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From: moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: IQ
Message-ID: <15936@handicap.news>
Date: 2 Jun 91 12:07:39 GMT
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Reply-To: moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum)
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Index Number: 15936

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>  AS> Ah - we don't believe in IQ's, do we?
> 
>  We don't?

Well, *I* certainly don't.  Details below.

> 
>  AS> I don't as I think one can learn from reading and being around
>  AS> people.  I've never felt any type of testing gives an accurate
>  AS> picture of how much one knows or how good one is in a specific field,
>  AS> especially since one can make outstanding grades in school and do so
>  AS> poorly on aptitude tests.
> 
> Sorry to interrupt the conversation, but I'm a member of Mensa, and IQ can be
> measured in a number of various areas using over 200 different tests, each of
> which is geared to different people of different backgrounds, with different
> life experiences.

Which, for me, does nothing to excuse the way IQ tests get used.  I
have worked for many years with developmentally disabled people,
and I have seen many people labeled "severe" or "profound" simply
because the examiner didn't have the patience to allow the person
to finish thinking.  I used to work in an alternative living unit
in Baltimore, and the three residents of the unit were, in my
opinion, classified exactly the *opposite* of their abilities --
the smartest one could count change without touching the coins and
had, frankly, a better memory than I do, and he said he knew how to
shoot craps (I never tested him on this ;-)), but he was the only
one of the three classified as "profoundly" disabled.

I have found, through this and other experiences, that standardized
tests, including IQ tests, too often are used as an excuse for
remediating or otherwise labeling students.  As someone who is
currently involved in a project to avoid doing just that with
college freshman calculus students, I can assure you that the abuse
of IQ is horribly widespread.  The fundamental problem is that IQ
tests take, as input, a student's intelligence, and give as output
a number (I don't care how specialized the test is -- the output is
a score).  Now, fundamentally, a single number cannot reflect all
that went into that student's effort.

Regrds,
Tom Leathrum
moth@dartmouth.edu