Read an Excerpt
Introduction
America is in the midst of a national makeover. But there's a significant problem. We're making over virtually everything except our minds -- our intellects. What sense does it make to paint your car and not put oil in the engine? Restoring your hair while ignoring your brain renders your makeover unfinished. Until we address this oversight, the national makeover cannot be complete -- or successful. This book aims to help you increase your knowledge base and tap the limitless power of your intelligence. It is clear even to the casual observer -- from sources including bestselling books and popular television shows -- that the country is gripped with reinventing itself. The following examples bear witness:
•Home and garden makeovers
(e.g., popular HGTV shows such as Before/After, Curb Appeal, Mission Organization, Room by Room, Design on a Dime, Feng Shui, Trading Spaces.)
•Beauty and fashion makeovers (e.g., Oprah's makeover shows, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Extreme Makeover,hair restoration treatments, antiaging creams, skin creams, and cellulite creams.)
•Body makeovers (e.g., infomercials hawking equipment to improve abs, buns, and thighs, popular programs such as Pilates, yoga, and tai chi, weight loss programs such as the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, and others, popular products such as Botox, antioxidants, and Viagra, and TV shows like Nip/Tuck, The Swan, Renovate My Family,and The Biggest Loser.)
•Soul makeovers (e.g., best-selling seminars and books that have dominated the nonfiction and fiction lists such as The PurposeDriven Life, The Prayer of Jabez,and The Left Behind series.)
Millions of people around the country want or need to learn but simply are not able to attend to it for one reason or another. Perhaps a family, a job, and other pressures of daily life combine to make it difficult to find time, money, or energy to learn in a formal program, college or otherwise. That's why a swift, sensible, straightforward path to an Intelligence Makeover is so valuable. This book takes you by the hand and leads you every step of the way into learning about intelligence, about yourself, about "super tools" that can take you to new intellectual levels, and about the resources you need for acquiring knowledge in a wide variety of subjects.
Who might want an Intelligence Makeover and why? Let's just look at a sample list:
•Accomplished professionals with knowledge gaps. Busy executives and others who need a refresher. •Businesspeople who seek tools that can raise the bar.
•Those seeking self-discovery and improvement.
•Those whose early education was lacking and who seek a common knowledge base.
•Those who wish to look at information in a new light, with a mind now advantaged by life experience and worldliness.
A solid makeover will recognize your unique nature: your background and experience, level of education, and diverse strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, and interests. Because not everyone is the same, each Makeover Plan presented in this book is designed specifically for the individual who will use it. Just as a beauty makeover aims to reinvent cosmetically, a makeover like this one aims to reinvent intellectually, generating a significant yet quick-and-easy increase in your knowledge and understanding.
You are entering a world in this book that offers change, dramatic improvement, intellectual renewal. Here you can acquire super-fast reading techniques, amazing memory power, incredibly quick math skills, and other high-level talents. You can grow intellectually, obtain steadfast confidence, and gain substantial achievement.
Welcome.
At this point it doesn't really matter who you are and why you're here. You may be a successful professional or a businessperson who wants to be more competitive. Maybe you are a student. Maybe simple curiosity brought you here, or a quest for fun. Or maybe you are just tired of feeling lost or left out of the conversations around the water cooler and want to contribute, break out of the pack, or impress your family, friends, and associates. Who hasn't wished he had paid more attention in school or felt "left out" of a high-minded conversation? Who hasn't discovered rust forming over old skills or dreamed of what it would be like to be even a bit "smarter"?
You've heard that expression, "If I only knew then what I know now." A makeover presents a perfect opportunity to look at information in a different light, engage material anew with a more mature and experienced mind. E. D. Hirsch argued in his book, Cultural Literacy,for the importance of possessing a solid base of common knowledge. Not being culturally literate puts you at a serious disadvantage. Whether in banter around the office or in more serious endeavors, an Intelligence Makeover may serve as a great equalizer.
This is an equal opportunity book -- it does not discriminate. There are benefits galore for all who pass through here. Your educational background does not matter: Whether you have a Ph.D. or a GED, it makes no difference. Nor does it matter whether you learn quickly or slowly. You might be wealthy or poor, male or female, old or young. It does not matter.
Think of this book as a Fountain of Youth of sorts, a boost for the brain, a magnifier of the mind, an injection of information aimed at regeneration, refreshment, and reinvigoration. This book can change your life.
By the time you finish this book you will have learned -- among other things -- methods to double or triple your reading speed. You'll complete books and articles in a fraction of the time you now take, and you'll save precious time. In turn, that will permit you the pleasure of more books and articles, or let you take on more projects. You'll have more time for leisure, recreation, fun.
