Answer-Smart Brain
A sharp edge passes for intelligence. The popular notion of intelligence is that it cuts to the answer. It is answer smart. IQ tests promote this notion as do the schools with their testing, and the media are in league as they reward politicians whose answers to questions are crisp.
Very much favored is the answer-smart brain.
It’s all the better if the answer comes quick. The intellectual model imposed by the culture is the mentality of the quiz show: have the answer and have it lickety-split.
The problem in this is in the emphasis. It neglects the reality that knowing goes deeper than answers, that intelligence is a complex habit that proves itself best in the work of discovery, most notably in the work of stretched-out ingenuity where the mind begins without an answer but is superb in finding its way to an answer, perhaps even in the form of a rich wrong answer as was sometimes the case for thinkers like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
thomas@discoveringyourintelligence.com