Why Intelligence is a Curse, or, You Can't Make Your Baby Smart

You don't have to be smart 

to succeed

I really don't understand our current preoccupation with intelligence.

Parents bend over backwards, plying their infants with breast milk, omega enhanced foods and anything else they think may make their kid grow up smart. They send them to lessons and enrichment activities like french and kindermusic, and fight to enrol them in $20,000 a year Montessori kindergartens.

I work in a top private high school and teachers struggle with the less gifted students who are usually so bored at being in class they disrupt everyone. Stupidity is the common evil, a shared enemy that galvanises the aspirational middle classes of any Western city from Sydney to San Diego.

But show me a learning disabled kid and I'll show you someone who will likely grow up happy, surrounded by friends, in a rewarded career such as sales, management, marketing or real estate. This child is more than likely to have a stable solid career, lasting relationships and affluence. Who cares that they never mastered addition, love watching footy, think Hitler is a fancy dish, and can't spell?

Show me a smart kid and I'll show you someone who may very well grow up a tortured academic, too intelligent to settle for a simple relationship or stable career, looking down the barrel of divorce, unsteady jobs, lower than average income and growing university debts from too much study and changing faculties too often.

The silliest girl in my school, let's call her Patty, was so dumb she never learnt to write a decent sentence and doesn't read. She grew up to work at McDonald's, became a manager by age 20 and is now at the upper management ranks of that corporation. Another very unintelligent girl worked in administration until she married a Spanish chef. Numerous other, mostly male, students who failed every subject at school are the wealthiest people I know working hard as plumbers, electricians and other generously remunerated tradespeople. They enjoy holidays snowboarding in Whistler and sun baking in Italy. They live in large houses with cleaners. And ironically, they send their kids to private schools.

Conversely, the intelligent kids are not faring quite so well, especially when you take into account the effort, time, lost income and money required to study at university. While their less able counterparts like Patty were working and training, earning money on the job and paying little or nothing for vocational qualifications, the smart kids were studying, racking up debts at universities around the world and unable to afford even basic food and accommodation. Scholarships barely covered fees and are few and far between.

A few years later, smart Katharine and silly Patty sit next to each other at a 25th birthday party. Patty works hard, but is richly compensated. She owns her beachside flat, drives a nice car and has a pretty good life filled with social engagements, friends, holidays and shopping trips.

Katharine completed uni several years ago and is still trying to find a job she finds satisfying. She worked in corporations but found it stultifying and went backpacking in Europe instead. She has been in the low or no income bracket most her life and is considering returning to university to do a PhD as there is nothing else she can find that suits her ability or desire for stimulation.

Just a quick illustration on why you shouldn't really care about intelligence.

IQ doesn't matter. You should probably just admit that even though being smart is desirable it is not even caused by ingesting omega. Intelligence is actually genetic! So relax and get back to that reality TV show and stop worrying about things you can't control in a society that celebrates stupidity.