So you want to be smart?

Notes from a recovering school teacher

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Let’s talk about the word, smart. What do you feel when you say or hear this word? I dislike this vague but cruel word very much; let me explain.

Yesterday, my daughter (who like me is a lover of precise language) said to me, “I think I’ve figured out the difference between the word clever and the word smart. I think clever refers more to problem-solving and smart…”

I cut her off. I know, I really need to stop that, but I have lots to say about this little awful word, and I jumped in and said, “I think the word smart is used to … elevate people.”

And she said, “I think it’s meant to put other people down.”

“We’re saying the same thing.”

“Oooh, you’re right!”

Forever, we’ve used the word smart to refer to people who have academic intelligence—the intelligence our society values above all others. If you get good grades in school, you’re smart. (Never mind that grades are inherently biased and often reflect the teacher’s preferences for certain students or have been skewed with “extra-credit”. Ugh, a post for another day.)

If you’re good at information recall, even if it’s useless information, you’re smart. If math formulas come easy to you, you’re smart. Oh, and of course, the more “education” you have, the smarter you are. If you have an advanced degree, you have unequivocal evidence that you’re smart. If you’re a college professor, you can wear your job like a badge of smartness. If you’re an engineer, well same goes for these guys, right?

And if you’re not smart, what are you? Are you the opposite of smart? Yikes. But that’s how kids in school feel when they don’t demonstrate academic intelligence. I want to scream every time one of my children say, “I’m dumb” or “I’m just stupid” when they don’t know something—often knowledge that they’ve not had the opportunity to learn yet, or just something unnecessary to their lives so they let it go from their memory bank. (Which is actually smarter? A brain that purges irrelevant information or one that recalls useless details at will?)

There are so many ways that people can be intelligent and frankly, other types of intelligence are much more likely to lead to a satisfying and meaningful life than being academically gifted. I don’t want to stereotype engineers, and I definitely know this doesn’t apply to all of them, but they have a reputation of not being particularly savvy when it comes to social skills. And those professors are famous for not having real world skills. Sorry, professors.

So what about those clever people with sharp wit that make us laugh but flunked out of school. Are they smart? I guess they could be considered “street smart” but that definitely doesn’t carry the same value in our culture.

What about the fast food worker who makes stunning art in her spare time? Is this a form of smartness or do we reserve that word for the educated elite, and call this woman creative? Because creative and smart are not the same thing, right?

How about the stay-at-home mom who juggles the care of two small children, cleaning, meal planning and shopping, bookkeeping for the house, and still manages to organize weekly social gatherings with her friends. That takes some serious energy, organization, and determination. Does it take smarts? Do we value her contribution to society the same way we value a college professor?    

What about the person who never goes to college but instead busks in busy city centers with his guitar and his voice, moving from place to place, discovering that he prefers the simple things in life and forgoing the social norms for this vagabond lifestyle? What do we think of this guy? Do we throw a few bucks in his guitar case because we think he’s smart?

But we all seem to want our kids to be smart i.e. good at school. Really? Why? It’s a values thing. We elevate smart people and pay them according to the amount of schooling they complete—because this is what our culture values. Think a bit about why schooling is so important. (Notice I’m no longer saying “education”) Is it really about the content? When you think about what you “learned” in school, what comes to mind? Quadratic equations? Or how best to jump through hoops? Historically significant dates? Or that sharing your knowledge with your peers is cheating? Do you learn to trust your gut or to defer to authority? Do you learn that everyone has something important to contribute to society, or that some people are just not as smart as others?

I’m not saying learning how to game the system isn’t valuable knowledge—but it might be less valuable in a culture that sees worth in other types of intelligence.

And being smart has its pitfalls. More on this in The Trouble with Being Smart.