Intelligence
- Gillian Beattie
- Jan 7, 2019
- 3 min read

The ability to acquire knowledge and skills
Have you ever questioned how our society looks at 'Intelligence'?
We tend to love putting everything in boxes or categories and have labels for conditions that share complexities. eg Autism, depression, ADHD etc
Every human being has complexities within the multitude of our capabilities. I have found with putting my children through our education system that intelligence is monitored, celebrated and recognised singularly... it ticks boxes for grades within a set syllabus. Is it time to revolutionize our education system not to compare or meet how others conduct their systems but to implement a true education for life and careers to benefit and work within our society?
In ordinary language, thoughts and behaviour we tend to say that intelligence refers to how smart or clever you are. Is this the way forward to develop the complete person? Smart and clever in what? Our emotional capabilities? Our creative and inventive capabilities? Our capability of acquiring and holding knowledge in our memory? Our instincts? Our common sense in judgement?
Intelligence is a flow through the multitude of segments that we are only at the beginning of understanding but in our understanding we are not nurturing what we know today. The below image is a basic overview of our 5 sections we work with.


So I want you to think about how you see intelligence and when connecting with various people within our society how do you see them? Is is through their personality of being able to vocalise their intellect or do you see their compassion? Do you see intelligence as various priorities and hence see their value as different?
Below are three scales I would like you to rate yourself in. Each has an intelligence level of 10. 1 being low and 10 being high . What priority would you put these scales in?
Scale 1
Intellectual - someone that is usually well read and is good at interpreting their point of view through vocal, written or other means.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10
Scale 2
Emotional - someone that empathises and understands living things and situations (humans, animals, plants etc) Good at understanding body language, passionate about situations, can usually predict situations before they unfold.
1. 2 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10
Scale 3
Creative - someone that has ideas, is inventive, can think of solutions, can create products, likes to experiment.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Although I have only demonstrated three scales above. Every scale has low and high intelligence level which is a massive strength for the person who excels at this.
I put myself at 7, 9, 9 from these scales. What do you put yourself at? If you know what you have high intelligence in, you find it easier to communicate your talent and skills. I found it hard for years as I was always working to better myself within scale 1 to be accepted. But in hindsight I realised its is accepting me for who I was and realising I have so many qualities that others don't, so connecting through my strengths helped me grow and develop as a complete person.
Thank you for reading.
Your ideas and point of views are always welcome, I would love to know what you think.
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