The Bell Curve Factor

          It often struck me as funny how we humans so often equate intelligence, education, and experience as the same. They're not!

            And if you buy the Bell Curve idea, then most of us are average in intelligence, as much as that hurts most of us to hear. Now intelligent we humans truly are in general, which is good; and most would say we are at the top of food chain and dominate the earth. This situation is probably due to our intelligence.

            Now we do vary a lot in our educations, and education does matter. Recently a 20 something year old person told me he had never heard of the Bell Curve. A few years ago a  USA presidential candidate said we had 57 states in the new world USA. Recently Ohio (the state) had its name misspelled at a local state university.  A couple of years ago an elected local leader in Michigan did not know that Texas shared a boundary with Mexico.  The percentage of college freshman that need remedial courses is ever growing. So, to me, if we have poorly educated voters and leaders (which I think has been happening), we will probably get poorly educated decisions that do affect our lives never-the-less.

            And then there is experience.  Most know of someone who may not be too smart, maybe poorly educated, but has a lot of experience (probably from the school of hard knocks), and succeeds in life, like is happy. Experience usually comes along with aging, but there are naive old people, too. I guess they just missed out in the school of life, or have been otherwise affected.

            As to the Bell Curve graphic in this post, one either buys it or doesn't buy it.  I buy it. And it applies to more than humans, like even in the distribution of artillery shots, but that is another story.

            Last if you buy the idea that it has taken decades to dumb down our voters and leaders, then it will probably takes decades to recover, like better educate them.  But one has to start somewhere, and to me the local school board election is just as important as the higher level federal presidential election.

            Decades of adding wonderful subjects to educating our children, now often grown voters and leaders, may have caught up.  After all, there are only so many hours in the day, and days in the year, to educate our children; future voters and leaders that they will become. Said another way, every time we add a subject, it usually means, under the table, that we give up something, too. Now most just want to work and have families, and educating them to be happy is a big deal, at least to me. Said even another way, is educating our children the mission, or is education more an adults job program?

            Now that's a voter decision, to me.

            And in the meantime, good on the parents who persevere to educate their children in a way that helps their future, to include their happiness! It certainly does not happen by itself.