Redefining "Smart"

Foreword:  I wrote this blog post as I was motivated by the work of a teacher in Florida, Steve McCrea.  His blog is at http://theindependenteducator.blogspot.com/.  He inspired me to write something about the right's and wrong's of education, and being the randomly motivated student I am, I wrote what was below at 3 in the morning.  I assumed that Steve would read it and nod and smile and that was that; maybe he'd even feature it on his blog.  What ended up happening was that the very same day, he gave what I wrote for his students to read.  I was astounded that my work would go that far and from that I felt all warm and fuzzy.  :)  So thank you, Steve, for sharing this with your students.  It makes me glad that I can make even a smidget of a difference outside of my local community.  I feel that if I can keep this blog up, it's going to be the beginning of changing peoples' lives.  Yes, I am quite the optimist.

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I must admit: I am not smart.

For some reason, I’ve gained the odd reputation of being smart, which is not at all true.  Before you strike me down as being modest, I ask that you hear my side first.

What others mean when they are labeling me as “smart” is “academically successful.”  Meaning, I do well in class and have relatively high grades.

Sure, this can mean that I am a diligent worker or a natural at every subject.  But with this version of “smart,” I could be a master of memorization and information regurgitation while not understanding the meaning behind concepts.  I could cheat and copy answers without getting caught, and I could abuse drugs to boost my mental performance.  All of these things would lead to me giving the right answers, doing well in class, and having relatively high grades.  Therefore, if I do these things and get these results, I am smart.

Clearly this is the wrong mentality to have as a student—that to be smart, you have to be academically successful.  You have to get the right results.  This could (and has) led to students resorting to the things I previously mentioned, or giving up altogether if they can’t tell you the answers.

Yet, the student is not mainly at fault.  It is us as a society who is the culprit.  The business world has ingrained a sense of result-based reward and punishment into our lives.  This makes sense in their environment, when everybody has already learned how to work the tools needed. 

But does it make sense for us to expect success at the start?  If we give young children fishing rods, show a seasoned fisherman reeling in fish by the bucket load, and help the children learn how to hold the fishing rod, do you expect them to catch half a bucket on the first try?  the second?  the sixteenth?  Some of them will get it on the first try.  It will take a week, a month, a lifetime for others to catch half a bucket of fish.  And some will simply give up after not catching any fish at all.  Are the ones who caught the first fish smart?  What about the ones who didn’t catch any at all?

We need to redefine what it means to be “smart.”  A famous quote from Albert Einstein reads, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  We are judging our students on how well they climb trees, when some are birds, others are monkeys, others are fish.

Why am I not smart, then?

Pull me aside and ask me how to find the lateral area of a cone.  Ask me why Shay’s Rebellion happened, how to balance an oxidation equation, how lightning is formed, the stages of cell replication.  I know that I have learned all of that, but I couldn’t give you answers.  I do not remember the answers.

I do know, however, how to get to the answer.  If I could get the surface area of the cone and subtract the area of the base, I might get the lateral area.  If I could get a summary of what happened during Shay’s Rebellion, I would be able to explain the causes behind it.  You get the point.

It isn’t efficient to do this though; it’s basically reinventing the wheel over and over.  I am bad at memorization (except strangely with foreign language), so even if I have all the tools I need to work, the ones I need disappear regardless of how strongly I fortify my toolbox.  I have been taught the values of cosine and sine on a unit circle since 8^th grade, but I still cannot remember them off the top of my head.  I only remember how to get there: find the quadrant, see if the value is short, long, or in the middle.  And at times I don’t remember which value is higher, ½ or √3/2.  What I’ve done is practiced how to get there, so I can find the answers quickly enough to catch up to the others who have memorized it.

In the end, the others are “smarter.”  They will do better at their jobs.  They will be faster in their calculations, decisions, everything.  And they deserve to have higher positions because they do their work well, and do it quickly.

But to me, it is more important to quickly be able to find the answer than to quickly memorize it.  Past school, rarely will you have people sitting down and guiding you on how to do things.  It is not because they don’t care (that could also be the case, but I digress), but because they won’t know how.  Someday we will not only be teachers for others, but for ourselves.  At that time there will be nothing to memorize, because it hasn’t been found yet.  You yourself have to get there.

And in getting there, you’ll make mistakes.  You won’t get the right answer.  In doing so, you can’t just stop and quit.  You can’t gloss over them and pretend they don’t exist.  You have to fix them to move forward; you have to adapt yourself to not make that mistake again. 

It is realizing this and learning how to adapt, I feel, which makes people smart.  Being able to get the answers on your own and being mature enough to accept and fix the mistakes made.  From these, you can face any problem.  Nobody is born smart or is naturally smart; they may be more receptive to learning certain skills, but that doesn’t mean they are just magically smart.  We all have to learn how to make ourselves smart.  The best time to do that is while we receive education, before we enter the business world.  At work, if you haven’t learned how to learn, it’s generally too late to deal with the copious mistakes that come with it—it will cost you tenfold in time, money, and other resources than what it would have in school. 

As students, yes, we do need to memorize the basics: the tools in the toolbox and their purpose.  But we shouldn’t rely on the memory of the details of every single procedure where the tool could be used; what if you approach a new type of door you’ve never learned how to fix?  The goal is to be able to figure out how to fix any door, not to continually have to update yourself with the procedures on how to fix the latest door.  Be able to find patterns, understand concepts, question; be your own teacher.

And as teachers, we must teach how to learn.  I use the word “teacher” in a loose fashion, not as one who is professionally employed to teach, but one who is capable of teaching.  Your lesson could be about how to solve an equation for x.  Challenge yourself to teach another subliminal real-life lesson alongside this.  Make taking notes optional for the lesson, and teach your student(s) that taking notes is solely for their benefit after they return to you struggling with practice problems.  Teach that they cannot rely on the stick and the carrot all their lives for motivation; they must motivate themselves to do work, to do what is morally right, to help others.  Teach the birds that although the monkeys are better at climbing the trees, because the point is to get to the top of the tree, they can fly up.  Teach the fish that swimming across the lake is just as monumental as getting to the top of the tree, but if they wanted to touch the top of a tree, they need to get a beaver to cut a tree to fall into the water.  You will never run out of things to teach.

As students (used with an equally loose definition), we must find these “hidden” lessons as well.  Do not come to school only for the academic material.  Come to school to learn, to grow, to mature and adapt.

I myself am still learning how to do that.