My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol.3 #30, January 26, 1998

TESTING, 1,2,3,4

That's what we say, isn't it, when we aren't sure a system is working? And the system I'm pretty sure is not working for us is: testing. We place a lot of faith in it in this country. We may reject the infallibility of popes or presidents, but an awful lot of us are willing to believe in the infallibility of tests--we seem to believe they tell us everything important we need to know about people. We believe I.Q. tests tell us not just our present intelligence, but our permanent intelligence, that the SATs really tell us whether we can succeed in college, that psychological tests can measure our honesty, and that lie detectors really can measure our truthfulness. But these beliefs are religious in nature--we cling to them despite an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.

For now, let's just consider the IQ test, which has assumed a monstrous importance in our society--in many schools, children are tracked on the basis of IQ tests from elementary school on up. To assign this much value to IQ tests, we need to make a few other assumptions--that intelligence is innate and unaffected by environment, that there is only one way of being intelligent, that IQ tests satisfactorily measure that intelligence, and that society has no need to worry about those at the bottom of the IQ range. Not only are all of these ideas demonstrably flawed, but their social consequences are devastating.

Studying only aggregated IQ test results, racists like the authors of The Bell Curve arrived at the conclusion they intended to: that black children are inherently inferior to white children and always will be, and that therefore we need not waste tax dollars providing a good education for them. But in any study of IQ where blacks and whites of equal social class and economic status are compared, there is no racial difference in IQ distribution. Quite simply, it matters what attention and stimulation is given to children in the years when their brains are developing--children of any race who are read to and played with develop those verbal and reasoning skills that are used to measure intelligence. That kind of parental attention is unevenly distributed in our society, so, if anything, it becomes more crucial for society to identify children who have been deprived of such attention and put them in a rich learning environment.

It also matters that children feel loved and secure. This is the background against which children dare to explore, to test the limits, to say to the world "I am important." Children need basic nutrition and protection against disease so that they have the energy and physical ability to run and climb and play and learn. They need a law-abiding environment so that they can feel safe in moving outside their family, outside their neighborhoods. Again, these qualities are unevenly distributed, and schools have a stake in providing a safe haven for children who have no other.

And what kind of intelligence is the IQ test measuring? It measures verbal dexterity, spatial reasoning, logic, memory. Is this all there is to intelligence? Not according to Howard Gardner, a prominent researcher of mind, who has identified numerous other varieties of intelligence. The IQ test says nothing about artistic or musical intelligence. Nor does it tell us anything useful about the connections we make between ideas, which is to say, creativity. It says nothing about optimism, determination and the sheer dogged effort which can make even the least promising people successful. It says nothing about the kind of emotional intelligence that allows some people to be leaders, and others conciliators and nurturers. Do not underestimate its importance to both our survival and our contentment. (Long ago, when I was leaving my little boy at his day care center, and he was clinging and whimpering, a little girl threw her arms around him and said, "That's all right, Brian, your mommy will come back for you." And for one guilty moment I wondered if her parents would like to trade kids. My son was bright and creative, but she was gifted with emotional intelligence.)

Though intelligence of all kinds, like tallness or any other physical quality, is randomly distributed, it is unrandomly cultivated. Giftedness is more likely to be noticed and nourished in the children of the suburbs, and more likely to be ignored in the children of the poor. Moreover, parents in the suburbs are willing and able to tax themselves heavily to provide good schools for their kids to prepare them for success in life. In the inner cities, where the tax base has eroded, there is barely enough money to keep the schools open and in minimal state of repair. There are not enough parents with the political clout to demand and get high quality schools. The money is not there to pay for enough teachers, enough supplies, enough books, enough safety, enough attention. Too often these schools become warehouses of children, not places where minds are nourished. Tests become not a way to identify talent, but a justification for keeping the schools strapped for cash. These schools become failure factories, not because the children are inadequate but because our will to make them work is inadequate. We do not see our stake in somebody else's schools.

But we do have a stake. Even if we agreed that IQ was the only important measure of intelligence, we still could not afford to write off the people at the bottom of the IQ pile. Ultimately, if our society is to work properly, it depends on everybody in it--as Bill Clinton used to be fond of saying, "we can't afford to waste anybody." Those of us who are living on social security, or hoping to, get that monthly check courtesy of the taxes payed by younger people, and the size of the checks depends on whether those younger people are slinging hamburgers or starting businesses.

The argument is not just economic, however. It's important for the stability of our society that it be seen as fair. You know, public schools came about in this country because in the 19th century, our leaders believed that ability existed in every social class, and that we would all gain if that ability was found and nurtured. Not only would we benefit from their ideas and inventions, but children would understand that if they studied hard and played by the rules they could make a better life for themselves and their families..

But schools and tests now seem less like instruments of democratic advancement, and more like mechanisms to insure that those at the bottom stay at the bottom, and those at the top stay there. This is dangerous, because when large numbers of people come to believe a system is only there to protect the privileged, they have no reason to support it. If minorities become the majority of the population, as they will in California, and their taxes support a university system that admits only whites and Asian-Americans, what reason will have they to continue to support those universities?

I wonder if our faith in tests has something to do with guilt. The tests allow us to justify our unconcern with the children of the poor. But we are indeed all in this together, and it's important for us to raise high the roofbeams and let all our children in.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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