Intelligence

"Those stupid country people", I hear. Those stupid farmers. Those stupid peasants.
Does ignorance make you stupid, I wonder? Or is every healthy person roughly equally intelligent (on the variety of scales used today). Perhaps if you didn't spend your time at university, you made up for it in a variety of ways and are equally intelligent in other ways. For example, I spent 10 years studying philosophy, locked myself in a room for hours and hours every day, 7 days a week, 31 days a month, for years. So I come forth rather erudite because I learned all those big words. On the other hand, my wife's aunt never finished high school. But she is a student of people. All those years that I spent in books she spent reading people. Does that make her any less intelligent?
Do we confuse knowledge with intelligence? Are the beer drinkers and the soap opera watchers any less intelligent? My mother says "My son is so smart", but only because I'm always talking about things that she doesn't hear other people talk about. Aren't those other people around her that she considers not so smart, just as smart really?

Here's another question for another blog: Is there a maximum intelligence? Can artificial intelligence reach levels of intelligence far higher than any human's?