From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 11:35:34 MDT
prometheansun@yahoo.com (Promethean Sun) writes:
>
>Mainstream Science on Intelligence
>
>50 professors at Universities throughout the U.S., Canada, and Britain have signed the following statement concerning the generally accepted science of intelligence and inter-race differences in intelligence.
>5. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.
Chapter 3 of The Rising Curve make a serious argument that the definition
of intelligence and the importance attached to it vary a good deal between
cultures. I.e. making intelligence tests good predictors of success in
western societies can cause them to be biased towards something rather
different from what someone in Bangladesh wants to excel at.
The Nurture Assumption provides some hints that this kind of phenomenon
may explain some or all of the racial differences in IQ (page 251):
all you have to do to lower the score of a bright black kid on a test of
academic ability is to give her, before she takes the test, a short
questionnaire that includes the question "Race?"
>17. Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. Whether recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable scientific debate.
The Flynn effect raises some doubts about this claim. There's a good deal
of uncertainty, but Geoffrey Miller's book The Mating Mind strongly hints
at an explanation that implies we do know how to raise intelligence.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Jon Johansen! http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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