Continuing with article 1:
"
America's gifted education programs have a race problem. Can it be fixed?"
by Danielle Dreilinger,
The Hechinger Report,
October 14, 2020,
published by NBCnews.
From paragraph 8 -
"
Gifted education has racism in its roots: Lewis Terman, the psychologist who in the 1910s popularized the concept of “IQ” that became the foundation of gifted testing, was a eugenicist. And admissions for gifted programs tend to favor children with wealthy, educated parents, who are more likely to be white."
These two sentences jump about 100 years and present a discrediting conclusion about today's IQ tests and admissions criteria, which is expected to be accepted by readers as fact.
The first sentence decries eugenics. An informative article at Stanford Daily helps us place the statement about Terman (
1877-1956) in context:
Terman is best known for developing the Stanford-Binet IQ test, a development which made both him and Stanford University well-known throughout the United States. Terman’s interest in intelligence... was motivated and shaped by Terman’s deep belief in eugenics.
... He was a firm believer in attempts to improve the human race through selective and restrictive breeding.
To be philosophically consistent, those who decry eugenics would oppose the modern-day applications of science in DNA testing, sperm banks, in-vitro fertilization and selective implanting, and more. They would also oppose abortion (promoted by Terman's contemporary, Margaret Sanger (
1879-1966) as a means of eugenics). Margaret Sanger shared her views in this half-hour
interview with Mike Wallace.
In considering the formation of one's own views on eugenics and myriad other topics, each person should be informed and cultivate the ability to recognize philosophical consistency and inconsistency in society, in articles and statements, in others, and in self. To borrow an idea from later on in the article, this may be considered as putting on one of Edward de Bono's six recommended thinking hats for varied perspectives... specifically the blue "Big Picture" hat.
Looking at the second sentence:
"
And admissions for gifted programs tend to favor children with wealthy, educated parents, who are more likely to be white."
By virtue of beginning with the word "And," this sentence is bundled with the first sentence, regarding eugenics.
The rest of this second sentence may be seen as giving anthropomorphic characteristics to the tests and/or admissions criteria, while casting people as passive entities being sorted by wealth, level of parental education, and skin color/race/ethnicity. It is a bit of creative writing which could be stated more plainly, factually and without implying the falsehood that correlation means causation.
To address the fact that some test questions may not provide meaningful measurements of native intelligence, IQ, aptitude, ability, achievement: science is never settled. There will always be more to learn, more refinements to be made. However, to retro-fit test questions to yield uniform scores/results among various race, ethnic, and SES may require abandoning valid and meaningful measurements altogether.
More later, as time allows.
