Historically, the initial reason for intelligence testing was to separate the higher ability students from the lower ability students (White, 2000). In doing this, higher quality education could be provided to students with higher levels of thinking ability according to the testing results. With this early higher education and training, these students would then be able to develop skills to lead the future of the country. As a result of the early higher quality education received, high achieving students will likely be placed into roles of higher socio-economic status when they reach adulthood. In other words, intelligence testing became the way to root out the “master race”. These higher functioning and educated citizens will then be able to supply their children with educational services that ensure their children's future success in schooling and the continuation of the tested superior citizen.
One major problem that I see with this practice of isolating high achieving and low achieving students is that unintended social roles will be developed for low achieving students. The students that were identified as having low ability were/are not given the opportunities of higher quality education thus resulting in the creation of a “dumber” class in our society. Rather, they are forced into lower quality classes regardless of their consent based simply on a test. Because these students are condemned to poor education, many of them will never have the chance to lead a successful life. As a result, these students will be cast into societal roles of low socio-economic status when they reach adulthood and perceived as “beneath” their higher scoring colleagues, also resulting in an increased bullying situation among their peers based upon these results.. Their poverty, then adversely affects their own children, denying them educational support from early on and this creating an “inferior” portion of society and a revolving door that may not be escaped by future generations. The result is a chain of events similar to the Matthew Effects that I researched based upon our in class readings.
The use of intelligence testing gradually spread out of the schools and into military disciplines. Colonel Yerkes designed two intelligence testing measures to identify the ability levels of recruits in the army (General Intelligence). These intelligence tests identified jobs that would best suit the qualifications of each individual recruit solely based upon the score received and not by individual want, desire or passion. IQ testing was important in the military mainly because intelligence tests offered a quick, cheap, and fairly accurate measure of general human ability (General Intelligence). That is, IQ tests allow for human resources that would have been utilized for assessing the qualifications of recruits to be allocated to other areas, allowing for more efficiency and functionality within the army. However, such tests strip away all personal choice or opinion in result to what the “recruit” wanted to achieve from his training or military experience.
Again historically speaking, the general consensus among US leaders and the general public was that intelligence was/is a relatively stable attribute of humanity. Consistent with this thought and theory, geniuses were/are regarded with awe and reverence while feebleminded or developmentally slower individuals were/are regarded as a menace to society (White, 2000). That is, the intelligence of these individuals was/is stable and could never be changed or altered based upon the results of a test. Resulting out of these beliefs and theories of degeneracy emerged hypothesizing that maladaptive characteristics of individuals are passed to their
