Intelligence Quotas? More Like Impressive Quirks

                I found this article on Popular Science blog and it actually was not the content that interested me this time, but actually the title for the article, which was “Goats Found to Be Smarter than Previously Believed”. You can read the article, but the main point is that goats were being tested with a puzzle and if the puzzle was solved they would obtain a piece of fruit, or their prize. Two of the goats were disqualified from this “intelligence test” because instead of using the puzzle to open the lock, these just chose to gnaw their way through the box and so were dismissed. It is kind of funny that a goat’s intelligence is being measured through how well they can adjust to human standards and orders given out by humans. In a way, it kind of reminds us of school.

       Bill Gates once said, “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.” This shows that the “intelligence” of a person should not be measured in how well he or she can regurgitate information or follow orders, just like the intelligence of these animals were measured in. As Bill Gates shows, an obviously successful businessman, that the scores that appear on a report card do not define us as human beings, because many of us are more than just statistics and numbers. Of course, unless you are part of the secret robot revolution, which I am totally not, hahaha… In all seriousness though, my parents have always expected the best out of me, and by best I do not mean that they wanted me to try my best, but they wanted me to be the best or at least close to it. This kind of discouraged me from doing a lot of stuff, because I knew I would never get up to their expectations, so I quit a lot of activities that I kind of wish I did not.

                Of course, I complain about these things all the time, but honestly, I have no good alternative or at least a reasonable one that is not extremely radical. It is pretty difficult to judge a person based on what they put forth because many people do put up different fronts when they are with a different person, but next time a terrible grade comes out, if you care about grades, or called stupid, just remember that there are different types of intelligence. As Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing it is stupid.