Are Cognitive Abilities Changed By Education?
Written by Craig Rogers, Posted on , in Section Teens & Tweens
Most people would answer yes to this question. It seems intuitive and is widely accepted that minds are molded by the type and quality of the education they experience. In fact, this belief is a large part of our nation's educational approach and commitment to giving everyone access to quality schools. However, a recent study conducted by MIT suggest this fundamental belief about education is false. What the study essentially claims is that research shows that even when students learn new skills or gain competence in new areas, their fluid intelligence doesn't change. This fluid intelligence is defined as being "the ability to analyze abstract problems and think logically."
How Should Our Educational System Incorporate These Findings Into A New Approach?
1 - Be more willing to divide students based on cognitive potential - If students are fundamentally divided by their fluid intelligence, then it could be incredibly beneficial to place them in different classes based on their scores. This would ensure that those with high fluid intelligence are able to focus on maximizing their potential while not being forced to move at a slower pace to accomodate other students.
2 - Experiment with new education styles to see if changes in fluid intelligence are possible - Schools could take this opportunity to experiment with new teaching styles and see if the finding that fluid intelligence remains unchanged is actually true. While we know that fluid intelligence doesn't change with traditional methods, we can't be sure that other methods might not cause different results.
3 - Continue to emphasize the importance of non-fluid intelligence indicators - Non-fluid aspects of intelligence are still incredibly important to a person's success in life and the importance of these should continue to be made clear.
Incorporating all of these changes into schools should allow for increasingly positive results as time goes on. It would be foolish of us to ignore the potential for educational innovation these findings by MIT have provided us. Moving forward with these principles as a basis for change could bring about quick and dramatic improvement.
