Smart Fools

In a Scientific American article, Claudia Wallis reports on an interview she had with Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg, who spoke at the 2017 annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science and "sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society." She quotes Sternberg as saying:

"IQ rose 30 points in the 20th century around the world, and in the U.S., that increase is continuing. That’s huge; that’s two standard deviations, which is like the difference between an average IQ of 100 and a gifted IQ of 130. We should be happy about this, but the question I ask is, if you look at the problems we have in the world today—climate change, income disparities in this country that probably rival or exceed those of the gilded age, pollution, violence, a political situation that many of us never could have imagined—one wonders, What about all those IQ points? Why aren’t they helping?

What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people; we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place."

Source: "Is the U.S. Education System Producing a Society of 'Smart Fools'?" by Claudia Wallis, Scientific American, May 31, 2017

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