English just another language

English is just a language. It is not a measurement of intelligence.
English is the mother tongue of the people of England and the fact that it is used almost everywhere is testament to the might of the British Empire at its peak.
But, in Papua New Guinea, when you misspell or mispronounce a word in English, people will laugh at you and question your intelligence. But, if you speak fluently and without a Papua New Guinean accent, people will presume that you are intelligent and probably got a few degrees behind your belt.
This is weird. Think about it.
We are using a foreign language as a benchmark to judge our fellow countrymen their intellectual prowess.
(I know this happens almost everywhere but this spit of land isn’t named “everywhere” so let’s just focus on us)
Don’t get me wrong, I do get the idea behind it.
All the textbooks and research papers we use in schools are in English.
We have chosen to use English as one of our national languages. So, knowing the language is a prerequisite if one were to venture beyond Gr 3. If you misspell or mispronounce a word, it stands to reason that the legitimacy of your education is called into question.
But education is not an indicator of intelligence. Rather, it is an indicator of training and development.
Aptitude may exist without education and education may not create aptitude. So, I say again, English is just a language. Think of it as stepping stones that you walk on to reach/grasp new concepts/ideas.
That is the whole point of education – to gain knowledge, which is made up of concepts/ideas, and how well you apply these concepts/ideas in the real world is proof of your training/education.
Intelligence is something else entirely.
It varies from person to person.
Almost everyone is just average on the scale of intelligence while only a few are so high or so low on the scale. The ones so low turn out to be mentally-retarded while those so high turn out to be geniuses. Some even turn out to be crazy, hence the term “mad scientist”.
Take Albert Einstein for example. Thought to be one of the smartest man to ever walk the Earth, he ended up marrying his cousin. Was that a smart move? I’m pretty sure his gene pool would disagree.
This kind of incestuous relations would disgust the average rational man but the average rational man would not come up with the Theory of Relativity even if his life depended on it.
So my point is, how well you speak and write in English does not correlate to your level of intelligence.
English is just a tool we use to convey and understand ideas/concepts.
Your level of education, whether it be Gr 10 or university, does not correlate to your level of intelligence either.
Education is just you learning about new concepts/ideas, and how far you’ve gone in your educational journey indicates how much you have learned.
The number of degrees someone has or their proficiency in the English language does not mean they are intelligent. That just means they are well trained/educated.

Phil Kaizerman
PoM