I’m not an expert on this at all but I think that IQ is an extremely dodgy topic. It’s dodgy socially and I think, this is not original, I mean Sir Peter Medawar said this before I did years ago, that it’s really wrong to think of IQ as one dimension that you can get, say, a child at school, you give a number, and that rates him for the rest of his life, you know. Now, one reason, I think, against it and I think Peter Medawar said the same thing, is that there are many, many different kinds of abilities. One might be amazingly good at cooking, arithmetic, philosophy, doing a television interview, even being in that interview possibly, some people look better than others, I don’t claim to be very good myself, but you really need a sort of a sub-IQ point for these different dimensions. We’re not one dimensional, we’re multi-dimensional creatures with an enormous range of abilities. Now, it’s very important because if you’ve got, say, a child at school who rated with low IQ because he’s no good at history or Latin or mathematics or something, it doesn’t mean he’s not going to be amazing at cooking or making a home or making damn funny jokes, becoming a millionaire on the radio, you know, with jokes or something. Indeed, this can happen, so I think the trick is to show children the variety of possibilities, find out what they would really like to develop in themselves and have the freedom and the opportunities and the rewards to develop for themselves what they want to do and not in a very rigid framework. I don’t believe in a rigid framework and then I think they will get the sense of self worth if they’re good at making meringues or they’re good at doing differential equations. The trick is not exactly to say it’s as good to be able to do differential equations as it is to make a meringue but at least say both things are worth doing, let’s reward and in a way feel that people who do either are worthy and worthwhile.
So what would your ideal school be like?
Well, it would be a like the slightly mad school I went to, King Alfred’s. I’ve got to be careful about this because it’s still there, lots of very bright and good people go to it and I think it’s a jolly good school but I would have more discipline. I would decide which subject you really have to learn, nitty gritty, and get people to learn it even if it’s boring and make sure they’ve got the basics, I really would do that. But I think the trick is one can and should run before one can walk. I don’t believe necessarily in doing this sequentially. What I actually think is this. I think that if one is trying to do something and you realise you’re hopeless at it, then there are two things you can do. You can give it up or you can say, golly, I’ve really got to learn such and such in order to be able to do it, and 10% of those children are going to say to themselves, I would really like to speak Latin or write Latin at least, you know, I’ve got to learn these verbs or whatever, and then you do because you’ve run enough and fallen over to know that it’s worth while and it comes from yourself not from the word of a teacher. You have to discover for yourself what you want to do, discover what you’re inadequate at in order to achieve it, then you’ve got the incentive, if you go that way, to get the nitty gritty groundwork done, then you can achieve. I think you need this flexibility.
