Steve Jobs - Intelligence, Intuition, and Genius

I just read an interesting piece written by Walter Isaacson reflecting on the intelligence and genius of  Steve Jobs.  Isaacson is Jobs' biographer.  The article struck a chord for two reasons.

First, Isaacson wrote about how Jobs' learned to trust his intuition over data, focus groups etc.  Isaacson writes "Mr. Jobs came to value experiential wisdom over empirical analysis.  He didn't study data or crunch numbers but like a pathfinder, he could sniff the winds and sense what lay ahead."  We live in a data driven world and the push in education is for more data, more spreadsheets, more progress monitoring, more meetings about data, more ways to analyze data.  Never mind that a lot of this data is obtained in questionable ways (see recent admissions of widespread cheating by teachers, administrators in DC, Atlanta, and NYC) but what about the professionalism of teachers?  Teaching is an art.  Teachers are professionals.  Any teacher worth his or her salt (which is most of us) can sense what lay ahead for our students and use our  intuition and experiential wisdom to determine the best way to guide our students.  Teachers are spending way to much time studying data and crunching numbers and not near enough time listening to our intuition and experiential wisdom.  I promise to do more of the latter and less of the former.

The second reason the article resonated with me was the final paragraph.  Isaacson writes, "China and India are likely to produce many rigorous analytic thinkers and knowledgeable technologists.  But smart and educated people don't always spawn innovation.  America's advantage, if it continues to have one, will be that it can produce people who are also more creative and imaginative, those who know how to stand at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences."  I'd say that is one big IF.  Seems to me our schools should be developing and fostering students to stand at that very intersection.  Tough to do when we don't teach civics, we don't teach social sciences, and we don't teach science.  All in the name of generating more data.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/steve-jobss-genius.html?_r=1