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Can grades really determine one's intelligence?


mac117

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Hello everyone :)

So, this part of the forum kind of died out, therefore I decided to make a topic about the thing that has been bothering me for the past few months.

We all go to school, or went at one point in our lives. We were graded on our tests, and those tests gave us an idea on our knowledge about the subject… But can they really tell us whether we are/were intelligent? Nowadays the pressure on recieving good grades is so high every 5th high-school student confessed that (s)he has experienced school-related anxiety.

I know people who get really good results and I know people who barely pass. Both of those groups act in a similar way, and their non-academic skills seem to be around the same level. I know there is a positive corelation between good grades and intelligence, but the argument that they separate the "good students" from the "bad students" seems wrong to me. Einstein failed school when he was younger, and even the teachers told him he would never archieve something in his life. Yet his IQ has been determined to be around 160 and he turned out to be one of the most known scientist in the world.

Grades are important to get into good university, and to test our knowledge, but can they really define us and our level of intelligence? Isn't intelligence something much more complex than just a number on a piece of paper?

I have arguments for both sides and I can't wait to read your responses.

Mac117

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Well, being average-ish in terms of both grades and intelligence I think correlation is there. However simply good memory and working can net pretty high grades. Usually successful students have both intelligence and willingness to use it to something productive. Its hard to generalize really.

Furthermore I think classifying people into "smart" and "stupid" could severely hurt "stupid" groups self-esteem. I think that reggardless of what is our starting point (I. E. intelligence) one should try to develope themselves.

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Not in the slightest. Quizzes measure how knowledgeable you are which has nothing to do with your intelligence, put quite plainly. You can have an IQ of 150 and not know jack squat, even though in most cases, that would cause severe boredom. IQ makes it easier for you to learn things, so say that an average person needs to repeat things in order to learn them, a gifted person would not necessarily have to do that (or at least not to the same extent as the average person). A person with an IQ of 130 will have an easier time grasping concepts and will do so quicker and more effectively than a student with an IQ of 100. 

This doesn't mean that gifted people do not have to study, because they do, especially for subjects which require a lot of memorization. You need to know the material or you fail. If you are not knowledgeable about the material, you are going to fail. 

Speaking from personal experience, I've been reported having an IQ of 140, and I fail quizzes quite constantly unless I study. When I do study, however, I don't have to study as much as my friends and get things quicker, which, in my experience, has made it way easier to go from a failing grade to an A with ease (but I still have to study). 

 

Furthermore, a student with an IQ of 100 may very well not comprehend things as easily as the student with an IQ of 130, but still get better grades than the student with an IQ of 130 because student A simply studied more and put more effort into getting good grades. 

So in conclusion, no, grades cannot determine one's intelligence, because there are too many factors involved.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Einstein failed school when he was younger, and even the teachers told him he would never archieve something in his life. Yet his IQ has been determined to be around 160 and he turned out to be one of the most known scientist in the world.

 

Einstein didn't fail school - that is a widely held misconception originating from Ripley's Believe it or Not. He was, in fact, brilliant right from his early years.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1936731_1936743_1936758,00.html

 

The misconception allegedly originates from a change of the grading system at his school - in the years prior, it had been akin to a ranking, with 1 being the best possible score. In his final year, it was changed to a system more like IB's grading, where 6 was the highest - thus it was quite easy for those unfamiliar with the situation to incorrectly analyse his schooling history.

Edited by UncleChopChop
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  • 4 weeks later...

Grades determine how systematically adjustable you are to the system

I agree with that completely, here's proof. So there I was taking IB history and getting really low grades is tests. I studied really hard and people I knew didn't study as hard as I did sometimes did better. Took a while but I searched up how to answer history questions and following the guidelines started getting sevens. Point is that I definitely hadn't gotten any smarter just realised how the system worked.

Einstein failed school when he was younger, and even the teachers told him he would never archieve something in his life. Yet his IQ has been determined to be around 160 and he turned out to be one of the most known scientist in the world.

 

Einstein didn't fail school - that is a widely held misconception originating from Ripley's Believe it or Not. He was, in fact, brilliant right from his early years.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1936731_1936743_1936758,00.html

 

The misconception allegedly originates from a change of the grading system at his school - in the years prior, it had been akin to a ranking, with 1 being the best possible score. In his final year, it was changed to a system more like IB's grading, where 6 was the highest - thus it was quite easy for those unfamiliar with the situation to incorrectly analyse his schooling history.

Einstein hadn't failed but at some point the system did fail to see his genius.

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  • 3 months later...

