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Craniometry Psychometric Testing “Broca and his school wanted to show that brain size, through its link with intelligence, could resolve what they regarded as the primary question for a “science of man” - explaining why some individuals and groups are more successful than others. To do this, they separated people according to a priori convictions about their worth - men vs. women, whites vs. blacks, “men of genius” vs. ordinary folks - and tried to demonstrate differences in brain size. Stephen Jay Gould “Wide Hats and Narrow Minds
Alfred Binet • The first intelligence test was designed in 1904 by Alfred Binet. The test was designed to identify learning disabilities in order to help and improve school performance.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) The search for “g” - the single value to describe an individual’s intelligence. • Initial IQ tests were used in immigration and in the armed services. • Hereditarian view of intelligence. • Intelligence testing grows into big business (ETS).
Biological Determinism Our human potential is determined by the immutable constitution of our biology. “What craniometry was for the nineteenth century, intelligence testing has become for the twentieth, when it assumes that intelligence is a single, innate, heritable, and measurable thing” Stephen Jay Gould “The Mismeasure of Man”
Current Theories of Intelligence • Multiple Intelligence Theory (Howard Gardner) • Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Robert Sternberg). • Domains of Intelligence
Questions to Consider • Can intelligence be described by a number? • Is there a need to measure intelligence? • In what ways is measuring intelligence helpful? • In what ways is measuring intelligence harmful?
Limits or Opportunities? “We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within”
