Or at least, that’s what a professor told us the other day. I twitted about it and, as I promised, I am blogging right now about it. But let’s start from square 1.
I am a Computer Science student and my department allows its students to follow some courses from other departments. By making use of that allowance, I chose to follow “Education and social inequities”. I went to the fifth lecture and I was expecting to listen about.. education and social inequities. However, what the professor told is that “all people are equally stupid” (or smart, doesn’t really matter). According to sociologists IQ doesn’t exist and what makes someone more capable from someone else is his enviroment. In addition to that, every single person is capable of doing everything and what has stopped him is only his enviroment. She also gave as an example where 2 twin brothers were given to different parents after their birth and they grew up with completely different ways. One of them happened to be smarter than the other one.
I have a counter example.. Michael and Ralf Schumacher. They are brothers, they grew up together, in the same enviroment, same moral support from their parents, etc etc. They also happened to love the same thing, car driving. Both of them, made it to Formula 1 world. However, one of them is the most successfull driver in F1′s history while the other one has never won a title. By that, I am not proving that IQ or talents exist but I simply prove that there are many many many more things that play certain role in developing an ability.
I accept that IQ is not something that we know where it comes from. We don’t have proved that it really exists but there are effects that we suspect that have something to do with “brain superiority”. However, we don’t have fully understand how our brain works so saying that “IQ does not exist, skills do not exist, talents do not exist” is at least immature. Especially when it comes from a professor in a room fully packed with students..
[photo via flickr.com, user: Kyle Jones]
