coogar:

smart at what? making money or writing chemical equations?
if a drug dealer is not careful, it's the graduate that would siphon the money he stashed into another account located thousands of miles away.

shymexx:
That's what you think, bro... You need to be able to separate real life from the four walls of a classroom... How many graduates have been able to transfer all the tosh we all get indoctrinated with in school to real life situations??

Real-Mccoy:
I worked with Japanese and chinese engineers that could only understand the word "food" and "Dollars" without using their translation device at work yet their production utility was higher than a Nigerian that studied English in a Nigerian university. Who cares about spoken english these days?

shymexx:

Rastafarians are more intelligent than most university lecturers, quote me on that as well...

emmatok:

Sorry, ENGLISH IS A LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION, if you live in Francophone country you will read, write and communicate in French.
How do you think an English Professor will perform in Portugal.

That is why Mathematics, and other scientific courses has universal standard irrespective of language.

pro01:

Well, if one lives in a Francophone country, and one claims to be educated and intelligent, it is expected that one should be able to communicate effectively in French. . .which is the language in which one learnt all he knows or claims to know. Then again, even mathematics and other scientific courses are taught in specific languages that require comprehension skills to assimilate, and communicative skills to teach or explain. It doesn't matter if it is English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, or Mandarin. The fact remains that it is inexcusable to have a poor grasp of a language in which you received all your formal education - from primary school to tertiary level. In that case, it will be difficult to convince anyone that you know what you're doing.

However, like I mentioned earlier, it is possible to be a genius in other areas (numeracy, street-smarts, business acumen, etc) in spite of one's poor language communications skills. I am only suggesting a point of view that is widely held and certainly plausible.

coogar:
plenty of them.....
the opportunity to showcase those acquired skills are few and far in between. so let's separate the opportunity to display the acquired skills from the ability to transform what was learnt into real life situations!

Flytefalls:

shymexx:
How do you mean "plenty of them?" For every educated idiot with all the paper-qualifications in the world - I'll give you a Bill Gate, or 50cent... Also, we don't even need 90% of the tosh we get indoctrinated with, yet they still force us to learn these things...

Personally, I don't judge people's intelligence based on their pencraft - I judge them based on what they've got up there and how they can communicate effectively...

shymexx:

I've met super-intelligent rastas... Benjamin Zephaniah is one of them...

Benjamin Zephaniah vs. any educated writer with a Ph.D...

coogar:
bill gates and 50 cent didn't go to school? what are you talking about?
that they dropped out of school does not mean they never received any formal education all their lives. people tend to get it wrong when they mention bill gates like he's a complete illiterate. no he's not - he got into havard(scored 1590 out of 1600 in SAT).

you have to go to school and receive some formal education before you can even have anything upstairs. sit a chils down at home to eat and drink......no exposure at all then come back and tell me how that child would show any form of intelligence - na yam?

Flytefalls:
.. then you must also be a guardian reader . I've only read his articles on there and when I have the chance. I appreciate his clarity. I wonder what you, the real life not-so-"shy-me", could have discussed upon meeting him?

I grew up living with Rasta's ya know. Very conscious people that shaped my early years .

shymexx:
We judge a person's level of education based on the qualifications they attained... and since Bill Gates and 50cent, never went beyond the G.E.D level; they're both basically "illiterates." Whatever he got in SAT is irrelevant here - that won't get him a top executive job in a Fortune 500 company!

Intelligence has nothing to do with all that... Language is means of communicating with one another, you can't use it as a pretext to ascertain a person's intelligence...
What about dyslexic people??

shymexx:

Lmaoo... I'm an avid Guardian reader and also a big fan of Benjamin...

Anyway, I'm about to change my handle to "ShymexxLion" to support my rasta brothers!! Jah bless!!

Ishsoph: @op u push me to conclude that u wanna use this thread to giv urself a pat at d back 4 all d gbaguans u write/intend to spew on this forum. And possibly use it to redeem ur fast eroding respect nd confidence here too. Honestly how many educated not-so-smarts would use "suggest that" twice in a line of writen sentence? That teeters on lack of choice of words(which ofcourse abound) to dsplace ur "suggest that". Heck! U'd "heard some girls say THINGS like" whoever makes poor choice of words like this ntori Olowun! Whatever happens to atleast "makes STATEMENTS/COMMENTS like this"? Then comes ur "been" in place of "BEING". Obviously this is not an expository essay, but u could have redeem ur image by a good write up seeing that u are talking about "good english(well spoken english), education n intelligence. Abeg am off to my bed. Wont be a contributor in mediocre's thread. Hoping am not ban by morning sha(for sure u'll hide my post).

Ishsoph: @op u push me to conclude that u wanna use this thread to giv urself a pat at d back 4 all d gbaguans u write/intend to spew on this forum. And possibly use it to redeem ur fast eroding respect nd confidence here too. Honestly how many educated not-so-smarts would use "suggest that" twice in a line of writen sentence? That teeters on lack of choice of words(which ofcourse abound) to dsplace ur "suggest that". Heck! U'd "heard some girls say THINGS like" whoever makes poor choice of words like this ntori Olowun! Whatever happens to atleast "makes STATEMENTS/COMMENTS like this"? Then comes ur "been" in place of "BEING". Obviously this is not an expository essay, but u could have redeem ur image by a good write up seeing that u are talking about "good english(well spoken english), education n intelligence. Abeg am off to my bed. Wont be a contributor in mediocre's thread. Hoping am not ban by morning sha(for sure u'll hide my post).

omicron: Wisdom..... Bring a case of conflict or crime to a wise village elder and he would analyse and resolve it same way an iconic justice from Harvard would have. That is wisdom! He may not be able to learn English or any other language as much as you could, he may not be able to read or write, but he is wise.

