LYRICFLUENT
LYRICFLUENTThe Dark History Of IQ Tests Lyrics by Addison Anderson Addison Anderson
Below, you will find the lyrics for The Dark History Of IQ Tests by Addison Anderson.
In 1905, psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon
Designed a test for children who were struggling
In school in France
Designed to determine which children required
Individualized attention
Their method formed the basis of the IQ test
Beginning in the late 19th century
Researchers hypothesized that cognitive abilities
Like verbal reasoning
Working memory, and visual-spatial skills
Reflected an underlying general intelligence, or g factor
Simon and Binet designed a battery of tests
To measure each of these abilities
And combine the results into a single score
Questions were adjusted for each age group
And a child's score reflected how they performed
Relative to others their age
Dividing someone's score by their age
And multiplying the result by 100
Yielded the intelligence quotient, or IQ
Today, a score of 100 represents the average of a sample population
With 68% of the population scoring within 15 points of 100
Simon and Binet thought the skills their test assessed
Would reflect general intelligence
But both then and now
There's no single agreed upon definition of general intelligence
And that left the door open for people to use the test
In service of their own preconceived assumptions about intelligence
What started as a way to identify those who needed academic help
Quickly became used to sort people in other ways
Often in service of deeply flawed ideologies
One of the first large-scale implementations
Occurred in the United States during WWI
When the military used an IQ test
To sort recruits and screen them for officer training
At that time, many people believed in eugenics
The idea that desirable and undesirable genetic traits
Could and should be controlled in humans through selective breeding
There were many problems with this line of thinking
Among them the idea that intelligence was not only fixed
And inherited
But also linked to a person's race
Under the influence of eugenics
Scientists used the results of the military initiative
To make erroneous claims that certain racial groups
Were intellectually superior to others
Without taking into account that many of the recruits tested
Were new immigrants to the United States
Who lacked formal education or English language exposure
They created an erroneous intelligence hierarchy of ethnic groups
The intersection of eugenics and IQ testing
Influenced not only science
But policy as well
In 1924, the state of Virginia created policy
Allowing for the forced sterilization of people with low IQ scores—
A decision the United States Supreme Court upheld
In Nazi Germany, the government authorized the murder of children
Based on low IQ
Following the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement
The discriminatory uses of IQ tests
Were challenged on both moral and scientific grounds
Scientists began to gather evidence of environmental impacts on IQ
For example, as IQ tests were periodically recalibrated
Over the 20th century
New generations scored consistently higher on old tests
Than each previous generation
This phenomenon, known as the Flynn Effect
Happened much too fast to be caused
By inherited evolutionary traits
Instead, the cause was likely environmental—
Improved education, better healthcare, and better nutrition
In the mid-twentieth century
Psychologists also attempted to use IQ tests
To evaluate things other than general intelligence
Particularly schizophrenia, depression
And other psychiatric conditions
These diagnoses relied in part on the clinical
Judgment of the evaluators
And used a subset of the tests used to determine IQ—
A practice later research found does not yield
Clinically useful information
Today, IQ tests employ many similar design elements
And types of questions
As the early tests
Though we have better techniques for identifying potential bias
In the test
They're no longer used to diagnose psychiatric conditions
But a similarly problematic practice using subtest scores
Is still sometimes used to diagnose learning disabilities
Against the advice of many experts
Psychologists around the world still use IQ tests
To identify intellectual disability
And the results can be used to determine
Appropriate educational support, job training, and assisted living
IQ test results have been used to justify horrific policies
And scientifically baseless ideologies
That doesn't mean the test itself is worthless—
In fact, it does a good job of measuring
The reasoning and problem-solving skills
It sets out to
But that isn't the same thing as measuring a person's potential
Though there are many complicated political, historical, scientific
And cultural issues wrapped up in IQ testing
More and more researchers agree on this point
And reject the notion that individuals can be categorized
By a single numerical score
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