I.Q. tests measure a narrow band of human capabilities

At age 26, I taught high school students with developmental disabilities. I think I learned more from them than they did from me. They were analogous to Forrest Gump, and I quickly began to question what the real value of I.Q. tests was. True, they measure intelligence, but my students taught me they measured a very narrow band of brainpower… academic achievement in school.

When I taught these slow-learning children in the early 70s, I thought of them as “eight-hour slow learners”. When they left the schoolhouse each day, they encountered a larger world with more choices to make and more endeavors that complemented their innate endowments… capabilities left unmeasured, unappreciated, and unnoticed by the traditional school curriculum. It was the pre-IDEA 97 era (Rights for students with disabilities), and my students were not mainstreamed for any classes, not even into a study hall.

So, being stuck together for the next 9 months, we got to know each other quite well. I remember Danny, age 13, who worked alongside his father, and could completely take apart and reassemble a truck’s engine and transmission in a dimly lit garage. By age 16, he could do it blindfolded. I still encounter trouble changing my car’s engine oil.

Another student, Dennis, age 14, was always one step ahead of the game warden. He could catch, clean, season just right, and smoke copious amounts of fish into a tasty delicacy. He stocked a large freezer full of them at home and often brought in scrumptious, smoked fish for me to eat.

“Best smoked salmon I ever ate!”, I said to him one day.

He smiled and replied proudly, “Mr. Morton, them’s carp, not salmon!”

I didn’t mind that for several months I had unwittingly been eating smoked carp, for Dennis prepared them like the chef de cuisine blanches a grouper dinner at some five-star ocean side Hilton.

The Danny’s and Dennis’ of the world may not score high on traditional I.Q. tests, but their type of intelligence and ambition will land them a living without an over-reliance on formal schooling. The rest of us require bookish preoccupations to obtain an education to get along in this world.

It struck me as odd, but both Danny and Dennis seemed to have more common sense than most teens, and they were two of the happiest kids at Ashland High School. I guess they were intelligent enough to develop those non-academic qualities, too.

Robert Morton has retired from his positions of school psychologist and adjunct professor in the School of Leadership and Policy Studies at Bowling Green State University. He authored two spy thriller novels: “PENUMBRA DATABASE” and “MISSION OF VENGEANCE”- both available in Kindle or paperback at Amazon.com books.