A student gets a perfect score in his test. His classmates then comment, "That guy is intelligent." Is he? We all know for a fact that we, students, are getting to be experts in the field of cheating among which includes the cheating arrangement. Along with it, we also have very trained eyes to see our seatmate's answers at a glimpse and very trained ears to hear our seatmate whispering the answer to us. So if a student gets a perfect score in his test, is doesn't necessarily mean he is intelligent.
When does one become intelligent? One becomes intelligent when he has a great "capacity to understand." The key word is understand -- NOT MEMORIZE. You may say it's better to memorize than to understand because in memorization, the information tends to "stick" to your brain. This is only partly true because in memorizing, you can only absorb part of the information. It is believed that if a person has a better capacity to understand and get new information into his mind, his memory isn't as good. But this has been proven otherwise. Researches of some neuroscientists show that these two -- memory and intelligence -- are two very different things and are probably controlled by two different parts of the brain.
Further research shows that our capacity to memorize or remember things must be related to our emotions regarding the subject. This would explain why some of us can memorize better when we are in desperation and not so much when we are in stress or tension. One of its disadvantages is the tendency of the information to "disappear" when we have relaxed. Another is having a hard time to remember what the information is under heavy stress. Some tests conducted by some neuroscientists showed that we can remember the information that we can't normally remember once a certain instance or object, similar to that in the information we want to remember, triggers a nerve in our brain that would suddenly flash the said information into the mind.
These are the reasons why it is better to understand whatever information we receive (be it a subject, topic, news or any discussion or symposium) because once we have set our mind to truly understand what we are about to encounter, the information will "carve" itself in our minds and we won't have a hard time remembering it. When it comes to reading information from newspapers or magazines, it is better to get the main idea of the topic and then analyze each of the data in connection with the main idea.
But with regard to solving puzzles and answering questions like those in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), the capacity of the person to understand will enable him to analyze the data faster than usual. He will be able to find the connection between Object 1 and Object 2 and apply it to find the partner for Object 3.
True intelligence is therefore marked by the person's capacity to understand the information he encounters. It doesn't necessarily have to reflect on your test score (but you must have an above-average score). With this in mind...ARE YOU INTELLIGENT?
Rico Andrew Patron, HS450
Taken from The Bosconian Forum
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