You'll improve your memory power dramatically, and people with good memory skills get noticed and admired. You'll also have the attendant, practical benefits of actually being able to remember names, dates, numbers, and long lists, never forgetting again where your keys are or where your car is parked. In fact, you'll never forget virtually anything again.
You'll perform certain math problems in your head faster than a calculator, develop your writing and speaking skills, and improve your Social Intelligence. On top of that, you'll have at your disposal a treasure chest of Foundational Knowledge in a wide array of subjects -- knowledge that provides invaluable background information and closes gaps for you in more than a dozen areas, including History, Literature, Science, English, Math, Sports, Art History, Music, Psychology, Religion, and Nature. Through entertaining, informative essays and noteworthy nuggets of fact, you'll reacquaint yourself with a particular area or introduce yourself to a new subject that has eluded you in the past.
Think of it as a "flash immersion," if you will. Let's say you target Art History. You'll learn about Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others. The information here will prepare you to strike out on your own. Using the resource guide at the back of that chapter, you'll bring yourself to a new level. You'll learn about the roots of the Renaissance and the place it holds in the history of art. Before long, you'll have firm footing and find that you can be quite conversant in the subject. Not only will you hold your own, but your opinion will be viewed with new respect.
We never take full advantage of the power of our brains. Wouldn't it be nice to be just a little bit smarter, to know more, especially in the subjects that appeal to you, the ones that have escaped you in the past? Wouldn't it be nice also to read faster and remember more? In fact, these are relatively simple functions. Normal brains can do them. The only reason that Joe and Jane Average do not read faster and remember more is that they have not been taught how. They have not been coached to do so. Normal standards of training in the United States and the world fall far short of teaching students to read fast. Heaven knows, this country has trouble teaching students how to read at all. And memory training is foreign to American schools, aside from a sporadic lesson or two anecdotally from an occasional teacher.
The kind of makeover you'll undergo in this book will give you a new persona. It will transform your day-to-day life. You'll wake up in the morning with new energy, new commitment, new joy. You'll have spring in your step, confidence and authority in your voice.
The world will seem a friendlier place. And it will all happen in the space of these pages. You'll make yourself over in a relatively brief period of time.
Let's get you a map of this new world of yours.
In the opening section, you'll learn some exciting theories about intelligence that will help you understand how your mind works. Many of these theories sit under the umbrella-heading of "Social Intelligence." In the following section, you will learn how to use "Super Tools" that help you acquire knowledge -- tools such as speed reading, effective memory techniques, and successful writing and speaking methods. With these tools, you will then follow a makeover plan, created especially for you, catering to your unique strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, idiosyncrasies, likes, and dislikes. With that plan in hand, you will pick and choose subjects to explore.
Besides the map of where you're going, you'll also need a guide, and I've been over the terrain you're plunging into many times. I know you can do this because I've done it myself.
The grandson of immigrants, the son of hardworking, blue-collar parents who had to sacrifice their education to provide for their family, I trudged through school -- like so many millions of others -- with low aspirations and expectations, and, not surprisingly, with little resultant achievement. No one in my clan had ever earned a college degree. Today, I am pleased to be able to say that eventually I came to realize the importance of intellectual maintenance and achievement. I earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale and both a master's and doctorate in Education from Harvard, and I have enjoyed a 25-year career in Education.
I was nearly 30 years old when I began my intellectual journey. I enrolled in college more than ten years after high school. I had been a police officer in New York City before that, working to support my family. Married when I was 18, I was the father of three children by the time I was 21. I found little time for intellectual pursuits.
In my earlier school days in Brooklyn, I played hooky regularly, preferring to visit amusement parks like Coney Island and racetracks like Aqueduct than to attend classes and do homework. I read the racing newspapers, but steered clear of school books. In fact, I didn't read a book from cover to cover until I was 14, and that was a baseball book. I had no idea what a classic was. I enjoyed working with numbers associated with racing, but treated school math as though it were a contagious disease.
In this book I delve into the pool of knowledge and experience I acquired at Harvard, Yale, and the NYPD, and during more than two decades in Education; distill it; and provide all that you need to get an intellectual boost in a relatively brief period of time -- to start, or to restart, an intellectual journey, to reinvent your "self." My experience can help you in your journey. At Yale, for example, I devised methods to improve my reading and memory skills dramatically, tools to help me to acquire knowledge, to help me to sharpen my intelligence. I quadrupled my reading speed and learned how to memorize dates, names, and long lists, which helped me to earn my undergraduate degree cum laude, and to earn nothing but A's in my doctoral work. I share these methods with you in this book.
