Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!eagle!icdoc!ivax!mmh
From: mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Bias on IQ tests
Message-ID: <253@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Apr 88 19:39:21 GMT
References: <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <73600018@uiucdcsp>
Sender: news@doc.ic.ac.uk
Reply-To: mmh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK.
Lines: 55

In article <73600018@uiucdcsp> pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>I didn't mean to start any fights about IQ.  I only want people to know
>that 'The Mismeasure of Man' is very interesting reading on this subject,
>and urge everyone to go read it.

I don't usually read this newsgroup, so I may have missed some of the 
discussion, but I really am surprised that no-one has brought up the
subject of motivation at least in what I've read. 

If someone sits you down with a paper full of daft questions that you could
answer but you really couldn't be bothered with, you may just spend your
time thinking about what you're going to do tonight, wondering what's for dinner
or so on. If that paper happens to be an IQ test you're going to score low.

If however you know exactly what IQ tests are, how the world takes them
absurdly seriously, and you've also had plenty of experience of doing things
under exam conditions, of course you're going to score a lot better.

As an example, when I was a kid at primary school in England, one day I
came in and the class was all sat down in a different room than usual
at separate desks, told to keep quiet and given some work to get on with.
Since I liked schoolwork, I went ahead and did it.
Now in fact, this was the dreaded 11-plus. If you passed this exam (and it
was designed so that about 20-30% would) you got a place at an academically
motivated school which would prepare you for higher education - called a
grammar school.
If you failed it you went to a school which would train you to accept that
you would always be a second-class citizen and you should not have ideas above
your station - called a secondary modern.
Kids whose parents were motivated and knew about the education system
prepared them extensively for this exam, and they knew exactly that passing it
would fundamentally determine their future lives. Kids like me from a rough
area where parents saw school as a kind of child-watching service had no idea
of its importance and could easily just mess about because they didn't feel like
working that day, particularly since they'd been upset by being put in a
strange environment.

If you came from a middle class home, it was pretty shocking if you failed the
11 plus. If you came from a working class home it was pretty shocking if you 
passed it. Needless to say the local grammar school was situated in a wealthy
residential area, the secondary modern among cheaper housing.

Although in most parts of England this system has now been abolished, there
are plenty in the ruling Conservative party who want to bring it back, and
they've already passed a law introducing regular tests at various age ranges
in schools.

Also there are a lot of campaigns to bring it back, or in those few areas 
which still have it, not to abolish it. Funnily enough, those campaigns always
call themselves 'Save' or 'Restore' the grammar schools, whereas in fact what
they want is to keep or bring back secondary moderns since that's where the
majority of kids go to under the selection system.

  Matthew Huntbach - Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London SW7, U.K.