Intelligence...ok, both of us are Igbos and we are to learn English. Having been exposed to the same learning condtions, you could speak English better than me. I think you are more intelligent.

Education...you have gone to school or exposed to some specific learning, leading you to acquire certain knowledge or skills that you wouldnt ordinarily have acquired such as reading and writing or solving mathematic equations. You may not be wise, nor must you be so intelligent, but you have got some education. But in the end, the measure of education is the measure sum total of what someone knows and is.

All of them are related though, but we confuse them a lot. Speaking English is not an absolute sign of education since those that speak it as first language do not necesarry need any 'education' to learn it. On the other hand, since the more intelligent people learn better and faster, to some extent, the person who has learnt better is supppsed to be better educated, or learned.

Smartness is a different thing altogether.

coogar:
that would be the same bill gates that reached the sophomore year in havard, scored 1590/1600. an illiterate cannot read and write therefore 50 cent or bill gates cannot be illiterates. that argument is washed up. you need 300 credits to graduate from college. you completed yours and i completed 295 of mine. you graduated and i did not - are you trying to say 5 credit points is the difference literacy and the illiteracy levels between us? come on - it cannot be!

if you cannot grasp the command of any language you were taught from your childhood to adolescence then you are not intelligent - it's as simple as that. dyslexic people have an ailment. you are throwing another matter into debate bringing that up!

Flytefalls:
*longest hiss*

Haile Selassie is choking on the dust created when he turned vigorously in his grave

Afam4eva:
There are people who never went to school but are fluent in English. Does it mean they're educated?

shymexx:
However, can he get a top executive, or just a normal graduate job with a blue-chip company - yes or no??

You need to understand that our brains function differently and our ability to grasp things is also different... That's what makes us human because we're all different... So, judging a person's intelligence based on his/her ability to grasp a language and not his/her ability get things done in the real world is just asinine, to be honest...

Obiagu1: I have an IQ of 145 but my written and spoken English is not so good, though I am well educated.
Does it mean I am a dunce?

Einstein never took an IQ test (they are a fairly recent development) so no one knows what his IQ is. But the fact that he was brilliant in some fields doesn't mean he would have had a high IQ. There are people, called 'idiot savants' who are incredibly brilliant in one field, but hopeless at other things. For some reason, mathematics is often the field of special intensity - they can calculate numbers in their heads that you or I would have trouble entering into a computer, and solve them faster than the computer. They can tell you what day of the week any date in history was, or project it forward into the future. But they may not be able to figure out how to get across town on a bus. So IQ, no matter how high it is, doesn't always indicate brilliance. And your personal IQ can and does vary over your lifetime, so it isn't a set number.

It is used as a guide, however. IQs of under 80 are generally deemed to need assisted living conditions, those with IQs over 135 are MENSA level. These are people who sit around and do math problems for fun and find sudoko and crosswords much too easy.

Some people with high IQs are not especially socially adept, because they can't undestand how other people (with lower IQs) have such trouble understanding things that come naturally to them. Others with high IQs are wonderful, kind and caring people. So there aren't really any generalizations you can make about people with high or low IQs.

omicron: No we don't go to school to learn English but we do English as a subject too. And recall I said after the two people have been exposed to the same learning conditions. I used the illustration simply to suggest that 'intelligence' is the ability to learn...the more intelligent, the better and faster the learning.

Obiagu1: I have an IQ of 145 but my written and spoken English is not so good, though I am well educated.
Does it mean I am a dunce?

MacLovington: .
Even though I think IQ test is overated(too Caucasian-orientated), you are not a dunce!

Some of the smartest people I have seen (Mathematicians, medics, scientists etc) don't speak great English.

shymexx:

Err... I was trying to join the rasta movement for you, sis... - change of heart..

Gatts act Jamaican for my future Jamaican Queen friend..

danniyal: English language is just a means of communication like any other language on earth.A young lad that is being spoken to in english will grow up to speak good english even without going to school at all.The chinese, russians etc dont speak english yet they are very intelligent people and doing better than us with all our big big grammar.We should judge intelligence based on ones ability to carry out effectively the tasks given to him

coogar:
why not?
he didn't drop out because he is a dullard - he dropped out to pursue his dreams. SAT is a much harder exam to pass than GED and his high score of 1590/1600 shows he's more intelligent than any nigerian graduate that has ever taken the exam. so bill gates wasn't a dullard and there are plenty of jobs he could have gotten without a college degree.....

even dogs with lower intelligence grasp language not to talk of humans!
any human being that was taught and trained in a particular language for 15 years should be able to grasp a good command of that language. if he fails at it then that human being is not intelligent!

the people throwing asians and germans who cannot speak english into this are just pissing in the wind.....english is not the official language in china, mandarin is! so i would not expect such people to speak english language fluently. however, nigerians are taught A, B, C throughout their lifetime so what's the excuse?