[lbo-talk] IQ scores (was: Sam Smith on Doug Henwood)

bitch at pulpculture.org bitch at pulpculture.org
Sat Feb 10 05:54:15 PST 2007


At 09:06 PM 2/9/2007, B. wrote:
>As I understand it, that's exactly the reason they're
>given: for & to adolescent kids, to see how well they
>will probably adapt to structured learning
>environments. They are not told what the resulting IQ
>scores are, IIRC. If you file special forms, etc.,
>once you're 18, you can learn from the administering
>doctor what it finally was, 6 years ago.

That's what I was curious about. Thanks for this. I remember taking boatloads of tests all through grade school, but everyone did, including apparently the Stanford Binet. This must have been when it was still the vogue to use those tests to place people in academic tracks. That was big when I was in school, with some of us in specialized groups. E.g., I was the only girl in school with another boy and both of us were taking advanced math because of our scores. This was pretty funny, too, because he was a farm boy and I was decidedly not the daughter of engineers, professors, and other professional-managerial types. I mean, obviously, we didn't really 'get' those social distinctions then, we were too young.

Unfortunately, I happened to have had a sexist math teacher who systematically humiliated me and told me, directly, that girls weren't good at math. After that horrible year, I remained in the advanced level math courses, but pissed my pants every time I looked at an equation. And seriously pissed myself when it came to tests. I couldn't learn in a classroom with a teacher. I had to do it outside the classroom, using books from the library. I would suck all year long on exams in class and anything associated with a math teachers, then sit for finals and get 98s and 99s.

Basically, I ended up with a serious math-phobia and had to check out more library books as an adult to overcome it.

My partner had a similar experience with Algebra. We've both decided that we will, with glee, piss on those two math teachers graves at some point. Whee!

Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org



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