'Successful people don't always have a high IQ score'

Albert Einstein‘s had said, “there are two things infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, I am not sure of the former”; of the latter, there surely is enough evidence.

News about a couple looking for a sperm donor from an IIT graduate for their future progeny is a recent addition to the repertoire of this human frailty — a classic case of parental ambition of a superlative degree. Parents have always wanted the best for their children but for many of today’s parents that perhaps is not enough, they want the best children — the smartest, the brightest, and the cutest. While we are still grappling with the sex selection scourge in the unborn, we might well be entering into a time of IQ, aptitude, personality and temperament selection in our pursuit of begetting ‘designer babies.’ 

The issue raises several pertinent concerns. Despite tremendous advances made in scientific research and a better understanding of genetic influence on various aspects of life today, predictability is not as high as we would like it to be; genes can play truant. Instances abound where upper IQ parents, with highly successful careers have had below average or even mentally retarded children. If such an eventuality occurs in the case of this enterprising couple, it is worth speculating as to what their next course of action would be. Will they abandon the child or will they then search for another scientific intervention? 

While this couple might become a trail blazer of sorts and be emulated by many who will not stop short of playing God, a few facts about this attribute called ‘intelligence’ needs to be dwelt upon. Firstly to equate academic credentials, that too in a certain field, achieved from prestigious institutes to merely inherited intelligence is to severely undermine the concerted, focused efforts that are put forth by a student. Very often, highly coveted qualification is the sum total of well planned aspirations, sound guidance and intensive preparations. Individual labour certainly reigns higher than genes.

 It also undermines other fields of study. Crediting persons deft in science, mathematics and occasionally in languages alone, with intelligence is a habitual fallacy, which has given rise to a myopic view to the entire field of education. It has also created false gradation of different subjects and resulted in unsavory competition. Students very often with parental pressure opt for science at the plus two levels although they have a natural flair for social science or law for instance, only to avoid being branded as less intelligent by their peers, teachers and society at large.

Value beyond its actual worth

Of all the human traits somehow intelligence has gained a prestige value far beyond its actual worth. Assessment and quantifying of intelligence which has had a chequered history beginning at the turn of the 20th century, around the time of World War I, succeeded in branding and segregating individuals based on their Intelligence test scores or IQ.

Years later, despite many revisions and researches, even today intelligence tests that are widely used as a selection tool for educational institutions, occupations, and for clinical purposes as well, largely measure, mathematical, language and visio-spatial capabilities. They leave out a wide range of abilities that form essential components of intellectual behavior necessary for living as well as making a living.

Going by definition of intelligence as the ‘ability to learn and adapt to situations,’ one requires certain core abilities in greater measure to successfully adapt to life that are not assessed by intelligence tests. In fact, most successful people whom we laud have been found to possess an average IQ score, but what they have in abundance is the ability to understand, adapt and veer through a maze of human relationships and a range of emotions. They have people with them, they are gritty, motivated, and they are emotionally stable. In other words they are socially and emotionally intelligent.

 Besides, the idea of ‘multiple intelligence,’ propounded by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist has gained a lot of ground today. He talks about eight different kinds of adaptive or intelligent behaviour, ability for mathematical analysis and good language usage are just two kinds. People such as Sachin Tendulkar and A R Rehman are as intelligent as perhaps a nuclear scientist but of a different kind. Human capabilities are enormously wide and varied and so are their usages in life; to regard only a narrow few and slot them as superior, have already done a lot of disservice to a large section of populace and robbed the world of useful human resources.

In the field of education such skewed thinking is much more prevalent resulting in serious consequences of labeling ‘differently intelligent’ children as dull and defiant, thereby crippling their self esteem for life. Misinformed and overambitious parents only add to the woes.

 Each child is unique; to recognise, accept and nurture their naturally gifted skills, instead of trying to relive their own ambitions becomes the prime duty of parents. Mother Teresa said praying, “Lord! Give me the grace to change what can be changed, to accept what cannot be changed and the wisdom to know the difference.”

(The author is a psychologist and an educationist)