Many brilliant people were considered dunces or at best unimpressive by their teachers and peers. Among these were Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Edison—perhaps you or someone you know were or are one of these diamonds in the rough, too.
There are several reasons for a person’s potential being missed or their intelligence being underestimated by those assessing such qualities, including (but probably not limited to):
They learn differently than others
They weren’t interested in or challenged by what was being taught in school, and thus put little to no effort into their studies, focusing instead on things of interest to them (which may not have been taught at their school, or were not considered signs of intelligence)
They were “late bloomers”
IQ tests are bogus. They fail to account for the many different types of intelligence. According to researchers into facets of the intellect, there are eight different types, as shown below:
The graph above, titled Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, is from SimplyPsychology’s website. I think I can use it here under the banner of “fair use” (especially since I attributed it to them). However, if they feel compelled to sue me for using it, they can contact me at:
Vulnerable Lovebead
c/o William Kunstler
157 Riverside Avenue
Champaign, Illinois 61820
The IQ tests commonly administered focus on only three of those eight types of intelligence, namely Spatial, Linguistic, and Logical-Mathematical. Thus, a person could be a stone cold genius in all of the other five types of intelligence (Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalist, Body-Kinesthetic, and Musical) but score only average or even below average on the three types of smarts that are tested, and be considered by the administrators of IQ tests as mentally dull. On the other hand, a person could be a complete washout in the five areas that are not tested but, because they do well in the three “blessed” areas, are considered cognitively sharp.
Can anyone say that the five normally neglected areas of intelligence are unnecessary, unimportant—or even that they are less important than—the other three?
Two conclusions can be drawn from this: if you do very well on IQ tests, you may view yourself as being more intelligent than you really are, when all eight types of intelligence are considered. The other side of that coin is that someone who is viewed by others—or even themselves—as lacking in acumen may actually—again, when all types of intelligence are given their due—assay out as quite glittery and precious.
And that’s without even discussing that there are other things more important than intelligence, such as character, integrity, charity and, in a word, love. Many extremely intelligent people throughout history have proven to be evil. High intelligence in suchlike people is a bug, not a feature. Ask yourself who you would rather have as a neighbor: a brilliant psychopath, or a relatively dimwitted person with a heart of gold? Who would you rather be, if you had to choose between those two extremes?
IQ tests are bogus; or, at best, they are severely limited in scope: they only manifest a fraction of the various types of intelligence. Even if they evaluated all eight types of intelligence, IQ tests would only reveal one aspect of a person.
That ‘xplains it.