What did I learn in the Class? Intelligence/Wisdom!

I learned a HUGE amount. If I had to Pick one topic: The material in ch. 8 on INTELLIGENCE. I posted last class on intelligence because someone made a comment on only cognitive part, but even though I then said that Intelligence was more holistic, I learned in this class (Human Dev.) that intelligence is really, simply, a holistic concept. I work with criminals, and admire Stanton Samenows work. Even though Im a liberal He says Criminals are responsible and aren't victims! Further, I realized from Ch. 8 that criminals, esp. repeat offenders, are extremely unintelligent. Even so-called smart criminals are really stupid. The basic definition of INTELLIGENCE is: The ability to solve problems and to adapt to and learn from lifes everyday experiences. Clearly, many (not all, of course) criminals DON'T learn! Yes, some do, but many (esp. repeat offenders) don't. You grow up knowing things are more difficult when you do things wrong. But even smart criminals, at the very least, have ZERO WISDOM. NO WISDOM. I was somewhat aware of the nature of WISDOM because I teach philosophy. Philo—sophia. Love of Wisdom. I always associated Living an Ethical Life or Living the Good Life (in the ancient Greek sense of Eudiamonia) with WISDOM, but now given what Ive learned in this Human Dev. class about INTELLIGENCE, I can associate the Good Life with INTELLIGENCE, and then WISDOM suddenly becomes even MORE important and less mystical that it was before. This means I'll be able to actually add a lot to the philosophy class--add another dimension, if you will. In Ethics class, we do a Peggy Sue Got Married exercise. This exercise shows that the Ethical life is desirable. If a 30 year old adult wakes up one morning and finds themselves back in high school, with their full adult awareness, and theyre asked to report how theyd do things different, they ALWAYS report they would: Take school more seriously, be more creative, take up more music/art, be friendlier with people, listen to their parents more, relate to people better, have more interest in life, seek more harmony instead of rebelling, be more in tune with nature. And what are these? They are GARDNERS FACTORS OF INTELLIGENCE! I've done this many times (10 times or more), and the students say the same thing every time. Now, I can directly associate those factors with Intelligence, and can do more with Wisdom when the class gets to that point. So, taking this UoP class will change the way I teach my classes. I learned that because intelligence is more holistic, that environmental factors make a huge difference in developing intelligence. Learning about the difference between Crystallized Intelligence (which increases with age), and Fluid Intelligence (which decreases with age) put many things in perspective for me. Near the end of ch. 8 is the section on WISDOM, and I learned a lot about that because learning about Intelligence put Wisdom more in perspective, and de-mystified Wisdom. I knew Wisdom has to do with Judgment and insight, but learning that Wisdom doesnt necessarily increase with Age was very telling and put many things into perspective, and knowing that Wisdom sort of rubs off contingent upon your experiences and whether or not the people around you are wise or not is also very telling.