The race is not to the swift. The medium is the message. The bell-curve is a graphic illustration of the relationship between literacy and success. The successful are not very literate! They tend to be mediocrities. The literate are not very successful! They are not always understood. The tendency of Mensans to vote for successful board members notwithstanding, a dues paying Mensan cannot be typical of individuals with superior levels of either intelligence or literacy. Success is at the center of the bell-curve. The upper two percent is not.
Without a notion of the abilities of the average person, nobody can begin to understand this world. Anyone who takes in a play, a motion picture show, a television program, a church service, in short, any sort of group or team activity, comes face to face or nose to nose with the confusing proposition that mediocrity with language is absolutely excellent. And what does an absolutely excellent individual have that Mensans do not? Now before you jump all over this proposition, keep in mind that eighty percent of the highest paying jobs of the planet are in sales. Politicians represent the average citizen. School board trustees are politicians. The business world caters to the preferences of its average customer.
From one side of this planet to the other, nothing unites a room full of school board trustees more surely than the proposition that reading scores should be secrets. Have you ever wondered why the names of female school teachers and librarians tend to start with “Miss?” Have you ever wondered why the truly masculine man sounds like he suffered emotional arrest around the age of ten and never shuts up? Have you noticed that illiterates are far more likely to graduate from schools and universities than the upper two percent of the population. Have you noticed that many employees in this planet wide lunatic asylum find drug addiction and alcoholism an advantage on the job. Have you ever noticed that the chapter on literacy is missing from most textbooks on psychology. Have you ever wondered who would be living on your street, if Canada had an honest education system?
Have you ever noticed that the education system is absolutely useless in the matter of locating potential members of Mensa?















Summer of '55... where the CN Tower stands today.

This item by George Noviss was included in Montage July/August 2005, The Mensa Newsletter for Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener/Waterloo, London, Windsor/Sarnia

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