Assertion: academic success does not equal intelligence.

In My Humble Opinion
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Let’s break it down.

  1. There are countless reasons people do poorly in school–from primary to post-secondary–that don’t reflect on their intelligence. For example, I had high-school classmates who had to work evenings and weekends to help support their siblings.

  2. Even those who have the opportunity to do well but don’t–the ones I think you’re referring to–aren’t showing a lack of intelligence to do poorly. Judgement and intelligence are different things. I had classmates who could outthink me any day, but just didn’t bother trying. I still think they’re smarter than I am, even if my approach to school was more practical.

  3. Your schooling was very different from mine; I was being taught to write persuasive essays in grade 5. Sure, memorisation reflected in part of my grade, but some knowledge of the ideas is necessary to “put them together” at all.

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If this topic interests you, I recommend The Big Test by Nicholas Lehman. It is a history of intelligence testing, which has greatly shaped the academic assessment landscape. Measuring and evaluating intelligence is so incredibly subjective - the things we can assess fairly on a common metric are low level skills, like structuring a writing task in a logical and grammatically sound manner. I’ve sat on any number of dissertation committees where there was a significant disagreement on the quality of the work.

Personalities, grading rubrics, life occurrences, and student motivation are just a few of the variables that affect one’s academic success. I’d be really concerned about assessing someone’s intelligence based on this, though I admit that’s probably the best measure we have at the moment.

I reviewed an application from a graduate of Reed College. In lieu of a transcript, there was a thick stack of papers with an assessment from each of the student’s classes. It was a major commitment of time to read the assessments, but I had a better understanding of the student’s strengths and weaknesses from any transcript I’ve ever read.