SIR – Re: your article about the young girl classified as a genius through taking an “intelligence test” (Gazette, December 30).

This is an ordinary girl described as ordinary by her parents, a horse lover, but who is now burdened by being considered a genius.

There will now be unusually high unnecessary schooling expectations that will be burdensome to others who do not pass the same tests.

It’s so strange that schools take pride in “producing geniuses”.

What schools need to do is to give our children practical thinking ability. Learning to think means that everyone improves their thinking (their intelligence increases as a side effect of better thinking).

Intelligence is a value judgement.

Professor John Edwards did research into the Edward de Bono thinking tools (which I teach professionally as an accredited trainer) taught to students.

Results showed that those students taught thinking did 300 per cent better in most school subjects, than those not taught thinking.

Thinkers ask their own questions. They don’t just respond to pre-set “intelligence test” questions.

Dennis Perrin
Vale Road
Witney