David B. Shemano wrote: > One of the hallmarks of the academic Lefty intelligentsia groupthink is the > belief that anybody who believes IQ tests and results have relevance is evil > and should be shunned, while simultaneously believing that their own high IQs > demonstrate how much smarter they are than everybody else.<
I haven't done a detailed and scientific survey of the "academic Lefty intelligensia" the way David presumably has. But my personal experience indicates that academics have entirely too much respect for IQ tests, in their current incarnation in the SATs. Again and again, I've heard about the need to raise the SAT cut-off for admission (at Loyola Marymount University). Doubts about the SAT have been rising a small number of other colleges and universities, however. For some reason, a large percentage of academics I've talked to are not familiar with Gardner's research indicating that there are 8 or more distinct kinds of "intelligence" rather than the one-dimensional version of standard IQ tests. They are familiar with the cultural biases of the dominant IQ tests, however. Strangely, I've never talked to anyone who's familiar with recent medical research on twin studies which indicates that poverty makes it difficult to attain the presumed biologically-determined IQ. On the other hand, I don't think academics don't care about "their own high IQs." Rather, it's their high academic degrees that count. This makes psychological sense, of course: it's hard to take credit for something like IQ, which is a result of some complex mixture of environment and heredity, as opposed to something one has achieved. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
