Are examinations true measure of intelligence?

A Newspaper article by Scott Bellows, an Assistant Professor in the Chandaria School of Business at USIU-AfricaAs more than 500,000 candidates anxiously await their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results released yesterday, what is the meaning of true intelligence? Can we capture intelligence in standardised tests? Psychologists debate different aspects of intelligence, but in general academic wherewithal falls into one’s intelligence quotient. However, many of us can remember a few smart high scoring students from our secondary school days who wound up leading lacklustre unrewarding careers. As highlighted on March 7, 2014, in the Business Daily, ‘Exam scores do not fairly represent true abilities’, preparation for standardised tests as well as most undergraduate and post-graduate education only nominally prepare students for the real world. Among many issues with formal schooling systems in Kenya that punitively foster convergent thinking rather than divergent thinking, the KCSE fails to capture key indicators of a student’s future success revolving around emotional intelligence and social intelligence. The most popular non-academic aptitude, emotional intelligence, construct exploded onto the academic and corporate stage in 1990 with a seminal research study conducted by John Mayer and Peter Salovey. A cacophony of social scientists as well as laymen, such as journalists, have ever since trumpeted emotional intelligence as the solution to human-centred problems within organisations