Here are a couple of recommendations for you before you dive into the first chapter.
Keep a Notebook or Two
You will want to have a notebook devoted exclusively to your makeover to keep track of a few items. In it you will record your progress, thoughts, quiz answers, and exercise responses. This notebook will serve as an important resource for you. Use a computer file, if you wish, but devote it exclusively to the makeover, and be sure to keep your laptop handy.
Pay Attention to Your Environment
Without question, our environment influences us. The people around us and the resources at our disposal can have a conspicuous impact. Studies have shown, for example, that reading aloud to children helps them to become better readers. Conversely, children who do not have others reading aloud to them generally find it more difficult to learn how to read. Neuroscientific findings indicate that various intellectual capacities are influenced by neural connections in the brain, and that those neural connections are formed in response to the environment.
If you are intent on an Intelligence Makeover, tend to your environment. Surround yourself with people and resources that can help you.
Be Aware of Your Surroundings -- Don't Miss the Obvious
To take advantage of your environment, you need to be aware of it. Sometimes it's all too easy to miss the obvious.
Let's say that you and a friend go camping in the woods. At the end of a long day of hiking, you both enter the tent and go to sleep. In the middle of the night your friend wakes you and asks you to look up and report what you see. You say you see tens of thousands of stars in a pitch-black sky. A breathtaking sight. But your friend rightfully calls you a knucklehead because you missed the obvious: If you can see the sky, the tent is gone.
You and your friend are trying to figure out what happened to the tent when you hear noises coming from the nearby bushes. Behind the bushes you discover a huge bear. The bear sees you, and you and your friend start running, but your friend stops to put on sneakers. You say, "You're nuts. You can't outrun a bear."
"I don't have to outrun the bear," says your friend, reminding you of the obvious. "I only have to outrun you."
Avoid a Negative Environment
A negative environment retards progress or achievement. It could be a person who always takes a pessimistic view and who tries to persuade you to see life in the same way. "That can't possibly work. Why waste your time?" Or it could be a noisy setting that distracts you from your study, a radio in the background, or a television set, or a jack hammer from the construction crew outside your window. Maybe you live near a train track or an airport. Maybe you live downwind from a paper mill or a sewer plant that every once in a while fills the air with a foul odor that assaults your senses.
You want to avoid or change any environment that distracts you from achieving your goals. This does not mean that you have to pack up all your worldly belongings and become a hermit, but you do have to be conscious of distractions, and active in avoiding them. If you have work to do, common sense dictates that you do not attempt to do it in a negative environment. Go to a different room, or to a library, or to a relative's house. Find an environment that will help you, not hinder you.
Seek a Positive Environment
A positive environment encourages you and permits you to succeed. It could be a person who always takes an optimistic view and who tries to persuade you to see life in the same way. "That can work. Try it." It also could be a controlled environment that shuts out distractions: a study carrel in the library stacks, a room in your home in which you can close the doors, windows, and drapes to find peace and quiet, and get away from the noise of the city, the cacophony of the street, the radios, televisions, and telephones of family and neighbors.
A positive environment allows you to think, to advance yourself, and to accomplish the task at hand. In the end, it allows you to stimulate and develop your intellect.
Take Advantage of Resources
Do you live in a city? If so, no doubt you have a treasure trove of resources available to you. Take advantage of them. At the same time, don't let geographical limitations deter you. Maybe the best library is 40 miles away at the university. Go. Arrange your schedule to permit regular visits. Combine visits with other chores and tasks to make the experience a pleasure more than a sacrifice.
Don't ignore or discount local resources. They can be right under your nose: libraries and museums, planetariums and zoos, parks and lakes, theaters and historic sites, newspaper programs and hospital programs, high school campuses and college campuses.
Avoid the Evil Television
A study by The Children's Hospital in Seattle in 2004 found a connection between excessive television watching and the development of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children. Apparently the risk increases significantly for every hour watched. Though the study focused on children, it stands to reason that too much television watching can turn the mind into a vegetable, regardless of the age of the viewer. The term couch potato may be more accurate than we realize.
Find the Good Television
Of course, educational programming on channels like Discovery, History, PBS, or any one of dozens of others can be a part of the environment that works for you. Even "good" television, however, should be watched in moderation.
Take a Course, Workshop, or Seminar
Virtually every town has a university or high school that offers adult education courses, workshops, or seminars. Taking a program like this could be an excellent way to close gaps in your knowledge base or to stimulate and enrich your intellectual passions. Some information-rich seminars may be only an hour or so long. You always wanted to act or sing or dance, but never quite found the time. You always wanted to study the American Revolution or the Russian Revolution or the Beatles' Revolution, but your schedule just wouldn't permit it. You always wanted to learn how to program a computer or how to repair a car engine or how to start your own business, but you could never screw up enough courage and energy to enroll. If this sounds familiar, stop making excuses.
