Development of the Intellect

Charles Debelak
This series of blogs is taken from articles by Charles Debelak in the Birchwood School of Hawken's Clipboard during the 2017-18 school year. The purpose of Mr. Debelak's Clipboard articles is to provide parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and Mr. Debelak's 40+ years educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents
 
In previous essays I have tried to establish that the aim of education should be each child’s becoming. That within the context of typical elementary education in core subjects, students would learn deeper, more enduring lessons of how to become a strong, productive, and beautiful person. I also have supplied a good historical, philosophical, and scientific foundation to support this claim. Now I would like to clarify why the development of intellect and character creates the educational framework for nurturing the becoming life.

A Definition of Intellect

When I use the term intellect, I am referring to the unique, universal, human capacity to think and reason. In the big picture, intellect encompasses the way someone thinks about and interprets life: how to live, why to live. It considers the pathway for personal and social betterment, which expresses a pathway toward happiness. It reflects upon and searches for answers to the questions, “Who am I? What can I become? What can I do for others?” Intellectual thinking asks “What are the best ways for me to pursue my growth and development? How can I live harmoniously and productively among others: my family, friends, and society?” The intellect envisions and forges a pathway for life that will create excellence for myself and others.

The intellect, or perhaps better described as intellectual thinking, includes knowing, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Intellectual thinking makes sound judgements and it makes those judgements based upon an accumulation of knowledge coupled with an awareness and sensitivity to current situations and environments. Intellectual thinking is awake to ideas and opinions of others. It’s always learning and growing its capacities. Intellectual thinking enables a person to confidently face problems, challenges, and obstacles. Intellectual capacity imagines and creates pathways of life that lead to goodness and value, regardless of circumstances.

I think it helps to better understand intellectual thinking if we place it on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is a life with little or no intellectual thinking. It is a reactionary life. Its decisions and behaviors are defined and driven by immediate gratification: “What makes me feel good right now?” It is marked by decisions of passion rather than of thought. It satisfies our base instincts without thought to consequences. It is usually self-centered and selfish.

This is not to say that sometimes our passionate reactions to life’s circumstances are always wrong. In my next essay I will identify where passionate reactions to life can be a good thing. But in general, a reactionary life seldom has good outcomes.

At the other end of the spectrum is the quintessential, intellectual life. Its approach is thoughtful, circumspect, prudent. It struggles with choices that can lead to fulfillment and to the good of others. It collects knowledge. It listens in humility to advice of others to gain greater knowledge and wider perspective. Intellectual thinking analyzes and critiques information to form wise judgments, and it seeks to do good, for self and others. Intellectual thinking at its best aspires and labors to produce progress and beauty.

It is important to recognize that intellect is not the same as intelligence. Intelligence is a genetic endowment sometimes affected by environment, but generally limited by heredity. Intelligence is a mental capacity that can be measured in terms of speed of learning, complexity of learning, and breadth of learning. It is different from one child to the next and can be changed little by education. On the other hand, the capacity for intellectual thinking is part of our common human heritage. Every child is born with the capacity to think well. Yet this capacity needs to be cultivated because through this capacity, every individual, every child can learn to think well about his life and to become the best version of himself in work, life, and play.

Why is it important to distinguish between intellect and intelligence? The implications for education are significant. Since ALL children are born with intellectual capacities, all can learn to think well, reason, and cultivate wisdom. This is true whether they are highly intelligent or not. Intellectual capacities do not belong exclusively to very smart people. Conventional wisdom would suggest intellectual work belongs solely to the scholar, statesman, or public intellectual. Not so. Intellectual work is a possibility for every human being. It is part of our common human heritage and it is the obligation of good education to cultivate that capacity regardless of intelligence. The distinction here is important. Intelligence is what we start with at birth. It varies from person to person like our height, body structure, or dexterity. We can modify our genetic endowments very little.

The capacity for intellectual thinking, however, describes ways of thinking that empower each person to become the best version of themselves. It is a pathway of thinking by which we make the most of who we are. Intellect describes the thinking processes in our personal development and in our uplifting impact upon others. Intellectual thinking is a means by which each of us attains some level of personal fulfillment in life and equips us to face the varied circumstances of life. This view of the intellect is at the core of our work at Birchwood. We accept that intelligence varies from person to person. Not everyone can become a scientist or a university scholar. Unquestionably these professions require very high intelligence which is not common to everyone. But this fact does not make intelligence special. Highly intelligent people have also made a mess of their own lives and that of others.

It is far more important to recognize that everyone, all children, can develop their intellectual thinking to make the most of the gifts and capacities they have received through birth. Consequently, we neither exalt those of high intelligence nor demean those of less intelligence. But through our challenging academic programming, we guide each child how to think well and how to think better each year of his or her life. At Birchwood, intelligence is just a starting point. Our work is to train children how to think intellectually. We know that our students represent a wide range of natural abilities, yet the core of our educational program is teaching children to think well ... about school, about friends, about recreational choices, about their use of time, about their teen years, about their future.

Our educational aim is to enable children to lead a becoming life. This requires the development of the intellect, the ability to think well, to think “rightly” concerning who we are, what we hope to do, and how we hope to live.

From the March 2018 Birchwood School of Hawken Clipboard
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