Gifted Children

[pippin_999]

I wrote:
> > 
> > I think it is probably very difficult to take an objective view of 
> > intelligence testing if your experience is that it has been 
>>abused  in this manner.

Shaun said:
> Yes - but Gould was a scientist. And more specifically, he was 
>a specialist in  (among other things) the history of science. As 
>such, he had a responsibility to be  objective.
> 
> There have been other objective and balanced works on these 
>ssues that exposed  all the same practices that Gould did. But 
>they did it without ignoring evidence, and 
> without misrepresenting studies. Gould did both of those 
>things in 'Mismeasure of  Man'.

Objectivity and balance are of limited use against propaganda, 
unfortunately. My understanding is The Mismeasure of Man 
(1999) was written to counter the influence of books like 
Hernstein and Murray's The Bell Curve (1996) , which I have 
read, and didn't find to be a work of scientific detachment, to say 
the least. I see that The Bell Curve is outselling TMoM at Amazon  
to this day,  sales rank 12,408 over 19,379.  Fighting fire with fire 
is debatable, but the point is, there's a fire to be fought. Blaming 
Gould for the controversy around intelligence testing instead of 
the  people trying to use it for social engineering  seems a bit 
like shooting the messenger.

It was interesting that you mentioned HIV. That's another area in 
American life where the research has become highly politicized, 
and the question "how is this distributed among the population" 
has become so loaded that it can barely be asked, much less 
answered objectively. 

 It should be understood that the public schools in the US have 
always been social engineering projects as well as educational 
institutions. The gifted programs of my era were not funded to 
help one in five thousand to reach their academic potential in the 
field of their desire, they were funded to produce mathematicians 
and scientists for the space and weapons programs of the cold 
war.

(Humanities programs got in on the coat tails. That is an area 
where I am not sure acceleration works so well. I was five years 
prepubescent when I was assigned to read "A Catcher in the 
Rye" and my reaction was, "What is this kid whining about?" <g>  
Salinger's portrayal of teen angst is a whole lot more meaningful 
once you've experienced it from the inside. )

I have to back up what Mary Ann said about local school districts. 
Here in America the largest districts are often the poorest in 
terms of per pupil funding. It's hard to manage a program that 
benefits even one in fifty when the buildings are crumbling, there 
are no books and the teachers have only emergency credentials. 
The federal government mandates that gifted programs and 
special ed be implemented, but  it doesn't fund them, so the 
districts have to do the best they can. 

In this light it is ironic that  the de-industrialization which 
impoverished our cities may be related to the skewed military 
testing done in WWII. The test-skewers thought they needed to 
preserve a supply of blue collar and unskilled labor. It didn't 
occur to them  that all the new college boys  they qualified for 
training would move to the suburbs and eventually engineer 
those urban factory jobs out of existence. ::sigh::

Thanks for sharing your expertise so gracefully, Shaun. It sounds 
like you are doing a great job for the kids you are working with.

Pippin