Memory, Thinking Intelligence Academic Intelligence:

Memory, Thinking Intelligence

Academic intelligence: critically examining an essay, reading an academic text, computing the answers to a math exam, finding a book using the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress System in a library, arguing with a fellow student on a critical level about a topic in class, participating in an organic chemistry laboratory.

Everyday intelligence: navigating one's way through rush hour traffic, adding up one's bills and finding out if one has enough money to pay for one's expenses, remembering one's way home after going to a new address, persuading one's boss to give one a raise, deciding upon the most nutritious and tasty meal to eat in the school cafeteria, finding the best treadmill in the university gym space, arguing with one's significant other about the best movie to see that night.

Analysis:

In contrast to what one might expect, both categories of academic and everyday usages of intelligence make use of crystallized as well as fluid forms of the intelligences. Thus, when finding a book in the library, one makes use of one's past knowledge of an academic categorization system, just as when one drives one makes past use of a learned, manual skill of operating a car. The main difference is not so much that one type of intelligence requires more memory, or more remembered intelligence, but that everyday intelligences more actively employ bodily memory, such as spatially navigating the roads or manipulating a stick shift, and emotional intelligence, such as emotionally manipulating one's boyfriend or girlfriend that he or she does or does not want to see the latest installation of Jackie Chan's martial arts series at the Multiplex. This is in contrast to making an argument about who to vote for in the upcoming election campaign with a fellow student or the professor in a political science class, where one is more apt to use logic and reasoned discourse, rather than emotion to sway someone to one's position.