Intellectual or Academic Development?

My grandmother, now 85 years old, is a holistic educator. She works even today, tirelessly, and touches the lives of teachers and their students. She has been a grand influence in my growth as an educator. In a recent conversation with her, we landed on the topic of intellectual development and how it is different from academic development. Both intellectual and academic development are focused on growing the mind. The mind is but one part of a child. But one is more complete in terms of how it addresses the growth of the mind than the other.

Intellectual development is grounded in inquiry. It is fueled by intrinsic motivation and curiosity. Intellectual development touches is the growth of the many intelligences nascent and dominant in every learner. It is about critical thinking, problem solving, the ability to make connections between disparate ideas as it is about creativity through imagination, expression of emotions, building and growing relationships, self-expression through writing, art, music, drama, poetry and learning from the natural world. Intellectual development is personal. It is about nurturing the fundamental ways of being intelligent that make us human. In that regard, it is about self-awareness or as John Holt stated, it is about nurturing the intelligence that tells us not "how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do." (Holt, 1964)

Intellectual development can be fueled partially by academic development. The latter has been classically and is still largely focused on amassing knowledge, information and acquiring particular skills (reading, writing, math, scientific concepts and thinking, historical perspectives and such). Academic development is driven by standards-based curricula and test-taking. It is thus extrinsically motivated and driven by external goals. Academic development can lead to intellectual development of a specific kind — namely being exposed to ideas and concepts, remembering them and knowing specific skills. The intellectual development fostered by academic work is essential but it is not whole, not complete in how it enriches a mind. It is but one part. And, it is not personal or uniquely aligned to the intelligence in every unique learner.

This distinction is important and ever more so. Most schools focus on academic development and while it leads to a particular type of intellectual development, it should not be considered the whole of what a child's mind needs. Our education needs to focus more on intellectual development that is focused on broader cognitive skills, abstract thinking and also on the unique ways in which every child is truly intelligent. This is to say, every child is intelligent whether or not she is academically successful.