ABSTRACT
The whole concept of intelligence as innate mental capacity – the raw stuff of ability, genetically determined and unaffected by experience – is seen to be unrealistic. The school serves an industrial working-class community whose hostility to academic education is often expressed in no uncertain terms and whose social life can only be described as depressed. The more intimate the face-to-face relationship with each of these students became the more evident it was that the deciding factor was not simply intelligence, however broadly denned, but the whole personality. The sole qualification for membership is an exceptionally high score in a standard intelligence test, ‘higher than that of ninety-nine per cent of people in general’. The more intimate the face-to-face relationship with each of these students became the more evident it was that the deciding factor was not simply intelligence, however broadly denned, but the whole personality.