I think grades do, to some extent, give information about our intelligence. They represent our ability to cope with difficult situations (tests) and our ability to learn exactly what is wanted of us.

That being said, intelligence is a far greater idea, and grades only cover a little area in the testing of our overall intelligence. Our ability to cope with some situations may be tested, but multiple choice tests are limited in that they are unable to account for the different types of intelligence or limitations. For example, I know that often in a test, a question is misread in the rush to complete it and so you can easily get a wrong answer where you actually knew the answer. This shows how tests really test our ability to think straight under pressure, and not perfectly the topic on which we are being tested.

Another thing is, with the testing in schools, it happens often that biases of the teacher come into play. If you are able to find out exactly what they want, it isn't difficult to get good grades despite a possible lack of understanding within the subject. It seems tests are sometimes good for teaching people how to manipulate others into giving them good grades.

So while tests do offer us an idea of how we're doing with some intelligences, not all of them are tested. That doesn't mean that the tests we take aren't good ones, as we do learn quite a bit from them, however a bad grade doesn't mean a person is dumb. It simply means they are not as strong in the areas of intelligence being tested, yet may be genius in other areas.

As for alternative tests that will give a better idea of someone's intelligence, that will not be soon happening in schools, as it is already difficult enough to test us the way they do and no better test has been invented yet. Anyways, our intelligence matters most for the test of life. :D

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It really depends on your definition of intelligence. Some people state intelligence is your ability to reason, others how much knowledge you have (though I would argue that's being knowledgable not intelligence), and so on. Personally, I would argue that intelligence is the manner in which you use the knowledge you have, and it can be done in multiple ways. I love Howard Gardner's Nine Types of Intelligence theory, myself, as I believe it really captures the essence of intelligence - here are some good links on it, though there are far better ones online.

Whilst I don't agree with physic_nerds statement about tests teaching people to manipulate others completely - though I do have some anecdotes which do show that sometimes getting on people's good sides can make you score higher (though it depends on the subject, like history compared to maths, and also on whether the person marking knows you personally, and so on) - I do believe that it, in itself, is (according to the theory) a type of intelligence.

Really, I'd say it depends on the subject and the questions in it. History, for example? I would personally say no; you can memorise essay plans and not understand a word of the analysis. Maths and English? I'd say they give an indication of prowess in those areas, but they can't truly define whether you're intelligent, particularly from a single test. It'd have to be mapping progress over time, and intelligence can change so it's really dependant on a lot of factors!

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What was said above about being able to adapt to situations is I think actually quite an important point. At the end of the day if you can achieve high grades, you can achieve a lot of things. Although obviously that overlooks very important things like personal skills, it's still a decent rule of thumb and a 'good student' will also be able to tackle a lot of things in life that a 'bad student' may lack the resources to tackle - and being able to hoop jump in sufficient ways to get good grades does actually measure something.

Whether there is a correlation between good grades and intelligence in the IQ sense, I guess being intelligent probably helps achieve good grades but other than that I'm not sure. For instance, I always used to get pretty good grades at school, but my IQ score is not very good. Whatever kind of 'intelligence' I have, it doesn't manifest itself in the kinds of questions they ask you for IQ tests. However, it never stopped me doing well at things (well, some things, by no means all things!) and going purely by grades at school I think you would say I'm reasonably intelligent. Actually I am not above average on formal IQ scores, I'm resoundingly average, but I think I have good adaptability to exams and tests and so I can still achieve in those.

The way I see it, all of these tests measure different things. None of them is 'intelligence' purely, I think intelligence is in fact a lot more nebulous and multi-factorial than either IQ or exam grades would make out. I do think that exam grades are perhaps more significant indicators simply because they are more representative of real life than things like IQ which are a little more niche. Exam grades are also in themselves a lot more multi-factorial. For instance you can do well from either talent or hard work. Or both! Equally you can do badly because of things totally irrelevant to intelligence - nerves, life stress, dyslexia etc. Doing well in exams in the face of those things also measures your emotional resilience, which again predicts life success. Whereas IQ tests are more solid and simple in what they test.

Really, the key thing is defining intelligence. I think it's easier to think of things more in terms of how they predict your ability to do well with and cope in the rest of your life. In which case, I think that by and large good grades reflect a level of mental flexibility which bodes well for the rest of your life, more so than a high IQ score might. It's an interesting question you've asked though, and I'm not 100% of the answer either!

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  • 3 months later...

