Tom Lowe wrote:
[snip]
> Can't remember the source, but I believe it's the other way around. The test makers
>established the mean at 100 and the SD at 15 (at least on the Wechsler) and then
>normalized the test to fit a bell curve with those characteristics. That's how tests
>are constructed. You assume a bell curve and then work backwards to the actual
>elements of the test. Elements of the test that disrupt the curve (questions or tasks
>that are negatively correlated to the overall score, in other words) are customarily
>excluded as inappropriate or "inaccurate."
>
> Bruno Bettelheim had a favorite saying: "The end is in the beginning." If you start
>out with what the testers (or their paymasters) think is important, then you will
>arrive at a measure of those very characteristics. Because these factors are
>culturally determined, they are usually unexamined.
[snip]
Permit me once again to cite Jurgen Habermas's assertion, which
undercuts the entire regional ontology of the so-called
social sciences, including IQ tests. ("Regional ontology"
is just a big word for the social construction of the
things we then mistake for "natural" reality, e.g., test
takers, students, test givers, etc., which, for us, are more
real than G-d, but in themselves are no less "mental
constructs".)
The systematic sciences of social action, that is
economics, sociology... have the goal, as do
the empirical-analytic sciences, of producing
nomological knowledge. A critical social
science, however, will not remain satisfied with
this. It is concerned... to determine when
theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities
of social action as such and when they
express ideologically frozen relations of dependence
that can in principle be transformed. To
the extent that this is the case, the critique of
ideology, as well, moreover, as psychoanalysis,
take into account that information about lawlike
connections sets off a process of reflection
in the consciousness of those whom the laws are
about. Thus the level of unreflected
consciousness, which is one of the initial
conditions of such laws, can be transformed. Of
course, to this end a critically mediated
knowledge of laws cannot through reflection alone
render a law itself inoperative, but it can
render it inapplicable. (Habermas, 1968/1971, p.
310)
I don't keep repeating this just because I like the sound of
the words (although I do find thse words
eolquent...), but because it points the way to the only
critically defensible path *up and out* from the
alienation of our lives in the workplace, school, and
all other such social instititions. I would certainly
be glad to try to clarify any points that prevent
"you" from seeing it as the *burning glass* I think
it is to penetrate the fog of ideologies wherein
our so-called society continues to wander off
and mis-take....
If persons treated persons humanely always or even
most of the time, we could perhaps get along without
understanding the reasons, but they/we don't.
The social forces which operate against
persons, no matter how self-righteous the
intentions of their agents (e.g., the IQ/ETS constituency) are
so well fortified with reasons which although they
are not good reasons, are better than "wishful
thinking". Therefore we must fight pervasive ideology with
fundamental theory, expose it for what it is, lance these
anaerobic pustules of the individual psyche and
the corporate spirit, and then
perhaps "people" will begin to realize
that there alternatives which not only
are more appealing but also more practical, too.
The answer is hiding in plain sight. It simply requires
that the test givers open the answer books to the testees
(so that the tests can never be "given" again),
and sincerely apologize for having previously ostracized the
latter from the huamn community of peer discourse
in which the test givers have since the beginning
of testing been privileged to life and move and have their
happy being. Hegel called the general pattern of social relations
of which this would be an instance (in his story of
"The Gentleman and his Butler", in his _Phenomenology of Spirit_):
God appearing in the midst of those
who know themselves in the form of pure knowledge.
For me, I would characterize it simply as:
The war is over; you have come home while yet there is time.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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