Not Every Individual Has the Capacity to Attend High School - Not every individual is suited to the high school environment.
For decades, researcher Elsbeth Stern has dived into the enigma of intelligence. She ponders over its workings and grapples with the debated assertion that men outsmart women. Get smarter with this engaging conversation, drawn from Elsbeth's archive and published in May 2024.
If intelligence can be broken down to its nuts and bolts, cognitive intelligence falls into that category. Since 2006, Elsbeth has served as a professor of learning and instruction research at ETH Zurich, hailed as a trailblazer in her field.
Dissecting the essence of intelligence with Elsbeth Stern has become an engaging dialogue in the "Die Boss" podcast, hosted by Simone Menne, a member of multiple boards. Elsbeth shares her perspective on the definition of intelligence and why social or emotional competence doesn't feature in her extensive studies:
"I find myself displeased when people discuss social or emotional intelligence. This is primarily due to the lack of reliable measuring instruments in this field that can match the quality of the addressing instruments we utilize for intelligence, such as intelligence tests. We aren't able to gauge emotional and social competencies with the same statistical measures as we can with cognitive ability."
Pondering over the statistical distribution of intelligence, Elsbeth explains:
"Approximately 70 percent of people show a reasonably similar level of intelligence, which forms the average. The remaining 30 percent is composed of 15 percent with above-average intelligence and 15 percent with below-average intelligence."
When scrutinizing the distribution of intelligence across genders, the average remains unchanged. However, research reveals a pattern: "There are more men in the lower percentiles, and conversely, we see an abundance of men in the upper echelons. The bottom line is that among the intellectually gifted, the distribution is no longer 50/50, but begins to decline."
Digging deeper into the desire of some parents to classify their child as intellectually gifted and secure them a spot in a gymnasium, Elsbeth shares her insights:
"Given that intelligence follows a normal distribution, this becomes a paradoxical concept to say that half of the students should attend the gymnasium. This means we're actually reinforcing the average, where the largest hump lies."
You can glean more from Elsbeth's informed take on universities, teachers, parents, and what happens when your superior outsmarts your supervisor in the latest episode of "Die Boss - Power is female" on stern.de and RTL+, as well as major podcast platforms.
In "Die Boss - Power is female," prominent women engage in enlightening conversations, led by Simone Menne, who has graced the boards of BMW, Deutsche Post DHL, and Henkel, to name a few. "Die Boss" appears every two weeks, always on Wednesdays.
Note: stern is part of RTL Germany.
Elsbeth Stern discusses the lack of reliable measuring instruments for social or emotional intelligence in her podcast appearance on "Die Boss". In her research, she found that approximately 70% of people have a reasonably similar level of intelligence, forming the average. This distribution of intelligence remains unchanged across genders, but research indicates that there are more men in the lower and higher percentiles of intelligence.
