Intelligence

I agree with you Todd, I think intelligence and schooling are very much required in a republic like ours where we each have an indirect say on how our government is run (by electing our officials). But it seems like that when we use "intelligence" in this way, we simply mean having good analytic/logical skills. And while I think this is definately an important skill for people to have, and perhaps the mark of an "educated/highly schooled" person, there are probably other important types of intelligence too. People often make the distintion between "book smarts" (academic) and "street smarts" (perhaps more practical?), and maybe there is some truth to this distinction. These days people also speak of "emotional intelligence", the ability to connect with other people, and they often put it on par with the other types of intelligence when it comes to how important it is in life.