How 'Knowing' Makes Us Less Intelligent

The ego trap-door from knowledge to ignorance.

At school, I wasn’t particularly interested in mathematics. Back when I was in education, there was an unfortunate pattern whereby girls feared maths because they were told it was ‘not for them’. That wasn’t my personal outlook. I enjoyed the simplicity of maths, it just didn’t interest me all that much, likely because it interfered with my burgeoning identity as a creative - the international designer extraordinaire that I’d decided I was to become. Across all subjects, my interest level played a significant role in my student ‘character’. I’d be one of two pupils to the teachers that knew me - either annoyingly attentive to the point my arm might leave my shoulder socket with the exertion I’d shoot my hand up to answer questions - or else I’d be completely distracted, swinging on my chair and chatting relentlessly to anyone around me. It wasn’t until an exasperated teacher called me out on this in my Year 9 maths class that my relationship with that particular subject changed. “Look around you, Miss Lord”, she said. “Everyone in this class is likely to get an A, and with our attitude you’ll be lucky if you scrape a C”.

It wasn’t the grade that bothered me - a C is just fine for a subject I hadn’t even tried in - but she’d embarrassed me, and what’s more, she’d decided what I was capable of, which just happens to be one of my big red buttons. As she screamed this at me in her rather formidable Welsh accent, I didn’t react in the moment. But she’d lit a fire in me that day, and whether this was her intention or not, I was determined to prove her wrong from that point.

Upon getting an A* in Maths GCSE (well-played Mrs. Morris), I didn’t feel worthy of it, but more like I’d somewhat cheated. There’s a way of gamifying school exams, I find. Just learn the exact material they teach, nothing more nothing less. Memorise it, bash it out on an exam paper, then release it from your brain forever. Not exactly what I call learning - simply a case of memory retention. Nevertheless, in my defiance towards being underestimated, I applied to do maths at A-level, which is a far more serious business. Depressingly, I was one of the only girls in the class, and I definitely felt like a fraud. I knew it, and the boys around me knew it - maths at this level was ‘not for me’.

Interestingly, it turned out that my feelings of inadequacy in this class were to serve me greatly. At A-level, the concepts and principles of mathematics jump up significantly and require, in many instances, a different approach to that of GCSE level. The boys who were so confident in their abilities struggled, because they had to unlearn in some respects, and let go of what they thought they knew to see a different picture. I, on the other hand, had no such attachments to my abilities. Amazed to be in the class in the first place, I approached every lesson with curiosity. Whilst my fellow students indignantly argued with the teacher, insisting “that can’t be right because X!”, I simply soaked up the information like a sponge. As a result, I found the class easier than most, and earned myself an A in the final exams, like some modern re-telling of the Tortoise and the Hare.

My point is not about achievement here, nor for me to re-live the glory days of algebra. But I think back to that class often, and what it taught me about psychology.

When we feel we understand something, we decide we ‘know’ it. Yet, this possession of knowing can limit further exploration if we attach to it. Many a scientific, engineering or psychological genius has felt self-satisfied with their accomplished works, only for a protégé to come in and see that “hey, you missed a bit!”. It struck me that in that maths class, my advantage was in my assumed disadvantage. Rarely does a lack of confidence work in our favour, and yet my acknowledgement that I ‘didn’t know’ was my greatest asset in learning.

I’d not really attached anything to the class, other than proving I could get into it, as my attachments to identity lived in the creative fields. By contrast, I was amongst students who felt ‘mathematician’, or simply ‘good at maths’ was part of their identity, so to not know put a lot more at stake.

It’s a key part of my work as a psychologist and therapist to continuously observe where attachments to ideas, narratives or identities might be keeping us stuck. In all my observations to date, I see courage and freedom in embracing the ‘not knowing’. By not knowing, we open the door to learning and moving forward. Our mistake is thinking that intelligence is static. We are only as intelligent as the decisions, acknowledgements and interpretations we make on any given day. IQ points are irrelevant when they live in the recesses of our potential if our ego tells us we have nothing more to learn.

The dictionary will tell us that ignorance is ‘a lack of knowledge or information’. Yet this is only ignorance if the person isn’t seeking actively knowledge - they’ve settled on what they already ‘know’.

Of course, as humans we’re constantly trying to make sense of things, and as such it is comforting to feel we’ve mastered something. But we should strive to always leave space for the ‘what else’. The additions that make our world, and intellect, bigger rather than smaller.

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Reflection

What areas of life or a particular field do you feel you have mastery of? In what ways might your attachment to mastery be holding you back?

AND

What areas of life or a particular field do you feel you lack confidence? In what ways might your openness to ‘not knowing’ be used to your advantage and evolution?