• Question: Why are some people dumb? How can you become more clever?

    Asked by iqramahmood to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi iqramahmood,

      I don’t think anyone is ‘dumb’, I think people learn differently. Some people have a special educational need and as a result can’t learn as quickly as other people, and that’s nothing they have done wrong, it’s something they were born with. As a result they sometimes struggle to learn at the same rate as everyone else. For the rest of us, it’s not about whether you are clever or dumb, it’s about how hard you work, everyone I know who has done well at university and since then are the people who worked hard and put the effort in.

      There are a few lucky people who are really really intelligent, but eventually even they have to work at it or they get no-where!

    • Photo: Nuala Carson

      Nuala Carson answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      hey iqramahmood,

      People have different levels of mental capacity, which is why people have different IQ’s. There is a bit of genetics involved (so how smart your parents are) but no matter what you start with practice and exercise of your brain will improve your intelligence. Which means that the harder you work at school the stronger you brain actually becomes.

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Hi iqramahmood,
      I don’t think anyone is dumb. Different people have different abilities in different things, and also different people learn in different ways.

      For example, people think that as a scientist I’m fairly smart, but when it comes to anything musical or arty, I’m completely hopeless. I just don’t ‘get’ art at all. But my girlfriend is really arty and musical, it just comes naturally to her.

      The other thing is for people to find something that interests them. If you find something interesting, you’ll be prepared to put the extra work in to be good and something. If you find something boring, it’ll always be a struggle to get good at it.

    • Photo: Gemma Purser

      Gemma Purser answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      I dont think anyone is dumb. There is always something that the person stood next to you knows more about than you do and vice versa, you might know more about them on a different subject.

      I dont think clever exsists really either, its just that those people have learnt more about a particular subject or subjects in the time they have had. It doesn’t mean people wont get to the same point eventually. It may just take some longer than others to get there.
      There will always be things that people dont know and the best way to know more is just listen, read and learn but to do that you have to want to do it, work hard but enjoy it too. Everyone gets given a brain when they are born its down to us how we chose to programme it later on in life.

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