Book 'Em, Danno
Filling your home with books and magazines can certainly serve as an inspiring backdrop for intellectual growth. A reference library, in particular, can come in handy during your Intelligence Makeover.
The Mozart Effect
In experimenting with college students, researchers at the University of California found that aspects of intelligence were increased after listening to certain music for a determined period of time. (IQ scores improved as much as nine points.) This result has been referred to as "The Mozart Effect." For the past decade many parents have played classical music to their infants in an effort to reproduce this Mozart Effect. Though the results are inconclusive and controversial, many educators steadfastly support the practice, and several successful educationally based corporations feature a quest for the Mozart Effect in their products.
Note that the original study tested college students -- adults, not children -- yet somehow the application has shifted down to the little ones. If you are seeking an Intelligence Makeover, listen to Mozart's music or to that of other classical composers. If you're a Deadhead or a punk rocker, or you like rap, R&B, Latino, or Sinatra, listen to your favorites. But listen to Mozart, too. No one said you have to like it.
To a large degree you can control your surroundings. Know that an enriched environment can contribute to your intellectual growth.
Quizzes
At several junctures in the book, fun and useful quizzes will help you to see where you stand in subjects covered in depth in later chapters. The quizzes will assist you in determining the extent to which you want to explore those subjects. There are 10 quizzes all together. Be sure to take all of them. The results are private, for your eyes only, and you will review them as you fashion your individualized Makeover Plan. Each question in the quiz corresponds to a particular subject, so you will easily see how you fare in more than a dozen areas. For example, all the questions # 1 concern American History, and all the questions # 6 concern Science, and all the questions # 8 concern Sports. You will want to score each quiz, indicating next to each question whether your response was correct or incorrect, and keep track of your results in the notebook as you go. After the last quiz, you will tally the totals. The answers to all the quizzes are at the back of the book.
IMPORTANT: Designate a specific space in your notebook for your quiz answers -- perhaps at the very back. As each quiz is brief, you won't need more than a page or two to accommodate the complete set of 10 quizzes. You will want to have all your responses together for easy reference later. Before we go any further, here is the first quiz. Have fun with it. If you know some or all of the answers -- great! If you know few or none of the answers -- no problem.
It's best to write your answers in your notebook, but in case you don't have it handy, record them in the space provided and transfer them to the notebook later. Be sure to score it right away, and indicate which of your answers, if any, were incorrect.
It's all multiple choice for your convenience. Choose the best answers.
QUIZ #1
1. Where do these words appear? "We hold these Truths to be selfevident, that all Men are created equal..." a. The U.S. Constitution
b. The Declaration of Independence
c. The Ten Commandments
d. The Articles of Confederation
2. The Ides of March was a bad day for:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Abraham Lincoln
c. Julius Caesar
d.Napoleon
3. How often does a committee meet that gets together biannually?
a. once a year
b. twice a year
c. three times a year
d. not a, b, or c
4. Hester Prynne was the creation of which author?
a. Alistair Cook
b. Charles Dickens
c. Stephen Crane
d. Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. Half of the area of a square with one side of 6 is:
a. 12
b. 18
c. 3
d. 36
6. "An object at rest tends to stay at rest..." describes:
a. inertia
b. osmosis
c. photosynthesis
d. natural selection
7. Many ballets, including The Fire Bird, were composed by:
a. Mozart
b. Bach
c. Stravinsky
d. Verdi
8. Which coach shares the record for winning the most NBA Championships?
a. Pat Riley
b. Vince Lombardi
c. Phil Jackson
d. Casey Stengel
9. Trees that lose their leaves are:
a. deciduous
b. pine barren
c. evergreen
d. fescue
10. Who created La Joconde?
a. Charles De Gaulle
b. Leonardo da Vinci
c. The Boeing Aircraft Company
d. Gustave Eiffel
11. Who is known for theories concerning stages of intellectual development, like the "concrete operational stage"?
a. Piaget
b. Freud
c. Jung
d. Skinner
12. Of the following, which religion has the largest membership:
a. Shinto
b. Sikhism
c. Buddhism
d. Judaism
13. "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players" appeared in:
a. 42nd Street
b. As You Like It
c. Canterbury Tales
d. not a, b, or c
YOUR ANSWERS
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The answers are at the end of the book. Record your results in your notebook.
Copyright © 2005 by Edward F. Droge, Jr., Ed.D.
