My 4.0 Doesn't Make Me Smart

Rain on the windshield (for no particular reason other than that it could provoke thought)

Albert Einstein probably wouldn't have graduated from my high school. Maybe that's an outrageous statement and maybe I'm wrong....but the way I see it, your 4.0 doesn't make you smart. The grade point average that gives you a label throughout high school, the one that gets you into Harvard or Yale, is only one very narrowly confined type of intelligence.

Let me back up.

To get a 4.0 in high school you have to be able to follow directions: it's 90% of your school career. Can you watch a teacher explain and demonstrate something, and then execute those directions...word by word and to the 1/16 of an inch. It is an important skill set. Without it the world would be chaos. But that's only part of it, because following directions isn't the only thing that gets you through life.

Yet that is the single biggest factor contributing to somebody's GPA. There is nothing wrong with that. It's great, we have an entire list of honor roll students who can follow. But it's actually not. Because smart people who can follow directions can make stupid decisions when left to their own devices. Because math geniuses can be flummoxed by a question with a deep and abstract answer. Because Albert Einstein, with some of the greatest intelligence of all time, failed high school. 

In my experience, people like to give 'smart' a single definition. Smart is the person who can analyze exactly what a person is doing in a math problem and repeat it with different numbers on a separate sheet of paper. Smart is the person who can look at a rubric and start checking things off the list. But really, as life goes on, that's not the most important decision. There will be a time in your life when nobody is going to give you an algorithm or an answer key or explain to you exactly what and where you went wrong. Eventually, you won't be given step by step instructions. 

And at that point, 'smart' doesn't make you feel so smart. School smart isn't life smart (quote by Abbi.) Life smart is the person who can struggle to find the answer to a question that isn't black and white, but a nuanced shade of gray. Life smart is the person who can make crucial decisions.  A person who has independent judgment and creativity.  Life smart is the person who can come up with creative solutions to important issues. 

I think you could even make the argument that the game-changers and the world-shifters, are the people who walk a little outside the lines. The people who set the rules are, ultimately, the people who broke them in the first place. Because they are the people who question everything. The people who see solutions and problems not directions.

Especially as technology grows in our society, as computers take over the jobs that followers succeeded in, the people who have their own internal compass, the people who want/need to figure it out, they are the people who will succeed.

I believe education is the most powerful thing in the world, but that doesn't mean that the way it's set up is flawless. Maybe school should shift its focus. Not completely change it, but we need to shift it. 



Question everything,

Victoria