these two eminent professors are telling us is that our system of education was engineered with a strong cultural bias toward left brain thinking. The left brain is the one that provides us with linear, sequential logic. Now, neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and those in the “mental” professions are discovering that the right hemisphere, the intuitive, “artistic” half of the brain, is maybe even more important to a human being’s success than the logical left side.

To be fair, in this article I have chosen to assert or support the right brain perspective only because right brain contributions in our society are minimalized because of the domination of left brain types.

I don’t want in any way suggest that the left brain or “realistic” perspective is not extremely valuable. The truth is that to be successful, it takes both left brain and right brain processes functioning most of the time.

I love the story when Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson went on a camping trip. After dinner and a few glasses of wine, they called it a night and went to sleep. A few hours later, Holmes awoke and poked his sleeping friend. “Watson, look up and tell me what you see”. Watson replied, “I see many stars sir”. “What does that tell you” asked left brained oriented Holmes. Right brained Watson reflected for a moment. “Well sir, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially millions of planets. Astrologically, I can see that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I infer that the time is approximately 3.15 am. Scientifically, I can see that the universe is magnificent, sir, and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you, Mr. Holmes?
Holmes was silent for a minute, and then replied. “Watson, you idiot. It tells me that someone has stolen our tent”.

Yes, left brain thinking definitely has its place.

I am also addressing this article to our educational and academic community. Puerto Rico and the United States are facing great challenges now and in the future. We will only be successful to deal with these challenges if we have well educated people ready to tackle them. Our present system of educating them is not effective.

A man I have always admired, Nobel Laureate Professor Richard Feynman, addressing the problems of educating our children strictly on left brain methodologies remarked, “Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. The students were all sitting there taking dictation and when the professor repeated the sentence, they checked it to make sure they wrote it down right. Then they wrote the next sentence, and on and on. So you see, they could pass the examinations, and “learn” all this stuff, and not know anything at all, except what they had memorized”.

This is what happened to me thirty years ago when I went to school and sadly it is exactly what is happening to our students today, in the Twenty First century.

With forty five million Hispanics in the US, maybe even more, those that speak English have a definite competitive advantage. All of us that have studied in Puerto Rico, especially those of us who attended college, went through school using English books.

We are in much better shape than millions of Hispanics that don’t speak any English at all. We have excellent private schools that although expensive, when students graduate, they qualify to study in the best universities in the United States. And yet, the fact that it is estimated that more than 50% of our population doesn’t speak English is absolutely shameful and anybody involved in our educational system should take responsibility and do something about it.