Are you intelligent? Then prove it. Do something clever. Right now. Go on. You can’t, can you. No.

Because intelligence is not like that. In fact its not really like anything. You can’t even judge it by behaviour, otherwise you’d have to think Boris Johnson was thick because he acts like a buffoon. And he’s not, he’s very very clever.

There are certain types of behaviour which do indicate strongly a complete lack of intelligence. Like singing “one nil, to the Arsenal” repeatedly. Irredeemably lacking intelligence, even when viewed as some kind of ‘group behaviour’ like lemmings jumping off a cliff. In fact intelligence has been described as ‘the ability to perform well on intelligence tests’. And that’s quite accurate.

And now there’s a whole ‘debate’ (I hate that word; it lacks intelligence) about intelligence and, agaiaiaiaiain, whether it can be altered, modified, adjusted, affected by home, education, family, or whether you’re born with or without it and nothing will change it.
The old nature/nurture question comes to the surface once more.

Yet now, according to clever people, only 50% of intelligence is inherited. G-d help my children then. Like most parents I was more concerned that they should be die-hard Spurs fans than displayed anything remotely like intelligence. Fortunately they haven’t let me down, bless them, showing total and absolute dedication to our football team and never indicating any tendency towards being intelligent.

Boris Johnson was in fact hi-jacked on a radio show and given ‘intelligence test’ questions which he failed miserably. Our own mayor of London, seemingly as thick as some Mancunian, as moronic as a Chelsea fan. How can this be? He’s clever. Went to Oxford, for Christ sake. Ok, what he did at Oxford was mainly dress as an upper class twit and get blind drunk with David Cameron whilst smashing up a few restaurants. But he uses big words, has extra-marital affairs with upper class bimbos, he must be clever.

I took an 11-plus exam at school. When I was 18. I was slow. And that exam was nothing but ‘verbal and non-verbal reasoning’ which is another way of saying ‘IQ testing’. I passed. Yippee, what a genius am I. Einstein failed his. Not that he was in my class, but he was subjected to the same kind of test, albeit in German. If mine had been in German I’d have failed it too.

And then kids who passed were sent to ‘grammar schools’ where this supposed intelligence was used as a basis for a highly academic programme. Whereas kids who failed were sent to ‘secondry modern’ schools to learn woodwork, knitting and how to hit things with other things.

11 years old and this crowd of potential Einsteins was deemed ‘beyond hope’ by the government and the education mavens. Because at that time it was thought that ‘intelligence’ was fixed, set and ‘immutable’. Whereas now its been downgraded to only being 50% so.

Intelligence testing is fine. Its what the fuckers do with it and how they act upon it that is rather scary.

Happy Monday

A xxxx