How intelligent do you think you are?

If you were ever told by a teacher that you were stupid, thick or some equivalent, do you think you would remember?

Well now it would appear that it was probably the teacher who was stupid, thick or some equivalent.

Over the last 70 years the education system has been dominated by the idea that intelligence was exclusively measured by scoring highly on alphabetic and numerical tests. People who ended up as school teachers could score well on those tests, so that was all they could recognise.

Meanwhile looking round we can see that many people have other talents which are equivalent or even more valuable than alpha-numeric skills.

The mainstream education system has ignored and derided these skills and given inferiority complexes to many talented people.

These include musical, logic, debating, artistic, spatial manipulation, and design skills. The mainstream education system has ignored and derided these skills and given inferiority complexes to many talented people.

The breakthrough came in the 1980s with recognition of multiple intelligences by Prof. Howard Gardener of Harvard University who laid out seven or possibly eight separate intelligences. These are linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily(kinaesthetic), interpersonal and intra-personal.

A major difference with these (other intelligences) is that they can be learned about, developed and improved.Other people have postulated other intelligences. One is Robert Kiyosaki with Financial Intelligence and another is Daniel Goleman with Emotional Intelligence. A major difference with these is that they can be learned about, developed and improved.

This contrasts with the theory of classic alpha numeric skills used in Intelligence Quotient (IQ) testing developed in the 1930s. This believed that a person’s intelligence level was set for life and could be measured as early as the age of 11. This produced the 11+ test which was widely used for 50 years to measure alpha-numeric abilities which is what was generally considered the only legitimate measure of intelligence. This version of intelligence is still pre-eminent in the academic world.

The purpose of this explanation is to show how many young people were scarred during their education by being told they were stupid and would not be successful in the outside world.

What is important is to recognise is that many people were categorised in unhelpful ways when they were young. It is up to us in adult life to recognise that and take steps to remove its effects.

Many of them went on to prove their teachers wrong. Many others however, performed far below their potential and continue to do so because of the invalidation they received at school.

There is no point in criticising individual teachers as they are creatures of a system which has long passed its use-by-date. What is important is to recognise is that many people were categorised in unhelpful ways when they were young. It is up to us in adult life to recognise that and take steps to remove its effects.

Ironically it is now becoming clear that alpha-numeric IQ is not ncessarily fixed forever at the age of 11. There is increasing evidence that individuals, even as adults, can increase their alpha numeric intelligence scores with the right educational processes.

We hope to help our Members find and develop their true abilities and multiple intelligences. In particular we deal with Financial and Emotional Intelligence but if you want to improve your alpha-numeric IQ, we can help with that too.

One of our other purposes is help the many talented people who have been ignored or side-lined by the education system because of little understood disabilities such as Dyslexia and Autism.

If you feel you were or know someone who has been affected by invalidation in conventional education, then Positive Input may be able to help them. Find out about Membership.