Education As the Cultivation of Intelligence

<p>Martinez defines intelligence from a cognitive perspective as a repertoire of those skills strategies and knowledge structures that are most instrumental in human effectiveness. He posits that in today's complex fast-paced technologically dense and information-rich society intelligence is the supreme human resource. The current social context not only demands intelligence but rewards it economically psychically and in other ways. His central argument in this book is this: The intellectual abilities that are crucial to modern life including economic viability and effectiveness in daily living correspond to the cognitive functions that are reasonably called <i>intelligence</i>; these intellectual abilities are learnable; we now know enough about the structure and mechanisms of intelligent thought and behavior to teach them directly. Martinez explicates his argument and provides research-based evidence to support his claim.</p>