Quantification and intelligence testing: a reassessment.

• Author: Bishirjian, Richard J.

Though not a student of the history of testing for intelligence, I have always thought that intellectual ability, the ability to think conceptually, is primarily shaped by culture and that testing for intelligence reflects the culture of the West, not human intelligence qua human. "I got rhythm" is a cultural statement, not a description of a genetic trait.

This thought recurred when Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute was given prominence at several conferences that I recently attended. Since the publication of The Bell Curve (1) a decade and a half ago, Murray has become the most listened to, if not the reigning authority, on intelligence and education--at least in some circles.

This article will critique the "strong hereditarian" bias characteristic of Murray, whose arguments defy just about every philosophical and theological truth of the Western philosophical tradition. It will also warn of the dangers to academic freedom presented by the push for measurement of learning outcomes that now dominates the accreditation of higher education degree programs and institutions.

With respect to the latter, the U.S Department of Education under former Secretary Margaret Spellings engaged in a systematic effort to "dumb down" college education in America by the forced imposition of a progressive education ideology that compels colleges and universities to apply quantitative measurements to "learning outcomes."

The debate about measuring what students learn at accredited colleges has practical significance because of the Education Department's desire to measure the learning outcomes of students in every course taught in every college in America. It gains further significance in light of Murray's advocacy of restricting a college education to those who score in the top 20th percentile on IQ tests.

Murray's focus on genetics--received intelligence--proved embarrassing to his neoconservative colleague Nathan Glazer, who wrote: "I wish Herrnstein and Murray had pressed further other explanations for these differences among groups before taking up differences in biological inheritance. Indeed, I wish they had dropped resort to such explanations totally: little would have changed in their argument if they had. For the nonbiological explanations will carry us far, to the point perhaps we need make no reference to genes at all." (2)

There are other reasons for questioning Murray's celebrity, including numerous findings that contradict Murray's thesis by Richard E. Nisbett, a cultural psychologist and co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program at the University of Michigan. The following data, which are taken from Nisbett's 2003 book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... And Why, (3) are relevant:

* Economic and social factors can affect perceptual habits, which accounts for the differences between agricultural peoples and those living in industrial societies (42).

* Asians' feeling good about themselves is tied "to the sense that they are in harmony with the wishes of the groups to which they belong" (49).

* Unlike for Westerners, for Asians choice is not a high priority (49).

* Asians prefer jobs in which everyone works together, and no one person is singled out for personal honor (63).

* In the West, the purpose of negotiation is to achieve a desired result. In Asia negotiation avoids either/or choices (75).

* Differences between the sexes are greater in the West (99).

* Chinese regard change as more likely than Americans (104).

* Westerners think in...