Last week, when I was invited on the set of the friendly scientific trivia game Awesome ! at Télé-Québec, I joked about “calling a friend or family member” to help me better answer questions. As Awesome ! is not Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, my request was not answered.
Posted yesterday at 12:30 p.m.
To defeat the Red team, led by my fearsome colleague and friend Rose-Aimée Automne T. Morin, I was ready to admit that I obviously knew less about science than my twin brother, a university professor who obtained his doctorate from the largest engineering schools in Quebec and France.
My brother is good at math and other related subjects. Whereas I left sciences after the fourth secondary. Which doesn’t mean I’m necessarily less intelligent than him. No matter what a 2019 study from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, found that in twins, the taller was generally the smarter. My brother is 6’2″…
If I remember correctly, I had grades in secondary four as good in science as my brother. I simply decided to step down at the appropriate time, anticipating a rapid descent into incompetence. My chemistry teacher, Lise, tried in vain to convince me to go into science journalism, but I was determined to hang up my blouse.
I have never regretted the course on the history of the XXand century that I followed instead of in fifth secondary. In light of some of the nonsense you can read on social media these days about Russia, this course should have been compulsory.
Rose-Aimée, for her part, succeeded in convincing her secondary school to modify her school curriculum so that she and the students of subsequent cohorts could study the dramatic arts rather than the sciences, as they pleased. Which did not prevent her, with the curiosity and intuition for which she is known, from playing a perfect game at Awesome !.
I am telling you about these memories of high school, in the context of our special issue on intelligence, because today as yesterday – as various surveys show – there remains a favorable prejudice towards students who choose a scientific curriculum. And that, on the contrary, a negative a priori weighs on those who follow a school course in human sciences “no maths”.
As if the latter, because they were interested in the arts, history, philosophy or anthropology, were less brilliant than the future engineers or biochemists. Some of the smartest people I know are literature graduates. I cannot say why.
Today, we still put as much pressure on young people to pursue science studies in high school and CEGEP. By devaluing those who have an aptitude for the human sciences, on the pretext that they close doors. What if they just open doors that interest them?
Another phenomenon, just as worrying, is the propensity of the school system to exclude at a very young age students who have an interest in science, but not the most exceptional academic results. Already, in third secondary, it is decided for some that they will not have the necessary prerequisites for certain scientific programs, because they do not have the best marks in mathematics.
Studies have shown that young students who do not see themselves as the brightest in the class will automatically give up on a scientific career, even if they are interested in it. The scientific journalist Kat Arney spoke about it a few years ago in the article “ Not clever enough to be a scientist? Nonsense (“Not brilliant enough to be a scientist? Bullshit”), published in the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK.
This is a phenomenon that is even more frequent among girls, who have traditionally performed better than boys in science and mathematics. Girls, without many role models, are unable to project themselves into certain scientific careers. Hence the importance of high-profile scientists like Farah Alibay, who remains an exception that proves the rule.
They are the men who occupy the most prestigious positions in universities, especially in the departments of chemistry, physics and engineering. A vicious circle is that male students are seen as more likely to do well and excel…by male professors. A scientist with a doctorate told me recently that she had left her post in university research because she had had enough of this macho culture.
A 2015 study of 350,000 people in 66 countries by researchers at Northwestern and Berkeley universities in the United States concluded that “even in countries with the most gender equality [les Pays-Bas, par exemple]there were strong gender stereotypes in male-dominated scientific disciplines”.
Also, the word “genius” is more readily associated with a man than with a woman. “Try to name 10 female characters from popular culture who – like Sherlock Holmes, Dr House or Will Hunting – are characterized by their innate intelligence and raw intellectual prowess. You will quickly run out of names. Whatever the reason, the message is clear: women are not culturally associated with such inherent gifts of genius,” concludes a study led by a professor in the philosophy department at Princeton University in New Jersey.
You don’t have to be a man to be a genius, you don’t have to be a genius to become a scientist, and being a scientist doesn’t mean you’re smarter than your neighbour. Intelligence, like everything, develops. It is not me who says it, but the French geneticist Albert Jacquard.
“Intelligence is the ability to understand,” he said in an interview with New Observer, in 1997. But really understanding something is always a long process. To be truly intelligent is… to understand that one has not understood. ” Awesome.