Yes, or capacities in areas that aren't measured on the Stanford-Binet, which is aimed at things that can be tested on paper. For example, someone may have high "intelligence" in areas like music, interpersonal relations, "body-kinesthetics" (to list a few of Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences"). I would also count "intelligence" in areas that are no longer significant for many in highly developed post-industrial societies, like farming (not agri-business farming, but farming as it was done before practices like keeping chickens in cages, raising animals in pens where they can't move, etc.) and the ability to "read" aspects of the natural world (e.g., in the 2004 tsunami, how some people recognized that the ocean receding from the shore signaled a tsunami).
I'm not saying that Misty is intelligent, or not intelligent. I'm saying that even if she took the most recent Stanford-Binet, which claims to have corrected for cultural biases (in Misty's case, in regard to social class and economic strata) and literacy skills (testing aspects of intelligence in non-verbal tasks), there may be "intelligence," developed or otherwise, that wouldn't be "measured".
I am a great skeptic in regard to the way many young people are marked as "low intelligence" based on school performance and standardized tests. It would seem to me that her impoverished emotional and social development, early drug abuse, as well as a family background that almost certainly did not prepare her well for schooling, might well explain her school failures--and might predict school failure even for someone with measurably high intelligence. I am also thinking here about possible pre-natal damage, given her mother's history of drug abuse, that might impair brain functioning, which could affect
capacity, especially when coupled with an early childhood that is impoverished in terms of the kind of mental stimulation common for middle-class children from homes in which parents are not addicts or criminals. That is, Misty's background, both pre- and post-natal, might have an impact on "intelligence," both in terms of capacity and in making something of that capacity, including compensating for developmental delays.
What's really discouraging is how many Mistys and Tommys and Rons there are out there--kids who may start out with developmental issues because of their parents' alcohol or drug abuse, and then are raised in chaotic homes that don't prepare kids well for school or for life, who then abuse drugs an alcohol and bring children into the world who have the same handicaps to try to overcome (e.g., Ron, Jr., whose mother is an addict and whose father is now incarcerated). We just don't see these kids because their lives either don't land them in the public eye or they just get their few lines in the paper when they end up arrested, convicted, or dying young.
There's a group of four teenagers (16-17) who were arrested for shooting a retired firefighter who was walking his dog. They wanted money for drugs and decided to "rob the first person they saw." They used the pretext of asking if the dog would bite to approach the man but after he said the dog was "friendly," shot the man twice and killed him. Having not thought the matter through, they ended up NOT robbing the man because...they were afraid of the dog, who had just seen his master shot and killed. This, of course, is an extreme example. It's hard to imagine how they wouldn't have thought through the consequences of shooting a man walking a pit bull--what they would have to risk to pull the wallet out of his pocket, for example--or that they gave no thought to the ubiquitous security cameras on city streets. But they had made a "decision" and followed it through--right to jail.
These punks are getting their few lines in the paper now, but soon they will be tried, convicted and sent to prison for life. There's a video of them stalking the man they killed, and all four of them are pointing the finger at the others. No one outside this city will ever know their names, and most of us will (I hope) remember the man they killed and not the names of the killers. But they are, more or less, like Misty, kids being lost to gross negligence by their parents, communities rotten with drugs and guns, their own addictions, schools totally unprepared to deal with their problems, and their own total lack of empathy for others--whether the result of psychopathy or more simply the fact that no one ever taught them to care about anyone except themselves.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10100/1049254-53.stm#ixzz0ko1K01FV
