Nicole Underwood

Mrs. Sharp

English 11 Period 4

October 10th, 2018

District Writing Benchmark

Based on Isaac Asimov’s article, “What is intelligence, Anyway?”, he views intelligence

as something that does not correlate with a person's capabilities. In the text the author

demonstrates a high level of intelligence but only pertaining to certain skills. He develops this

idea through the use of implicit and explicit statements.

Firstly, the author explicitly states that he is more intelligent than others. The text states,

“When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a

normal of 100, scored 160.” (Asimov 1). To elaborate, the author confirms that he is more

intelligent based on these test results. This relates to his point of view because, even though he

had high test scores, he would perform poorly in other tasks. The passage states, “In a world

where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something

intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.” (Asimov 4). In this example, he is

explicitly stating that he is not as successful with ‘hands on’ tasks in comparison to academic

ones. Just because he is smarter than the average person does not mean he is good at

everything.

Additionally, an inference can be drawn that intelligence does not reflect one's

skillfulness. In the article, an auto-repair man tells Isaac a joke which the author does not

understand. The repair man then states, “but I knew for sure i’d catch you.”..”Because you're so

goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart.”(Asimov 6). To elaborate, the

repair man is claiming that an educated person is not necessarily ‘smart’. There is an implied
meaning here about the difference between being smart and being educated. In another

example, the author implies that uneducated people can be good at specific things. The

passage reads, “For instance I had an auto-repairman once, who, on these intelligence tests

could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate.” (Asimov 3). In this citation the

author is implicitly stating that the auto-repair man is unintelligent. He is estimating that the auto

repair man would receive a significantly lower test score than him to prove his point. This relates

to the author's viewpoint because the auto-repair man is excellent at repairing cars despite

being ‘unintelligent’ in the author's opinion. This proves that there is no relation between a

person's skill and their level of education.

In conclusion the author uses implicit and explicit statements to strengthen his ideas

about intelligence. The author demonstrates that the amount of intelligence a person has does

not determine how capable they are. Everyone has a different skill set of strengths, and those

are not always determined by a person's level of education.