Who is the most intelligent person in the world? One day, I heard my friend say she had met the most intelligent person in the person. Then I asked what made the person so intelligent. This friend of mine told me that her
acquittance had the best grades in every subject. This left me wondering if intelligence can be based on grades. Whilst talking about intelligence, how can we actually define it? How can we measure it? In our society today, many people believe than having high grades is the same as being
intelligent. Is this accurate? Before giving any opinion on this question, let me say that the first definition of intelligence in the Oxford dictionary is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” This definition mentions knowledge, which is evaluated during assessments. Most school tests assess knowledge but not the capacity to apply the knowledge. To illustrate my point let me ask you another simple question. Can we say that a child that can add 1+1 but cannot do one apple + one apple is intelligent? Don’t get me wrong, that young person is not dumb but he or she has to
learn the real-life applications of knowledge to be complete. Another way to express my thought is by saying that good grades are useless if the knowledge used to get them is not applicable out of school. Another way the society evaluates intelligence is with the IQ test. This evaluation might
be accurate to some people, but the results cannot be relevant. Why? This is because sometimes it measures the capacities of a fish to climb trees and that of a monkey on how it swims. How can we state that one is “dumb” if we cannot see how he or she acts in their habitat? I have been stating the wrong ways of measuring intelligence, but is there a right way? Personally, I believe that the best definition is given by late scientist Stephen Hawkins. He says that “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” The world today is all about evolution and progress. If we are not able to follow the movement, we become nothing. Intelligence is using our brains so as to make the society better. Yes, we need the knowledge, yes, we prefer being in our natural habitat, but if we are not able to change systems and still see how things are related to each other, we cannot evolve. To sum up, intelligence is wrongly defined in our society though it is important. If we keep this definition, it is better to say that being wise is important. Be intelligent, understand the world and understand that knowledge is power if you can apply it, then this world will be better since it will be harder to make irrational decision when using our brains. Now you can ask yourself who the most intelligent person in the world is according to you.
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