How important is intelligence for performing well in school?

[Anonymous]

So many students and parents say "As are possible if you just work hard", yet so many teachers disagree. Many students who study 5-8 hours per day in high school still get Bs and Cs. Intelligence definitely plays a role, and many students are unable to get top grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many students and parents say "As are possible if you just work hard", yet so many teachers disagree. Many students who study 5-8 hours per day in high school still get Bs and Cs. Intelligence definitely plays a role, and many students are unable to get top grades.

Our principal calls them her “pluggers,” the hard-working kids who keep plugging away for Bs and Cs.

[Anonymous]

It's a combination of intelligence and executive function skills. My kids both have ADHD and struggle with the EF part and so get a lot of Bs and occasional Cs despite high IQ.

[Anonymous]

Very important. I always have at least two students every year who are very slow learners. Years later, they test them for IEPs and they have IQs in the low to mid 70s. They can learn but it takes a ton of repetition. Much more than the other students. By third grade, they are working on first grade skills. So yes, intelligence is important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a combination of intelligence and executive function skills. My kids both have ADHD and struggle with the EF part and so get a lot of Bs and occasional Cs despite high IQ.

There are also different learning strengths. Some people can learn any fact and remember it forever. It's those people who know names and dates and win at Jeopardy. Others are good at problem solving. I loved calculus and aced it, but struggle memorizing facts.

[Anonymous]

Are you asking for your kids? Or what is the purpose of your question?
Intelligence plays a significant role, crucial, I would say, in many ways.
If you have a child with a below-average IQ, it is questionable how much they can retain, including learning how to study.

On the other hand, an open mindset is also important compared to a closed mindset, which might develop in many brilliant children if they are told they are super bright and everything comes easily when they start school.

They are likely to give up, but then they have to put in effort and study, and might refuse to learn, thinking that if they don't understand it, it is not possible to grasp it.
I believe that fostering strong study skills, effort, and an open mindset is key to a successful academic year.

[Anonymous]

Until we figured out that my son learns by looking and memorizing letters, words, and visualizing everything, he was not a strong student.
The phonetics and all that he could not grasp at all.
Within a week, he became an "AI" and started acing all his tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very important. I always have at least two students every year who are very slow learners. Years later, they test them for IEPs and they have IQs in the low to mid 70s. They can learn but it takes a ton of repetition. Much more than the other students. By third grade, they are working on first grade skills. So yes, intelligence is important.

I have one of these kids. It’s a long hard road. He made it through HS with a lot of support and even then just barely.

I also have a brilliant child with an off the charts IQ, but executive functioning, attention and MH issues. He works at
Least as hard as the other one and can make good grades. But even with a high IQ, it’s really tough for him.

So IME, intelligence is important but other issues can still impede success.

[Anonymous]

Sister studied constantly and needed tons of mom help, my mom said it was a full time job pulling her through school.
For me, school was effortless and mom never even knew what classes I was taking.
Guess who lives the more lavish lifestyle now?
My sister is prettier and has far far better social skills.

[Anonymous]

One of the most consistent findings in psychology over the last 100 years is that measured IQ is the single biggest predictor of measured learning (as in on tests such as the SAT or MCAT or LSAT or state reading or math tests). The other consistent finding is that measured IQ by late adolescence and adulthood is largely genetic.

[Anonymous]

IQ helps but it depend son so many other factors including learning disabilities, mental health, etc.

[Anonymous]

jokingly, I'd say, today, not important at all as schools constantly pass kids who haven't learned the subject at all.

but I suppose what you're really asking about is IQ vs. performance.

a good IQ means you have the ability to perform well, whether you do or not can also be an attitude thing.
Take my husband, who has a high IQ but hated learning "school stuff" so barely passed HS and never went on to college. Joined the marines in the 70's and got into fiddlin' with computers. By the early 80s he got a job in comp eng when there were more jobs than degrees and had a highly successful career as he was already making 6 figures in the early 90s when we met.

[Anonymous]

Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient.

[Anonymous]

It depends. Executive functioning skills are huge. Really smart kids usually do reasonably well in K-6 without a lot of help. It starts falling apart in middle school when they have to self manage assignments and adapt to different teachers' expectations and routines. By high school intelligence is pretty useless without strong executive functioning skills. If you can't stay on top of things and forget tests and major assignments you're probably failing the classes unless you go for the really easy courses or have a parent who is sitting with you every night doing the executive functioning for you.

[Anonymous]

I'd say intelligence is necessary but not sufficient. Both my kids are smart, as measured by IQ tests. But one really, really struggles in school because of poor executive function.