Flowers for Algernon

I don't know if you've read this book or saw the movie (I did in high school). If you didn't the book is about a developmentally challenged janitor who undergoes an experiment meant to enhance his intelligence and what he learns about life because of it. Algernon by the way is the lab mouse who the experiment was done on first.

But I'm not here to pimp the book or the movie I want to point out a part of the story that I find significant. At one point Charlie Gordon's (the main character) intelligence is so high that it far surpasses that of the doctor experimenting on him. He comments something along the lines of "that it's not right that such a mediocre man should be his judge" Once again I read it like 20 yrs ago so that isn't an exact quote.

I find this idea important because I was just watching a special on CNN about genius and they were discussing how do you recognize genius and it reminded me about somethings when I was in school. One: the kids who went to the "gifted" classes were the ones who asked the most questions (which in my experience is often frowned upon) and two: my learning style didn't mix the way they taught at my school. Mind you I still managed to maintain As and Bs despite a learning disorder and having my own way of learning. But my method of learning is basically "give me the hard stuff first. I'll pick up the easier stuff later". I'll give you this as an example. To learn to spell the word "eight" I spelled it that way even if the context required the past of the verb "eat". I could spell "ate" no problem what I needed to do was drill into my head how to spell "eight" the number. So I got a lot of errors attributed to me because I never followed the exercise. Okay I'm no genius but one of the geniuses in the CNN special pointed out that he felt if had been taught in the regular school system he never would have finished his novel (which is going to be a movie set to be released this November or the next I'm not sure) before he was sixteen because it didn't allow for free time and independent thought.

I guess my point is that genius is not well understood because the people who are interested in defining geniuses aren't geniuses themselves and therefore often miss the geniuses they come across. If only because they are ill equipped to recognize what only the genius can see in the first place. This amounts to a number (I have no idea what the stats are) of potential geniuses having to "bloom" in infertile ground, if they do bloom at all.

I once heard it said that the saddest thing an intelligent person can learn is that "stupid" people run the world they live in. Not an exact quote but that is the sentiment.

It's funny as much as I don't like to argue about differences in intelligence because like anything else it's just an edge not a guaranty of success. I still find myself saying things like, "stupid people shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion." Some of these "stupid" people have said things that have provoked epiphanies for me.

Anyway I just needed to "hear" myself "speak" ;)