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False Standards

What’s wrong with being a galah?

Robert Gowty
4 min readJul 1, 2022
A galah bird on grass
Here’s a nice galah for you. By the author.

I often watch my neighbour chop wood.

He would readily admit that he was never the book learning type, as he puts it.

Yet, as I watch him cast his eye over a log of wood then let the axe casually fall to the designated spot and the log pop gently into two, I can sense a mathematical calculation that most professors would struggle with.

Bashing away myself, with half a dozen blows would not have achieved the same result.

My brother was in the airforce.

Once he returned home for a family event. His job was something to do with radar.

He mentioned that he had been sitting various exams.

My uncle, who was a school teacher, said “I don’t mean to be facetious, but surely there is no need for exams. Surely, you just need to be able to do the job?” Knowing my uncle, I don’t think he was being facetious. It seemed like a counterintuitive idea, particularly coming from an educator.

Aren’t exams all about a proof of learning? It was an interesting question that stuck with me.

An Australian researcher noticed some Aboriginal participants didn’t do so well on IQ tests, even though he could sense their intelligence.

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Robert Gowty
Robert Gowty

Written by Robert Gowty

Extemporal Explorer. Music, art, fiction, science fiction, culture and technology. Tasmanian Existentialism. Aficionado of the number seven.

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