Increasing intelligence

I have always been interested the idea of developing the gifted and wondered why we aren't all inventing creating and displaying understanding at a high level. I was optimistic that we were becoming smarter and smarter as inhabitants of the blue planet. A visit to the Waikato Museum made me reflect on this. The Da Vinci exhibition here in Hamilton showed this man who lived over 500 years ago and did so much for us, so much thinking and doing in one lifetime. While this man was an exception it would be good to think that we could all be capable of more. In a conversation with Mark Treadwell I remember him saying "the world is running out of smart people." We certainly have some challenges ahead of us and will need to maximise our smart people. Is this just a case of genetics? Royce Helm the headmaster of my school talks of "Intelligence is like a balloon which can be increased". Can we provide the conditions for increasing intelligence and still keep the benchmarkers happy? I think the answer is yes. The assessment process for basic literacy numeracy skills needs to provide information naturally so that we can take care of the basics with out spending huge effort to work out what these are. I share Suzie's dislike for league tables found in the linked post. If we are to increase our intelligence balloons education has to step up to the plate and take responsible risks some of these of the top of my head are

any webspiration user who want to collaborate in this diagram can email me and I will add them as authors.

On a final note in my mind we are definitely going to need help foster creativity to help us. Here is a reflection from a team of teachers at school as to what may effect the fostering of creativity