Knowledge v. Intelligence

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 32, 8 February 1937, Page 11

Knowledge v. Intelligence

THE VALUE OF BRIDGE. This suggestion was made by Sir James Jeans in an amusing talk on “Knowledge versus Intelligence, * 1 given at a luncheon held by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, says the Daily Telegraph. Sir James says that a psychologist might define intelligence as “the capacity for picking out of your experience the revelant facts of forming a judgment from them.” Many people holding very high positions had lost that capacity for picking out the revelant facts. “If I were given an intelligence test for a child of three or four I should probably do badly,” added Sir James, ‘ ‘ because my mind is so weighted down by all I have read about the differential calculus and the theory of relativity.” Our system of education originated from the time when a printed book was a rarity and students had to listen to lectures. Sir James then proceeded to recount a conversation between a man from “Erewhon” and himself, in which the Erewhonian said that they had found the best method of education was the playing of a game rather like bridge. .Sir James thought this was an excellent idea. “Bridge teaches you to make rapid decisions, to plan a course of action, to estimate odds, and it does teach qualities such as courtesy and tact in which a man who has concentrated too much on mathematics and physics may be deficient. ’ * Americans, he found, agreed with the Erewhonians more than we did. The American system had advantages for a certain class of people which we missed entirely over here. It wa & better suited to product practical men of a kind we call * * captains of industry. ’ ’ The trouble with our system was that the universities stored minds with facts —useful and well worth knowing but iu doing so the elasticity of the mind was taken away.