Asking, “Which is more important, education or intelligence?”, is somewhat like asking “Which wheels on a car are more important, the front wheels or the back wheels?” The answer is that they are both vital and they work together as vital components in achieving goals. Intelligence, without some degree of education, is merely unharnessed potential, while education without intelligence is impotent.
When Einstein was in Boston, a reporter challenged him with a question taken from the famous Edison test, “Dr. Einstein, what is the speed of sound?” Einstein responded, “I don’t carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” The reporter persisted, “Mr. Edison contends that a college education is of little value.” Einstein responded, “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” A decade later, when Edison was interviewed on his 84th birthday, he was asked what he thought of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He responded, “I don’t think anything of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity because I don’t understand it.”
Edison was an intelligent man, but he was unable to understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, because he lacked the requisite educational background in mathematics and physics required to understand the theory. Although Einstein was a brilliant scientist, he refused the offer to become the second Prime Minister of Israel, admitting that he lacked the experiential knowledge demanded of a politician.
Most psychologists agree that intelligence is composed of two components: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is related to neural efficiency, manifest in the ability to learn quickly, solve problems, comprehend abstract ideas, and retain information in short-term memory long enough to make connections. The more efficiently the brain is “hard-wired” in its neural connections, the greater the fluid intelligence. Neurologists are exploring different brain structures using new brain scanning technologies to ascertain which neural structures correspond to greater fluid intelligence, but these studies are still in their infancy. However, it is generally believed that a person’s fluid intelligence is mainly determined by the genes they inherit.
Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, represents the accumulated experience and knowledge that underpins comprehension and judgement–cognitive abilities that grow and mature over time. This component of intelligence depends largely on environmental factors such as a person’s home environment, education (whether formal or informal) and career. A person who grows up in a home where learning is valued, where ideas are discussed, and where free-thinking is encouraged has a huge intellectual head start relative to those who come from homes bereft of intellectual interest. Of course we have no control over our genes or the home environment in which we spent our early years, so our efforts to increase our intelligence must be aimed at increasing our crystallized intelligence, i.e., expanding the depth and scope of our cerebral experiences, including intense education in the area where we wish to succeed.
