Conversations with J, or, Resorting to the Cat.

[mixer2435]

me: do you think "knowledge" and "intelligence" are separate and disticnt and can exist independently of each other?

Sent at 9:25 AM on Friday

Jenna:  yes
you mean intelligence in the brain/mind way, not in the spy way, yeah?

me: yeah.

Sent at 9:28 AM on Friday

me: I believe they are separate, but I'm not sure that a truly intelligent person won't have

Comments

[jennopher]

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

For whatever it's worth.

[regularb]

That's actually a huge debate in education right now. I mean, not "dead or not dead" or "resort to the cat or do not resort to the cat," but the first proposition. Because someone decided that to help a kid who's struggling to read, you should teach the kid "reading strategies"--as in, make a chart as you read to record your questions and answers about the text. Pause in the middle of a paragraph to make sure you understand it. Etc. These things--basically intelligence without knowledge--are now mandatory in most state curricula. BUT. Someone just did a study that demonstrated these strategies don't actually do much. The test group of kids was given a book about baseball. It turned out that what most helped them read it wasn't a chart; it was a working knowledge of baseball.

So there you go.

And yes, that was very funny.

[m_lurkinghorror]

I LOL'd. Then I read it aloud to G. Well, parts of it. Mostly just the cat.