What is that ability? It's memory. The ability to memorize detailed instruction. Some got it, some don't. Its memory, not intelligence, that erroniously defines intelligence. If some of the higher folks can remove an anyeurism and not change oil in their car, well, I guess they're not so intelligent after all are they. How I see it anyway.
Your views on education are SEVERELY out of date. Memorization has long been proven to be a fruitless pursuit. In today's world problem solving is focused on, not memorization. Take computer programming for example. A good programmer typically has a pocket reference or a website detailing function calls pulled up at all times, because it's virtually impossible to remember the syntax to every facet of a particular language (particularly when you're not even just working in one language - on any given day I could be coding in C, C++, C#, Perl, PHP, Java, Visual Basic, or T-SQL - VERY occasionally even COBOL).
Instead of memorizing syntax, you learn how to look at a problem and break it into steps. You have to see a process and understand how to break it into something solvable by a system of loop statements and conditional logic. You have to understand how different types of data are stored - when to use a B-Tree or a Linked List or an Array. Does it need to be sorted? Is the data-structure self-sorting? If it needs to be sorted is this data type the type of thing that would be best handled by a quick-sort or a radix sort or a bubble sort (ok, the answer is NEVER a bubble sort
)?
Learning what a string tokenizer is and when to use it is far more important than remembering exactly how it works. If I need to use it I can pull out the quick reference to get the exact syntax.
In short, in most professional positions, the skill is in recognizing a problem and identifying what exactly you need to look for, not in memorizing every minute detail. Critical thinking over memorization.
This isn't an elitist thing. I think that by far the majority of people CAN think critically, but the problem is that kids aren't pushed to do so. They're more obsessed with the latest sports star or what's on TV to even try. And the ones who do? It's socially acceptable to call them "nerds" or "geeks" or anything else you might think of because as a society it's become ok to shun them.
In short, we're becoming a nation of idiots - not because most people are dumb - because they've been convinced that ignorance is bliss. All the better in the eyes of some I guess. As long as they have their bread and circuses the ignorant masses will comply with whatever you feel like imposing on them.
