New Curricula for a New Way of Teaching 107
But it is not only the accuracy of predictions that factors into our sense of a person’s or an animal’s ability to think. We say that a person is intelligent even when he predicts badly, if he gives good explana- tions for his predictions even though they don’t pan out.
So when a sportscaster gives his prediction about the outcome of an upcoming game, we think he is intelligent if he has thought it out carefully, and if his explanation is coherent, and if his reasoning is sound, and we give extra credit if some of his ideas are surprising in some way. So, even if he subsequently turns out to be wrong, we still think he is good at thinking.
But prediction is actually quite complicated to judge. We respect great predictors. We think people who can predict well, especially those who can explain their predictions well, are very intelligent. But, often, we see intelligence when it may not be there. The reason is scripts. And we may fail to see it when it is there. The reason for that is explanations.
Scripts and explanations are at the beginning and at the end of intelligent behavior. What do I mean by that?
When a child is learning about the world, she is learning the scripts that commonly are followed in the world that she inhabits. I have explained this at length in two different books,’ so I will just summarize here.
Scripts tell us what will happen next in the aspects of the world that repeat frequently. Anyone who goes to a restaurant knows that when you order food, someone will bring it to you and later you will be expected to pay for it. There are lots of variations on this standard restaurant script, however. It doesn’t work quite like that at Burger King. The script is different but there is a script there too and we learn it if we frequent Burger King. The restaurant script has many varia- tions and we are initially confused when we encounter a new one, but we learn through repeated practice. And, we generalize so that we can understand that the McDonald’s script is pretty much the same as the one at Burger King.
We can predict what will happen next in the world based on ex- periences we have repeated. Following scripts is so normal that it is not seen as a sign of intelligence to be able to do it. We don’t exclaim: Wow, he predicted that the waitress would bring what we ordered and she did. Amazing!
But the opposite is certainly seen as a sign of stupidity. Once one has experienced something many times, one should know what will
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