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

[B.]

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_."