[lbo-talk] IQ and politics

[Michael Dawson]

The whole "joke" here is elitist anyway, as any potential "red state" (can't
believe I just said _that_) ally would immediately see.  As SJ Gould said,
Binet invented the IQ test because he knew it measured a socially alterable
quality, and could thus be used to identify kids in need of more educational
assistance (as if that isn't obvious from observing everyday appearances).
If the "red" force has captured the lower IQs, that's a fancy, snobbish way
of saying they're winning the working class.  The fact that decent political
forces are losing the working class speaks to the power of our ruling class
and to our own failure of imagination.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Miles Jackson
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 2:49 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] IQ and politics

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, ravi wrote:


> i had a few outstanding questions for miles, the last time this thread
> came around. i do not think he responded to them, perhaps because like
> others he found the thread tiring. in my response to him, i had provided
> various pieces of information showing that the correlation between
> standards testing (which i used as a substitute for IQ) was very poor.
> some examples: boys scored better than girls in standardized tests, but
> girls do better academically (at the college level).

No, I agree that these tests underpredict women's academic performance.
However, this doesn't support the claim that the correlation between
standardized tests like the Stanford-Binet and college performance is
poor (in fact, it's a healthy positive correlation, and that's true
for both men and women).

Miles

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