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Originally Posted by somerfrost
An interesting thread....I agree that Americans aren't stupid, just lack intellectual curiosity. SAT scores and IQ tests are clearly only rough estimates of innate intellect, both are severely compromised by environment as well as how an individual processes information...this was an area of interest for me in Grad School, I was taught to administer, score and evaluate IQ, personality and other tests...I think I have a fair grasp on their uses and limitations. Quick example...I have a friend who has a documented IQ score 95 points lower than mine...yet she's taught me everything I know about computers, cell phones and other electronic equipment and no, her expertise isn't limited to those areas; she has difficulty with timed reading comprehension and written exams...she processes information differently than I do, I suspect her intellectual capacity is equal to mine yet if you go by IQ testing....
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I got tons of examples of this type of thing. Our school used to enter contests to build a robot out of a box of scraps that included all sorts of stuff that we had to tear apart and then build a bot to perform a specific task and square off against other schools in a field of play. Of course all the bookworm brainiacs would show up, but occasionally we would get these kids that were so 3-d mechanically oriented, and they made horrible grades and test scores.
But they would be telling the other "brighter" kids, no, no, if you do that first, we will not be able to get the arm to swing out this way because..., and the ball catching device will not work because... it was quite an eye opener. And these "lesser" kids were the ones that were by far the best at sequencing the building way ahead of time. They knew exactly what needed to be done first and last..., and being able to come up with alternative designs when we hit a snag on a certain part of a robot. Amazing kids with horrible test scores. I learned some huge lessons from those experiences.