What definition of intelligence do I have?
Intelligence has nothing to do with good results at school.................................. some of the most important men of the XX and XXI century have not studied at university or have studied on their own and achieved great success................................. intelligence marks human beings and at school it is difficult to say why some students learn better than others.............................
My reflections
after week 2
My past life as a student and how I learnt
I do think of intelligence as a
special gift given to very smart people.
I was assessed in my years spent at
school and at university, but teachers
assessed my performance orally or in a written
task. I was asked to write about
a topic, to present a topic and
to answer about a topic. I had to do
this in all the subjects that I had to do and study. I never took any IQ tests:
my parents were not interested in them; I was a good student and I wanted to achieve a lot, but most of all I wanted to be the best student.
Learning, studying, working on my own were
the main goals in my life starting from
my first years. I loved learning all the main subjects: history, art,
biology, Italian, maths, science, grammar, literature, French,
German................................later I went to university and I chose
what I liked to study and learn:
languages and literature. It was my world
but again I did not consider myself an intelligent person: I was
a student who was proud and wanted to get the best and most out
of what
school and university were
offering me. I was INTERESTED and this is the main reason of my success in achieving good results, sometimes they were the best of
the class , sometimes they were
acceptable but I had learnt how
to run and organize my knowledge and now I
can say that after years of
learning I am a good learner. However, my teachers were
sometimes not good at encouraging my self-development and I must say that what
I learnt was more in relationship to my interests, some teachers were not good teachers or they did not care . One person I can remember is my primary school teacher: she loved her job and
she loved us, she would follow us in the
next years and wanted to know how we
were making progress and she loved to give us some advice.
In
terms of educational facilities
I was offered good and top level quality in secondary school while
the university was a very traditional environment where I
had to cope with low level professors sometimes and I could not
develop myself. What boring lessons
did I have to follow and
what boring texts to read!!
My
teaches never talked about my intelligence: they only recognized that I was a student who worked hard.
After reading the
texts about intelligence which have been
suggested for this course (1) I still believe that teachers
can make the difference: good
students can achieve bad
results if the learning environment
is low quality and if teachers do
not know how to cope with them.
Every student has a lot of potentialities but it is up to their tutors and teachers to help and
develop their skills and abilities. I know that there are special schools for bright students, but I feel that the future
of education depends on how school systems
can cope with more students and give them
the best in terms of tutors,
critical thinking and help in developing their mind.
Maria Montessori is for me a great woman who has helped children to grow ............................................
Maria Montessori is for me a great woman who has helped children to grow ............................................
References for these reflections
(1)http://sandraleatongray.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/a-guide-to-intelligence-and-heritability-for-beginners/
The myth of ability
in http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/newsletter/1447.html
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