Dogs and Chimpanzees
I recently read an interesting article about animal intelligence.
Apparently, dogs are better than chimpanzees at distinguishing human
signals, even though chimpanzees are generally thought to be more
intelligent. This is not particularly counterintuitive, since
dogs evolved alongside humans, and natural selection probably favored
those that could understand some human communication.
It is also suggestive about different forms of intelligence.
Modern education emphasizes things like problem solving and creative
thinking, things that a chimpanzee would presumably have an advantage
in. On the other hand, it does not stress aptitude in picking up
signals from other people, i.e. interpersonal communication, although
development of this skill is presumably one of the goals of putting a
large number of children in close proximity. I wonder why this is
the case. It would not seem too difficult to design a class where
school children are taught how to capture and understand the emotions
or intentions of others at a reasonable level of subtlety.
An obvious counterpoint would be that formalization is unnecessary
because life experience and the family will pick up the slack.
This is undoubtedly true to some extent. On the other hand, if
English were not taught in the education system, I’m quite sure it
would be picked up to varying degrees at home and through the
necessities of life. My point being, keeping this skill out of
the education system probably disadvantages two classes of people:
those who are naturally inept, and those who come from backgrounds that
are not conducive to development. The first group might benefit
considerably from rigorous training where they cannot pick things up
naturally. I suspect people who fit into the second group are on
the rise, given the proliferation of nuclear families and single
parents/children.
On a related note, keeping “dog” skills out of the education system
also stacks the decks against a particular type of intelligence.
A place like Harvard selects students based on chimpanzee skills, and
the distribution of dog skills is either comparable to the rest of the
population or below average. Formally including dog skills in the
education system would provide two benefits. First, overachievers
would be motivated to acquire such skills. Second, I suspect this
would substantially increase the correlation between academic success
and success in life.
