Intelligence

Is smart at certain things

Intellectual

Just because he’s smart at one thing doesn’t mean he’s smart at another.

Example of Army—high score

Smart people aren’t smart at easy things

Society decides who is intelligent

Test doesn’t judge whether you’re smart or not

Intelligence is not only about academic subjects

Academic tests

Mention intelligence of people

Education

Dumb vs. smart

He was smart but only at certain things

Deaf and dumb joke

Auto repairman was smart to be able to repair the car

“Because you’re so goddamn educated, I know you couldn’t be very smart.”

Book smart

ASIMOV’S THESIS: Just because you’re educated doesn’t mean you know everything.

“My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in.”

YOUR THESIS:

Educated=confident on reading or writing test

A person that knows about a particular subject

Smart=better problem-solver
The difference between being educated and being smart

Being educated is being taught academically, whereas smart means being a good learner.

A book-smart person learns in school.

A street-smart person learns on his or her own.

Prison vs. Harvard

Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King

A book-smart person learns in school. A street-smart person is self-taught. They both communicate,
but it’s important to be both book smart and street smart in order to communicate with different
communities.

I. A book-smart person communicates using the language they’ve learned in books and
reading.
a. Harvard
b. Martin Luther King—examples from Bible. Doctorate—fancy language.
c. Professor doesn’t know the word smut.
II. A street-smart person communicates using language they’ve learned on the street.
a. Prison
b. T.I.—went to prison, communicates well using street language
c. Drake “Everybody talks and everybody listens, but somehow the truth always comes up
missing.”
d. The mechanic proves that Asimov wasn’t smart by telling him a joke that he didn’t
understand
III. You need to be able to speak both to communicate with both communities.
a. Malcolm X: Learn their language in order to have a conversation with them. Self-
educated, learned to speak “book” language.
b. Mechanic’s joke that Asimov didn’t understand.
c. Example of American Gangster---learning how to communicate with “educated” people.
d. Frederick Douglass

“Intelligence” is an essay by Isaac Asimov. He explains that his intelligence “is not absolute but is a
function of the society “ he lives in. In other words, just because you’re educated doesn’t mean you
know everything. He was very smart: for instance, Asimov scored 160 on an Army test compared to the
norm of 100. However, he wasn’t smart compared to the intelligence of his mechanic in terms of
knowing how to fix cars. The mechanic is street-smart, whereas Asimov is book smart. A book-smart
person learns in school. A street-smart person is self-taught. They both communicate, but it’s
important to be both book smart and street smart in order to communicate with different
communities.

A book-smart person communicates using the language they’ve learned in books and reading.
They talk how they were taught: the “proper” way. They use correct language, professional language.
They have an advanced vocabulary that other book-smart people can understand. For instance, Isaac
Asimov got a very high score on an Army test because he understood the language of the questions [the
test creators.] Students who apply to Harvard need a certain score and GPA to attend Harvard, or other
high-level college; they have to understand the language of the test to get into Harvard. They have to
have the knowledge to answer the questions. Another example of a book-smart person who
communicate with the language he learned was Martin Luther King. He went to college at a young age
and he had a doctorate; because he was educated, he was able to catch the eyes of the educated public,
using language and examples from the Bible.