The United States may be smart.
It may be one of the most well-known countries in the world.
America may evoke a vision of leadership and power to the minds of millions of people across the globe.
However, according to an organized ranking of the intelligence of countries based on the highest IQ scores by StatisticsBrain.com, the United States didn’t even score a spot in the top ten.
Ahead of us are countries that require their students to go to school less days out of the year than we do and for less hours each day. Some of these same schools have outlawed homework due to the belief that it is not beneficial for either the students or the teachers.
These theories go against everything schools in the United States are based on — long hours of school, five days a week, ten months out of the year and afternoons spent studying and memorizing for tests and quizzes.
And yet, those countries are scoring higher in intelligence levels than we are.
In an attempt to improve our position on this list, Blue Valley School District has begun to enforce a new code of learning called the Common Core. This system focuses on more intense levels of “education” at younger ages, which means more homework, more memorization and more hours spent on schoolwork altogether.
Basically the exact opposite of what the countries ahead of us preach.
In a logical sense, Common Core should be rocketing us in the direction of the places in the world with higher IQs.
For some reason, we seem to be so caught up in the state of mind that driving information more forcefully and repeatedly into kids’ brains will make them smarter faster that we can’t even wrap our heads around a different process — a process that involves a more laid back environment with space and time for students to actually take in what they’ve just finished learning.
Real learning comes from taking something you’ve been told and applying it to situations that may actually occur off the page. If we spend all our lives with a hand pressing our noses into that page, how will we ever be able to apply this knowledge to the world around us?
By spending less time sitting at a desk inside a school and more time in the place schools are training us to be prepared for, we’re given an opportunity to remember what we’ve been told and apply it to real life situations.
Once we have memories and experiences to connect information to that lesson becomes easier to remember and recall when we need it.
This is how IQ is heightened, how real learning occurs — not by repeating and reciting, but by living.