What does being clever actually mean?

In our first lesson we were presented with this question. "what does being clever mean" and after twelve years of going to school with the aim to become clever it should have been a faily simple question to answer. This unfortunately wasn't the case, so much for a nice and easy first lesson. My group and I decided that being clever was to not just knowing the answers to things but knowing how to work problems out. Other suggestions from the class were that being clever is being able to understand new things and to adapt. I first thought that exam results would be a good measure of how clever a person is but as later demonstrated this is not always the case.

Mr Croft went on to show us two cartoon characters that represented two of his students that he has previously taught that both got the same grades at GCSE. One of these students had been trained to get through his exams the easy way. He was told all the tricks, all the answers and everything was pretty much done for him. The other student was trained to work problems out for himself, to relate his education to the real world and to stand on his own two feet. The students went on to get a job but were made redundant because of the recession but the first student found it difficult to retrain and ended up in a boring job that he hated. The second of the students manage to retrain easily and tried out a few different jobs and eventually found one that he enjoyed. He went on to live happily ever after all because he worked harder and got more out of his education.

We were then asked which method of teaching we preferred and came to the conclusion that we would like a mixture of the two. We want to know the tricks to get the best grades in the exams but not to be just spoon fed the information, we want to have the understanding to know why? After experiencing this style of teaching and comparing it to an hour of copying notes from a textbook, it is not only challenging me to push myself but also more enjoyable.