The History of IQ Tests
- reannonrieder
- 14 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Baylor Barnard
The origins and development of the IQ test are still unknown to many. Most of the stories told about the test’s inception go something like this; in the early part of the 20th century, French government officials sought out psychological professionals in order to create a test which might help them identify students who have trouble in France’s newly mandatory school system. They recruited none other than Alfred Binet, who in turn asked for assistance from Theodore Simon. Over the course of multiple years and a number of trials, Binet and Simon created a bank of questions to present to a person in order to receive a final “mental age.” This result would then be divided by the test taker’s actual age, which would in turn be multiplied by 100. Hence, the phrase intelligence quotient. Keep in mind that this test was originally intended for French school children.
There are a few problems with this conception of the history of the IQ test. It is almost accurate to say that close to every aspect of this well trodden story is incorrect. Beginning with the situation French Education found itself in during the late 19th and early 20th century. Primary School became mandatory for children between the ages of six to thirteen in France in 1882. Before then, there were some classrooms which existed for children who struggled in the typical classroom. However these were not in schools, they were inside hospitals and psychiatric hospitals. After mandatory attendance began there was a desire to find a place “for children who were ‘unfit’ for regular education” [1]. When there was finally any legislation passed in the French Parliament, it was to establish Special Education classrooms in asylums, not in schools. It was only after this initiative was struck down because of its perceived costliness that there was a second law passed which created alternative classrooms in public elementary schools [1].
Next to discuss is Alfred Binet, who was not a psychologist as is sometimes claimed. Binet achieved his PhD by working in a biological laboratory and studying Insect Nervous systems. After this, he became the director of the Sorbonne University Physiological Psychology Laboratory [1]. Binet entered the circles of French Education when the former Director of Education in France, Ferdinand Buisson, founded the SLEPE. In English, this translates to the Free Society for the Psychological Study of Children. Binet became the chair of the SLEPE in 1902. It was less accurate to say that Alfred Binet was personally called upon by the French Government to create some testing mechanism for their schooling system. Instead, Binet was part of the SLEPE, a lobbyist group who petitioned the government repeatedly to create classrooms or pass laws which benefited children who needed greater attention in their classrooms[1].
Before becoming the chair of SLEPE, Alfred Binet became acquainted with Theodore Simon, a Medical Doctor and the two began working together. They were influenced by the earlier trials of Simon’s mentor who developed a system of simple 20 questions which would supposedly differentiate a child between the categories of severe, middle, and mild degrees of intellectual disability. Some of these questions were carried forward into Binet and Simons’ own work, they included: asking the child their name, age, and nationality, and asking the child to remember and recite a string of digits. Additionally, the authors described a bank of tasks which they believed children should be capable of performing from ages three to 13 [1].
IQ testing is undeniably linked to eugenics and that is likely the result of the work by those who modified the Binet-Simon Scale of intelligence testing and translated it into their respective languages. According to Sue du Plessis, Binet was not of the opinion that intelligence could be measured in the same way that one could measure distance. Meanwhile, figures like H. H. Goddard and Lewis Terman both believed that intelligence in a person was “solitary, fixed,” and “hereditary” [2]. Terman produced the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence in 1916 which was swiftly adopted by American Education. In the next year when the United States entered the first World War, another American, Robert Yerkes, brought together “the country’s leading eugenicist scholars” to work on a test for the US Army. This test was reliant on knowledge “of elite and urban pop culture” and the results were understandably biased. Fortunately, these results were not used to any great extent by the armed services but forwarded the biases of those that collected the data and inspired the continued use of standardized tests for entry into higher education [3].
In the same way that modern standardized testing is a high profit industry, the Stanford-Binet Scale experienced the same popularity in the 1920s, coinciding with strict immigration laws, and forced sterilization of individuals with so-called inferior scores [2]. In the same decade, the United States Supreme Court upheld the involuntary sterilization of a woman for being “feebleminded”[3]. There was, however, a shift in the early twenty-first century with the case of Atkins v. Virginia when the Court ruled that executing individuals with intellectual disabilities was unconstitutional [4].
There are several core errors which arise with any attempt at measuring intelligence. The first is, as has been previously stated, it can be measured in a linear fashion. Binet, the creator of the initial scale, did not believe this. Sue du Plessis in an article for Edublox asks the important question of what intelligence the IQ is testing, “Is it the ability to do well in school? Is it the ability to read well and spell correctly?”[2]. The second and third errors appear to be in what tests measure and how they arrive at a score. As has already been stated, the test created by Binet and Simon was intended for children. Some of the questions asked of those children were as simple as “whether they could close their eyes” [1]. In short, these early tests frequently measured the basic facets of memory and motor function while later tests, including modern standardized testing, often relied on at least some knowledge of the test writer’s culture.
The modern IQ test still used in Education today is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale Children-Revised* or WISC-R. This test is often utilized whenever students are initially tested to receive Special Education services for a learning disability or are being reassessed for possible improvement. The WISC-R is composed of several sections under the umbrellas of Verbal and Performance. The Verbal sections rely on knowledge of certain vocabulary, and memory, while the latter relies on spatial skills, fine motor control, and in some cases speed of response [2]. Overall, even modern tests seem to rely not on what a test taker is capable of doing, but what they have learned [2].
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