Many years back - mid-'70s - , when I was doing my post grad in Psychology from Lucknow Univ, there were 2 of us males (out of a class of 32!.. my elder brother classified us as "protected minority" :0)
We were supposed to administer experiments/ questionnaires on unwarying folks - and then write and submit a report on that to get our marks
So, I administered a so-called "culture-free" IQ test to my other male classmate (a topper from Gorakhpuur Univ from the village), which had no requirments for knowing the language/ english... but just matching patterns..
and he scored below 5%-percentile!!..
.. we pulled his leg, naturally... and he smiled sheepishly
We came out of the Psy dept. and it was a hot summer afternoon, with a blazing 40C+ sun and a cloudless sky in April-May
My friend made one more statement to be ridiculed; he said, smelling around: "it should rain tonight"
We laughed and made fun of him - threw the below-5% percentile IQ on him...
But, that night it rained heavily... we even had a hailstorm of sorts...
To me, that was one learning experience, viz:
- that we measure the intelligence/ IQ/ capabilities on very narrow bandwidth..
- that we have 5 senses from which we 'learn', and the so called 'education' caters to only two of them, "eyes" and "ears"...
perhaps the other 3 senses - touch, smell, taste - hold much more wisdom...
We were supposed to administer experiments/ questionnaires on unwarying folks - and then write and submit a report on that to get our marks
So, I administered a so-called "culture-free" IQ test to my other male classmate (a topper from Gorakhpuur Univ from the village), which had no requirments for knowing the language/ english... but just matching patterns..
and he scored below 5%-percentile!!..
.. we pulled his leg, naturally... and he smiled sheepishly
We came out of the Psy dept. and it was a hot summer afternoon, with a blazing 40C+ sun and a cloudless sky in April-May
My friend made one more statement to be ridiculed; he said, smelling around: "it should rain tonight"
We laughed and made fun of him - threw the below-5% percentile IQ on him...
But, that night it rained heavily... we even had a hailstorm of sorts...
To me, that was one learning experience, viz:
- that we measure the intelligence/ IQ/ capabilities on very narrow bandwidth..
- that we have 5 senses from which we 'learn', and the so called 'education' caters to only two of them, "eyes" and "ears"...
perhaps the other 3 senses - touch, smell, taste - hold much more wisdom...
2 comments:
tangentially related to this ... when you see dragon flies, be sure it will rain!
True. Insightful. My dog, for instance, can smell / hear me get home from 5 minutes away - with no aspersions cast on my hygiene habits. :) But it does make me wonder when we let our other senses/ instincts just die out.
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