A bad IQ test result tends to prompt some soul searching and if, like most Americans, you decide someone else must be to blame, Murdoch will give you a good list of scapegoats. This is a highly readable history of IQ tests: their origins, their current (allegedly flawed) use, and their possible future.
Of course, if you're like me, you're going into this already highly skeptical that "intelligence" can be measured with a few vocabulary tests and some wooden blocks, and trust me, you'll feel highly vindicated after reading this one. Next time an IQ snob asks you "what you got" on the test, you'll now be able to suavely ask them if they agree with eugenics policies. After a shocked and slightly awkward "no, of course not," you'll be able to respectfully disagree with them, informing them that the origins of the modern IQ test they seem to care so much about actually began with a man named Francis Galton, who wanted to create a "mental test" to evaluate who should be allowed to breed in society and who should be sterilized and institutionalized. "Did you know," you'll ask the embarrassed person, "that IQ tests have been used as late as the 1970's to justify forced sterilizations in the United States? Oh, you didn't? Well, you might want to check out Buck v. Bell. Read up. You'll see." Thanks to Murdoch, this conversation is now possible.
He reviews the test's uses in the legal system, the medical establishment, the military and, of course, includes a long chapter on the offspring of the IQ test, the SAT. The chapters range from short- to medium-length. I ended up enjoying it far more than I thought I would, and ended up (to Murdoch's glee, I would suppose) outraged at the origins and uses of the IQ test throughout history and today.
RECOMMENDED
Of course, if you're like me, you're going into this already highly skeptical that "intelligence" can be measured with a few vocabulary tests and some wooden blocks, and trust me, you'll feel highly vindicated after reading this one. Next time an IQ snob asks you "what you got" on the test, you'll now be able to suavely ask them if they agree with eugenics policies. After a shocked and slightly awkward "no, of course not," you'll be able to respectfully disagree with them, informing them that the origins of the modern IQ test they seem to care so much about actually began with a man named Francis Galton, who wanted to create a "mental test" to evaluate who should be allowed to breed in society and who should be sterilized and institutionalized. "Did you know," you'll ask the embarrassed person, "that IQ tests have been used as late as the 1970's to justify forced sterilizations in the United States? Oh, you didn't? Well, you might want to check out Buck v. Bell. Read up. You'll see." Thanks to Murdoch, this conversation is now possible.
He reviews the test's uses in the legal system, the medical establishment, the military and, of course, includes a long chapter on the offspring of the IQ test, the SAT. The chapters range from short- to medium-length. I ended up enjoying it far more than I thought I would, and ended up (to Murdoch's glee, I would suppose) outraged at the origins and uses of the IQ test throughout history and today.
RECOMMENDED
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