John W. Kulig
Tue, 30 Mar 1999 11:09:05 -0500
Other tipsters quoting Gould may be right about Goddard's beliefs. All I know
about him is what I read second hand. But what's the point? Why do we give a
darn about what Goddard _really_ believed. We know there are racial
differences in intelligence, though the full extent and cause of them is an
unknowable because nobody studies them. But that doesn't stop people from
having strong opinions about them. As a scientist, I was trained not to have
strong opinions about anything prior to facts. This area is so fraught with
politically correct/incorrect preconceptions it is virtually impossible to
carry on an intelligent conversation about it. I have never totally understood
the furor over the the IQ testing of immigrants as portrayed in our texts, and
I say that as the immediate offspring of Slavs (not Slobs; sorry, old joke)
that sat across the wooden table from Goddard et al. at Ellis Island. The
actual IQ of Slavic immigrants is an empirical question we could address if we
chose to. The point is, we simply do not know. The immigrants who came circa
1900-1915 were _not_ a random sample of the racial populations we associate
them with. Some left for opportunity. Others left because land was scarce.
Others were escaping from their past. Many were peasants. They were different
than the highly educated Slavs who came over the previous century. Are we
upset that Slavs were incorrectly stereotypes based on ill defined sampling
and suspect psychometric practices?. I suspect not.
My own theory about the "touchiness" is that we are afraid to discuss racial
topics of any type given "our" experience with slavery, and the continued
racial differences in mental test scores, academic achievement, and economic
success in the US. Therefore, any topic even remotely related evokes highly
charged reactions. Jumping all over Goodard is a diversion. If we convince
ourselves he was a WASP racist, and a bad psychometrician, _we_ are off the
hook. He was probably no more racist that other people, then or now. The fact
that Goddard used interpreters and used multiple sources of opinions means he
was sensitive to "norming" issues in testing. But again, I am puzzled over the
furor, and can only conclude, as an amateur psychoanalyst :) that we are
dealing with displaced psychic energy.
I don't want to get too anecdotal about the Ellis Island experience, but I
knew my Ellis Island relatives quite well, and, at the risk of putting too
many words in their mouths, let me propose that basing immigration policy on
mental tests that cut across racial and religious lines is an improvement over
basing in on the color of your skin or the sound of your last name. It's the
direction we want to keep pushing toward, because the other direction, imho,
is Kosovo.
So, in place of the usual treatment of Goddard as protrayed in our texts, let
me make a modest proposal to remove the horns from his head, applaud his early
efforts to utilize racial-free standards, and train future generations of
psychologists to make continued progress in the fair and objective treatment
of fellow humans.
--
* John W. Kulig, Department of Psychology ************************
* Plymouth State College Plymouth NH 03264 *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig *
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* "Eat bread and salt and speak the truth" Russian proverb *
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