Ditto. Once we accept the fact that there are diffrent cognitive skills that are not directly comparable to one another (which I think is an implication of Levi-Strauss's idea of "practical intelligence") - the hierarchy goes down the drain. The unspoken agenda of the IQ testing was the institutionalization of one type of cognitive skill -- the manipulation of certain types of abstract symbols produced by academic authorities, while delegitimizing all other cognitive skills that may be put under the rubric 'practical intellgence."
BTW, multiple choice testing that proliferates in the US, is another way of institutionalizing a 'desirable' cognitive skill, picking up the right choice from a narrow range of options handed down by an authority figure - over, say, creative problem solving.
In all those cases, the trick lies in the arbitrary selection of a single cognitive skill whose performance forms the backbone of a hierarchical ranking system. Multiple and incomparable cognitive skills, e.g. psychomotor coordination required to play basketball and abstract symbol manipulation, considered as the basis of different types of 'intelligence" would be a death knell to meritocratic ideologies so dear to the Harvard/Yale/Princeton & Co. - processed minds.
Regards,
Wojtek Sokolowski