Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?

So I was working with a teenage girl yesterday on some of her history homework. It occurred to me that she didn't understand the questions her teacher was asking her. And when she gave answers, they didn't exactly make sense. I wondered for a moment why she was struggling so much. I will be honest, at one moment she started to write a paragraph inside another paragraph that was unrelated.I lost my patience and probably used a tone I should not have. I realized after I thought about it that she was struggling so much because she had never been pushed to think this much. She probably did not have parents that pushed her to excel at school. She has never taken school that seriously and she is failing some of her classes due to this.I have this strong belief that the brain is a muscle and the more you exercise it the easier and better you can use it. If you have not been taught how to use your brain from a young age, you will struggle as you get older and older. I don't think that intelligence is just something that you are born with. There are cases of people who are maybe genetically smarter than the rest of us, but normally I think most of us are in the same ballpark when it comes to how much smarts we are born with.We like to think that some people are born with better brains. I tend to disagree, I think some people are born with better educations and support from their family. If you have not been encouraged to do well and think a lot, then you will probably have more and more trouble doing it as you get older. Young childhood is the time where we first learn how to use our brain effectively. If someone skips that phase, it's hard to catch up.I don't believe in IQ tests and such things. I think those tests are again measuring how educated a person is, not how innately intelligent they are. I'm not even sure if real intelligence can be measured. There is the creative side of intelligence that some artists have that is difficult to quantitate and also the emotional intelligence which is just as hard to gauge.I like to think I'm intelligent, but I don't think it was because I was born this way. I had parents who pushed me to do well in school, who taught me a lot of subjects at home before I even learned them in school. At the age of around eight, my dad was trying to teach me about negative numbers. Of course, not being so proficient in math, I'm not sure I understood him, but he made me think, think hard.When I was in an all-white neighborhood where I grew up until I was twelve in Livonia, Michigan, I was the smartest person in my class very often. However, when I moved to Troy, Michigan, there were so many Asians and Indians and I was no longer at the top of the heap.Are Asians and Indians naturally smarter than white people? Not at all. The immigrants who came to this country are often the smartest in their class because they came here to go to college. There are a lot of not so smart people in India and all over Asia. The difference between the kids that are Indian or Asian in America is that our parents worked so hard to get to America, they implanted that same work ethic into their children.The harder to you work, the smarter you get.I could probably be smarter if I thought more. However, what is the point of being the most intelligent person? Intelligence does not equal contentment. Intelligence is knowing things and understanding how to solve problems. But oddly enough it does not teach you how to solve the ultimate problem of life. How to be happy.If I had to choose between being happier or more intelligent, I would choose happy in a heartbeat. I think it's harder to be happy then it is to be smart. Happiness is a knowledge and an art. But it is not exactly book knowledge. It is a feeling, and feeling something and thinking something are two different things.Do you need intelligence for art? Is creativity a type of intelligence? I'm not sure, it might be something different altogether. It may be a kind of intuitive spirituality.I often wonder if intelligence and spirituality go hand in hand. Do you have to be book smart to know yourself? I don't think so, I think again it is a type of intuition, connection with the self and the world that leads to spirituality.To be truly alive and really live this life may or may not have to do with your intelligence. To be passionate and kind, I don't think that you necessarily need to be smart. To be good does not require any worldly knowledge, but it may require a type of spirituality once again.I guess maybe the goal is to be a good person, a smart person, a creative person, and a spiritual person. I wonder if you can be all these things at once. I like to think I have a little of all of these characteristics. However, for me, it is most important to be kind and to recognize the spirit in me and in the world. I think this will lead me to happiness, a state of mind that can only be enhanced by intelligence.My mother used to say that if I kept questioning everything that I would never understand anything. Sometimes we become so 'intelligent' that we question our very existence. I don't think there is such a thing as asking too many questions. I think much of the knowledge we are seeking is within us, in our spirit. That is simply my point of view, it may not be a scientifically proven, intelligent perspective.But it is what I feel. What is more important, what I feel or what I think?I'll choose good feelings over good thoughts any day. But perhaps good thoughts lead to good feelings.It's all a circle and we come back to us. Our selves are the only factor that remains the same.We are most intelligent if we can question our own intelligence.nina