Going to School Doesn't Equal Intelligence?

So this has been bugging me for a while. I have a lot of friends, a lot of stupid friends and very little smart friends (or at least smart friends who don't come off pretentious as fuck. Now, it is true that a lot of my friends didn't graduate High School, but I am not one to judge them base on that. Though it is sad that they couldn't find it in them to complete High School, it doesn't make them bad people. Hell, it doesn't even make them unintelligent people.

Here's my point: Does going to school make you intelligent? My answer is no. Going to school can probably get you a better paying job and a better future than dropping out, but I don't think it speaks much for helping us become intelligent people.

Here are two examples from my life:

First is my best friend, Brandon. Brandon was left back three times and eventually dropped out of High School after his first year--mostly due to his own laziness. It is true, that Brandon is a terrible speller. He spells cognitively like most of our friends do, and has to be told a couple of times the correct spelling of first grade words like "tomorrow" which he insist on spelling with an "a" instead of a "o". However, Brandon is one of the few people who I can have long winded intelligent conversations with about all different topics (except reading). We talk about politics, writing, psychology, etc etc. He has a lot to say, and he is very articulate even with his small vocabulary. Sure, there are plenty of times I get frustrated when I say a simple word like "protagonist" and he's like "what the fuck is that?" He has also demostrated a want to learn. he is going back to school, he insist that I correct his grammar and spelling, and has showed an interest in reading.

On the other end of the coin, there's my other friend Phil. Phil has a bachelor's degree (which is the same level of education as me). He went to a decent college, and had a decent learning experience growing up. However, the kid can't even spell "tomorrow" as well. He also can't seem to get it through his head that when turning verbs into -ing, you drop the e and -ing (*that was such a dumb way to explain it lol) such as "write" turns into "writing" not "writeing." Even typing it makes me mad. I called him out on it and he admitted he was lazy. LAZY. That was his excuse. What a terrible excuse. What a terrible thing to even admit to. Now I see maybe doing short hand when typing a text or on FB, but how LAZY do you have to be to not spelling TOMORROW right. You are just changing ONE letter.

His grammar isn't even the only issue. He can't speak. He has nothing to say. I can tell you about ONE intelligent conversation we had, which was about the possibility of aliens--in which he just agreed with everything that said and added perhaps a little snidbit of his own opinion. That's it, he doesn't have an opinion. He just agrees with what everyone else says. We watched a political commentary movie called Rampage which is basically about a kid who kills a bunch of people to make a statement to the government. In front of his friends (who were all YAY DEATH) he agreed. Yet when I privately made the comment that the movie fell short in proving it's point, he agreed with me. -_- He also pretended to like Slipknot for me. I hate that. This is someone with an education, yet lacks all forms of intelligence.

tl;dr

Does going to school really make someone intelligent? Have you run into situations where those who should be smarter are dumb?
September 2nd, 2011 at 01:22am