Stupidity and Intelligence are worlds apart. If people have a lower intelligence, you can just tell, and you make allowances. But then there are the stupid people who just need a good smack.

I always think of common sense as having two parts. There’s the obvious part, like don’t touch hot objects or you will get burnt, don’t walk out in traffic or you’ll get run over. But then there is the other sort, the sort that when a person opens their mouth, you’re left wondering if their brain is actually wired up to everything the way it’s supposed to be.

On a different tack, one thing I have noticed here to do with intelligence. People have said for a few years now that the school exams are getting easier. Yet at the same time they are complaining that people are getting lower grades than ever.

For that I blame the education system. When I was at school, maths was taught with a calculator. With the result I left school without knowing more than 25% of my times tables, and no mental arithmetic ability whatsoever.

We were told that it was more important to get our thoughts on paper rather than take the chance of stifling the child?s expression with things like spelling or grammar. So I left school with poor spelling and terrible grammar. (Neither of which have improved much with age)

In instances like that, who is to blame, the child who did as they were taught, or the education system that didn’t teach the basic fundamentals?

So much depends on the education system which is staffed by disillusioned and underpaid people who have almost no ability to control their pupils any more, is it any wonder that it is slipping?

I am not unintelligent, I was reading before I even started school, after my first year at school I was reading books targeted at children 3 or 4 years older then I was, yet I had no concept of grammar, poor spelling and went to high school unable to distinguish between C and K as letters, yet my IQ is in the top 5% of the country ( sat one of those mensa tests and that was the result - I was stunned!). I left school with very poor qualifications, yet I went to college and re-sat my high school courses and improved in every single subject. Does that say more about me, or about the schooling I received?

I think it is tragic that we are expected to have one set of knowledge in the work place, but are taught a different set of rules by the education system.

A calculator is all well and good, but when you go shopping and have to use your cellphone to check you have been given the right amount of change, or when you want to check how much vat you are paying on an item, but have no clue how to work it out. These are simple and basic things that you need to be able to do throughout life. Yet I for one was never taught them properly. Mental arithmetic was barely looked at. Spelling was looked at, but just as often it was overlooked. Grammar was overlooked entirely.

So tell me how is a person working in an office or general admin environment supposed to manage to get and keep gainful employment when they can’t do simple things like write a letter, or a report, add up a set of figures without having to run around for a calculator, dictionary and the nearest computer for spell and grammar checking functions.

People are not unintelligent, but they can only learn what the system teaches them, and by the time they have reached an age where they realise that it is not enough, the bad habits have already formed and become a part of the foundation of their entire education.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I would and I would know what needed to be changed. But I can’t and the failings of the education system have generated consequences that I have to live with for the rest of my life.

Knowledge may be power, but misinformation is worse than not knowing in the first place.