In my opinion grades do not at all determine someone's intelligence. For instance, I have a student in my IB class and he gets lower grades than others and so people cast him off as an average good student. At my school only the top students are in the IB. But when you hold a legitimate conversation with him it is so thought provoking and he is so freaking intelligent. He just doesn't find the grading system and school all the important with his purpose in life. When he talks to me I leave it asking myself questions that I never thought of asking. He comes off as a stoner type but in all reality he is just so laid back with everything and just wants to enjoy the life he has and not worry. He is knows his stuff but he doesnt care enough to put forth the effort to do something that in all reality is quite trivial.

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Nope, it also asses memory which has nothing to do with intelligence. 

Also emotions for lit.

And your ability to check work.

Plus your ability to work under pressure and go fast like sanic.

Of course includes your ability to NOT do stupid mistakes.

And your ability to have good handwriting.

Your ability to organize ideas in writing and highlighting.

Your ability to not make sense and follow a stupid format for your answers.

Conclusion: Exams do measure intelligence to some extent but other random stuff and memory are also assessed and it is only when all is mastered that you get 7's. 

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High school curriculum is geared toward the masses so that average students, with work and dedication, can do well. I strongly believe that anyone, no matter their genetic potential (to a certain extent i.e. excluding cognitive illnesses), can excel in school as long as they work hard. You often see very intelligent people doing poorly in school due to a lack of work ethic and you also see rather "dumb" people doing extremely well because they work really hard. 

What is intelligence anyways? Could it be measured? I think your question is futile, one that can not be answered; but it's still fun to think about. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

It really really depends.....

I have known some native german speakers in other schools doing german B. They of course easily got a 7 but that "7" is a reflection of absolutely nothing. 

For subject like maths/natural sciences I would say grades do to some extent reflect one's intelligence. These subjects are more about problem solving under time pressure and are not very subjective. 

But overall.... I would say at a high school level, your IB grades reflect "more" of your diligence than your intelligence. 

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I saw that you mentioned Einstein did bad in school. I just wanted to point out that contrary to that popular belief he actually performed quite well. 

As a general reply however, I think that if people were to perform at their fullest potential in school tests then that could be a measure of intelligence. But taking tests requires a vast set of skills and I think one of them is identifying the skills that you don't naturally posses and working on those. If someone is fully aware of their strenghts and weaknesses (innate ones) and is able to manage them well then that is the sign of true intelligence. 

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On 18.11.2015 at 4:57 PM, Arieta Hamiti said:

Grades determine how systematically adjustable you are to the system

This is exactly the definition of grades in one sentence and to the point. Grades are neither more nor less than that.

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  • 4 months later...

Partially, I guess. But again, standardized tests are not the best way to approach one's ablitiy and test it. There are plenty of students, who just don't get good grades, yet are very talented on different areas. In this essence, I think IB is doing a good job -- it encourages students to study in 6 different areas (plus ee, cas and tok) and find exactly where the student fits in. 

 

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4 hours ago, Nintendogslover123 said:

Education is a social experiment involving almost everyone's entire life. Grades measure how well you are being formed into what they want you to be. So when your studying for a test you are really just smashing yourself into a mold.-_-

"Education is a social experiment" – that's an interesting statement, though it helps if you could clarify it.

And I have to disagree. It's all in the attitude. "Great minds think alike" – such people are all brilliant at their fields because they have passion for them and most importantly, put in the effort. That's pretty much the crux of education too – it's pretty sad that society overvalues talent and undervalues effort.

An IB education encourages open-mindedness, looking at things from various perspectives, emphasis on critical thought, develop time-management skills etc. – imo it's hard to argue such an education isn't beneficial at all.

And studying for tests – well, not everyone has the talent to waltz into their Number Theory test and get out with a perfect score. It's also somewhat frustrating how prevalent the idea is that everything is just out to "mould you and ensure you conform to societal expectations". There's a fine line between bettering yourself as an individual so that you can pursue your passions to being the mindless routine-minded zombie that everyone so irrational fear of becoming. 

I'll concede that it is easy to take education for granted at an early age, usually pre-high school, as a lot of the content taught and tested are not as relevant.

Edited by IB`ez
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Interestingly enough, I got a notification about this topic just in time for my SAT scores. I should say I am disappointed by them, and feel quite stuck. I am applying to universities this following week. I do IB as well, and I must say, I am doing a lot better than my SAT score may imply. 

What I am trying to say is; I could complain about how grades do not determine one's intelligence, about how I have more capacity which I cannot reflect through SATs or any other standardized test. Doing that will not be fair though, because no one ever demonstrates any capacity by critisising the system. I think that it is something we should get over. If scores indicate something and hold merit in that regard then be it. No score will stop me from achieving. Basically, in the long-term, we will see that they aren't real obstacles to whatever we wish to acheive. 

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