[lbo-talk] 'American kids, dumber than dirt'

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 2 07:16:06 PDT 2007


Really, Wojtek is right. If you haven't read _Mismeasure of Man_, it's hard to be on the same page. It's not just about the evolution of things like craniometry and other junk science, how that evolved into intelligence testing, and the sordid history associated with the Stanford-Binet IQ test's origins, it's about how -- on top of what really is an incredibly odious backdrop -- the tests themselves are pretty scientifically dubious.

The recent reassertion from Watkins of Africans' innate ineptitude just reminds of what Gould wrote already in The Mismeasure of Man: "The same bad arguments recur every few years with a predictable and depressing regularity. No sooner do we debunk one version than the next chapter of the same bad text emerges to ephemeral prominence."

-B.

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:

"As to a comprehensive list historical uses IQ/'aptitude' testing for explicitly racists and elitist purposes, please consult the book by Stephen Jay Gould, _Mismeasure of Man_."



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