When we talk about intelce, we do not mean the ability to get a good score on a certain kind of test, or even the ability to do well in school. These are at best only indicators of something larger, deeper, and far more important. By intelce we mean a style of life, a way of behaving in various situations. The true test of intelce is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.
The intelt person, young or old, meeting a new situation or problem, opens himself up to it. He tries to take in with mind and senses everything he can about it. He thinks about it, instead of about himself or what it might cause to happen to him. He grapples (搏斗) with it boldly, imaginatively, resourcefully (机智地), and if not confidently, at least hopefully: if he fails to it, he looks without fear or shame at his mistakes and learns what he can from them. This is intelce. Clearly its roots lie in a certain feeling about life, and one’s self with respect to life. Just as clearly, unintelce is not what most psychologists seem to suppose, the same thing as intelce, only less of it. It is an entirely different style of behavior, arising out of entirely different set of attitudes.
Years of watching and comparing bright children with the not-bright, or less bright, have shown that they are very different kinds of people. The bright child is curious about life and reality, eager to get in touch with it, embrace it, unite himself with it. There is no wall, no barrier, between himself and life. On the other hand, the dull child is far less curious, far less interested in what goes on and what is real, more inclined to live in a world of fantasy. The bright child likes to experiment, to try things out. He lives by the maxim (格言) that there is more than one way to skin a cat. If he can’t do something one way, he’ll try another. The dull child is usually afraid to try at all. It takes a great deal of urging to get him to try even once: if that try fails, he is through.
Nobody starts off stupid. Hardly an in a thousand, or ten thousand, could in any three years of his life learn as much, grow as much in his understanding of the world around him, as every infant learns; and grows in his first three years. But what happens, as we grow older, to this extraordinary capacity for learning and intellectual growth What happens is that it is destroyed, and more than by any other one thing, it is, destroyed by the process that we misname (误称) education-a process that goes on in most homes and schools.
According to the author, if people are not intelt, they ______.