Intelligence is often thought of as something absolute, something that can be measured through tests. Isaac Asimov talks about the abstract concept of intelligence. Who decides what intelligence means? Who gets to decide who is smart? The people in academia who get educated might think that anyone who meets their standards through the tests is smart and someone who cannot pass the IQ tests is dumb, but who is to say that?
Isaac Asimov’s essay though very short, is thought provoking. We live in a world where the education systems decide our smartness. The IQ tests set by a bunch of people in the academia are used to label people as smart or dumb. That is how we are divided into the smart and dumb category. Our test results in courses like mathematics, logic, science are considered a fair determiner of how smart we are. Moreover, the standardized tests with repetitive questions can accurately judge our intelligence. Or can they? That is the question!
Asimov describes his wide-ranging experiences in life where he felt that people like an auto repair man are smart, maybe not academically, but in what they do. Their expertise is unparalleled by other book smart people. Even the educated people have to take help from auto repair men, plumber, and carpenter.
Our Education System
Society has established its criteria of smart and the kind of people who fall into this category. What exactly is the definition of intelligence? The dictionary definition of intelligence is, “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.”
However, most people’s definition of intelligence today is the ability to answer mathematical questions, or the ability to get questions on an IQ test right. Why is this ability only inclusive of the academic tests? The test makers in academia are probably at the top of the ladder who make these tests and put people under the umbrella of smart if they get good scores on these tests. This, however, is not the correct way to think about intelligence. People develop their own strengths in life; one person may be strong in a field, the other person may lack strength in that field. Intelligence develops from the brought up and environment a child has, along with the child’s inclination for something. Hence, intelligence varies; some people may excel in studies, but not in everyday life problems. One person’s smart can be different from another person’s smart. It does not in any way mean that one of them is dumb. I have often thought about society’s perceptions about smartness and I have felt that society does injustice to a large number of people who might be smart, but who just fall short of society’s set standards of smartness. Intelligence is a wide encompassing topic that needs to be given a thought. Who gets to decide who is smart? Can the street smart people decide what intelligence is and call the book educated people dumb?
Writing It Out 
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