The WAIS is a widely-used instrument that generates an IQ. In general, it attempts to quantify two aspects of g–crystalized and fluid intelligence. Crystalized intelligence is facts and learned processes (“If Bob has one and a half chickens who lay 5 eggs an hour, then…” “What is the airspeed of an African swallow?” etc.). Fluid intelligence is the ability to learn a new task and then apply it. In addition, the tasks of the WAIS are divided across verbal and performance domains. A test of vocabulary, which is crystalized and verbal, correlates most highly with the full IQ score, suggesting that the WAIS understands crystalized, verbal knowledge as the best correlate of g.
If “school room success” is memorizing and reporting facts, then sure, IQ as we measure it could indicate school success. However, sitting still might also be highly correlated with school success. We don’t measure sitting still as a form of intelligence, though it could be argued that hypoactivity and obedience/compliance is smart behavior in a school setting.
IQ correlates with SAT scores. SAT scores correlate with parental socioeconomic status. People of higher socioeconomic status run the state. The state makes the rules about what behaviors are valued. The valued behaviors are measured. The measurements show that higher-status people are more sufficient on the measures. Systems reflect the worldview of those in charge.
Shoshana (Jewish, middle class, high-achieving, high test-scoring psychologist who administers the WAIS and writes reports attempting to contextualize IQ and response sets)
I can’t think of any reason to make that assumption.
I know a great many people who are very smart who, for lack of opportunity, never got an advanced education. (I knew one gentleman who never even learned to read, yet he was smart enough to hold down a supervisory position in a tool shop.)
IQ tests (that tend to be based on testing for literacy-based values) tend to be a decent predictor of success in literacy-based studies, but there is no reverse test that demonstrates that possession of more education by an individual indicates possession of greater intelligence/intellectual ability than an individual with less education–and extrapolating to groups muddies the issue even further.
I wonder if you might expand on that or better, provide a link to a credible source. I’ve never heard IQ results described in that way.
My position wasn’t that motivation or paying attention has no influence on succcess in school. My position was that IQ results are one of the best predictors, if not the best predictor, of academic success. No one has addressed that as far as I see.
Fine. And I say that because whether I agree with that theory (supported or not) or I don’t, doesn’t change IQ’s otherwise “unreasonable” correlations with real, supported, life outcomes. So, in my mind at least, that’s really not addressing the issue and vaidity of IQ results per se, and whether those results for a population correlate with certain positive and negative life outcomes. In fact, IQ subtest results are used to help identify, at an earlier stage, the potential areas a child who needs academic help, might need that help, and the extent to which they might need that help. So it’ss not all ‘my IQ score is hhigher than your’s’ or that ‘this “race” has a lower IQ scorre than that race’ — which, I suspect, has been the REAL gripe about IQ all along in certain circles, So, as the Wikipedia link indicates, IQ results play a role in death penality determinations, Social Security disability claims, and whether a recruit will be admitted to the military. IQ results don’t only measure high scores, they are taylored into subtests and might shows areas where a student, or a convicted person, or a disability claimant, or a potentional recruit, might be deficient. I suspect you’ve chosen to make the ‘those in power value their own cognitive skills so have created a tool that measures only that’ line of agrument because IQ results do predict academic success … and IQ predicts it to a high degree.
Agreed that such is an unwarranted assumption, that education and intelligence, let alone wisdom, are different beasts. And as an aside, I’d argue that difference is precisely the cultural value that has Jewish culture producing the number of sigma outliers that it has. There is education, as a means to an end. And there is education as an end unto itself, for the love of understanding. It is my belief that Jewish culture traditionally held the latter in higher regard than did cultures that had other resources than ideas alone to traffic in.