IQ, UQ, We all Q
I've been following with some fascination the toing and froing over Boris Johnson's speech about how some people with a low IQ will be perpetually consigned to the lower echelons of society. According to Boris those with high IQ scores will always rise to the top and should therefore be thanked for their mighty contributions to society, and be given knighthoods for the huge taxes they pay. Needless to say, I don't believe a word of his tosh, and agree with those who have called him 'elitist' for his speech (and general attitude over many years).
Now, I cannot recall ever taking an IQ test, so I've no idea what my score would be, and hence my 'proper' place on the Boris scale. I did pass the Eleven Plus, and went to a grammar school, though left at seventeen, mostly out of boredom. As luck would have it, eleven years later, I was hired by the Open University to do project control work for the Faculty Of Science. I took the job with some trepidation, wondering how I was going to get on in an institution filled with people whose educational accomplishments were so much greater than my own. I very rapidly learned that degrees and doctorates don't matter a damn when it comes to organising production of OU material, because some of the most distinguished academics in the place had difficulties organising their way out of paper bags. High IQ? Check! Low degree of common sense? Also check!
I stayed in the Science Faculty doing their project control work for thirty years, until I took early retirement. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, met some fascinating people, but also some exasperating ones, too. They probably all had IQs way above mine, but that didn't mean they were all capable of functioning at a high level, and I've no doubt the same applies in most walks of life. A towering IQ is no guarantee that someone is a high flyer, and a low IQ is not necessarily a sign that someone is destined to bump along on the bottom. IQ tests have rarely been an indicator of a person's ability to successfully function in society, and you only have to look at the number of political gaffes Boris Johnson manages to inflict on his long-suffering PR staff to see how erroneous they can be.
Now, I cannot recall ever taking an IQ test, so I've no idea what my score would be, and hence my 'proper' place on the Boris scale. I did pass the Eleven Plus, and went to a grammar school, though left at seventeen, mostly out of boredom. As luck would have it, eleven years later, I was hired by the Open University to do project control work for the Faculty Of Science. I took the job with some trepidation, wondering how I was going to get on in an institution filled with people whose educational accomplishments were so much greater than my own. I very rapidly learned that degrees and doctorates don't matter a damn when it comes to organising production of OU material, because some of the most distinguished academics in the place had difficulties organising their way out of paper bags. High IQ? Check! Low degree of common sense? Also check!
I stayed in the Science Faculty doing their project control work for thirty years, until I took early retirement. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, met some fascinating people, but also some exasperating ones, too. They probably all had IQs way above mine, but that didn't mean they were all capable of functioning at a high level, and I've no doubt the same applies in most walks of life. A towering IQ is no guarantee that someone is a high flyer, and a low IQ is not necessarily a sign that someone is destined to bump along on the bottom. IQ tests have rarely been an indicator of a person's ability to successfully function in society, and you only have to look at the number of political gaffes Boris Johnson manages to inflict on his long-suffering PR staff to see how erroneous they can be.