Our Dangerous Addiction To Intelligence
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
This is a question that almost every person has been asked at one point
in their life. The answers we are most likely expected to give include
Accountant, Engineering or Medicine. But John Lennon of The Beatles gave a
different response…when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, John
Lennon…who was barely five years old wrote down the word “happy.”
But his teacher did not accept the answer “happy” they wanted something
else…an occupation and definitely not a feeling. They accused John Lennon of
not understanding the question…
That clash between 5 years old’s innocent mind and an established and
aged educational system, generated a classic response from John that exposed
one of the greatest and most critical flaws of our educational system. In the
words of John Lennon…
“They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they
didn’t understand life.”
And that is the truth, because for decades our educational system has
not understood life. We seek to train students, with a goal to make them the
most intelligent so that they can get the best jobs. We teach them how to
answer questions and pass tests so that they can get the highest grades. But in
the midst of all the craziness we forget to teach them about life, about
happiness and about kindness. John Lennon in his response simply wanted to be
“happy” and judging from his track record on humanitarian efforts it is safe to
say that his happiness was centered on
others being happy.
But education teaches otherwise, the focus is on intelligence. They
teach us how to derive, integrate, permutated and postulate but fail to show us
how we can use any of that to make people happy. The focus is simply on
intelligence and I dare say that we have an addiction to intelligence. And that
addiction can be a dangerous one…
Sometime ago I stumbled across a primary school Mathematics word problem
and it read:
Ada HAD 8 sisters. 6 of her
8 sisters ran away due to domestic abuse and violence and of those 6 that ran
away, 3 of them died from malaria. How many sisters does Ada have left?
Our Dangerous
Addiction To Intelligence. To find out the answer to the question “How Many Sisters Does Ada Have Left?”
…if number of educational degrees were directly proportional to a
nations GDP, then Nigeria will be up there with the giants of the world…but we
are not.
Ada HAD 8 sisters. 6 of her 8 sisters ran away due to domestic abuse and
violence and of those 6 that ran away, 3 of them died from malaria. How many
sisters does Ada have left?
In primary school the answer would have been obvious and
straightforward…2 sisters. After-all if 6 run away, 2 will be left. But in
Secondary school, students would anticipate a trick in the question and
probably determine that Ada has 5 sisters left, which include the 2 sisters
that did not run away and 3 of the 6 sisters that ran away but did not die.
But if it was in University we might have gotten a multitude of answers.
A Psychology major might have argued that Ada still had 8 sisters left. After
all, even if 3 of her sisters were dead that will not change the fact that they
were still her sisters. An English major on the other hand might have homed in
on the fact that the opening statement said “Ada HAD” and that “had” being past
tense means she no longer has any more sisters. A Law Major would probably have
analyzed both responses above and depending on who was paying would have argued
in support of either the Psychology Major or English Major. Whatever level we are
at, the focus would be on getting or debating the right answer.
But the problem with this question is really the answer. Because the
answer is a distraction to the bigger picture and Nigerian education as a
whole. You see the people who get the answer right or argue their answer
best…are not the ones that will necessarily change a Nation. But rather the
ones who cannot focus on the answer without asking questions such as…Why did
Ada’s sisters have to die from Malaria? Why was there abuse in Ada’s home? And
how is Ada doing now?
These are the individuals that have what we call social empathy. They
are able to see beyond the answers and put themselves in the shoes of others.
They are the lawyers that make decisions not based on who is paying more, but
rather on who is morally right. It is the banker that creates a financial law
not to make profit for himself, but to make owning a home easier for those
around him. It is the Engineer who designs his oil equipment not just to
maximize oil production, but rather to ensure non-pollution of the environment.
At the core of their decisions is a desire to make people happy. They are not
focused on showing how smart or intelligent they are, but rather how their
intelligence can make lives better for those around them.
But education for decades
has thought us otherwise, we are brought up to focus on getting the right
answers to the tough questions, which is why out of about 50 responses to the
original question on Bellanaija, only 1 to 2 people
commented on poverty or abuse, the other responses were focused on what the
right answer was. And in our addicted focus to being intelligent we miss the
point of intelligence, the point of using the material learned in school to
impact our community. That is why we have so called intelligent people,
politicians, lawyers, ministers who wipe out a Nations resources without
feeling any remorse. People who can wake up every day and pass by poverty
without skipping a beat. And then we blame our problems on lack of intelligence
in our national leaders, but the problem of Nigeria has never been a lack of
intelligence. We have an abundance of that…it has instead been an abject lack
of social consciousness and empathy. The big question now is this…how do we educate both the
Mind and Heart in our schools? I have a few suggestions….
Firstly, let’s change the way we offer up scholarships. Scholarships
should not be given to only the most intelligent as is often the case in
Nigeria. But should also be given to families in need…people who cannot afford
tuition should be given a chance to go to school. When a government shows
people that they care for the less privileged, students will graduate with a
sense of responsibility that they have to care for others less privileged than
them. But when a nation focuses primarily on how smart a person is, it creates
a dangerous race to the top devoid of emotional connect. Simply put it is not
enough to talk or preach about empathy…government, organizations and
individuals need to show it.
I mean we spend 12 years telling primary and secondary school students
to keep quiet and then we thrust them into the world and tell them to make a
change and speak up against social injustice and then berate them for not
taking action! Also for the sake of God let’s stop writing down
the names of noisemakers. We have to break the myth that a well behaved child with good grades is the ideal student leader! I mean look at people like Gani
Fawehnmi, Fela Kuti or Pat Utomi, one would be hard pressed to believe that
they were amongst the quiet ones in class. But look at what they have done by
simply speaking up and making noise. Let’s eliminate the list of noise makers, because
we need them to speak up against social injustice.
Lastly, we need to change the question we ask our children. It is not
about what you want to be when you grow up? But rather it should be, what
difference you want to make when you grow up? When we
change the question, we force students to actively think about how they can use
their education to make a difference instead of simply using it to make money.
Shifting a student’s mind-set albeit delicately at an early age, will reap huge
returns in the future. Because students will be invested in the idea of
creating social change from an early age.
At the end of
the day we have to realize that life is not always about getting the right
answers, but rather about ensuring people are getting the right treatment. Our
interest should thus be that Ada is happy and not how many sisters she has
left. Because intelligence alone does not change a world, what sparks a change
is empathy…that should be our focus and that should be our addiction…our
dangerous addiction…
Comments
Post a Comment