Dan Rather and I.Q.

Sorry it has been so long since I've done a post, I had a test in statistics on Friday and I was pretty stressed out about it all week. I think I did alright though, so now I can stress over the two other tests I have this week.

Anyway, I thought I'd write a bit about a video we watched in History of Psychology. It was a 60 Minutes report from 1975, featuring a young Dan Rather discussing I.Q. with the big psychologists of the day. It mentioned all the big questions that 30 years later we still don't have the answers to: why so much disparity between whites' and blacks' scores? is intelligence a single construct or comprised of several abilities? does a low score really indicate a low ability to perform? etc. Given that we still don't have the answers now, I won't be holding my breath for any breakthroughs.

The other interesting thing that was brought up, in classic Dan Rather form, was a class warfare argument. I believe one direct quote from the film was "the only purpose intelligence tests serve in our society is as a tool for the middle class to disenfranchise the working class, and to justify racism by using a 'scientific' measurement." I found that all very interesting since the middle vs. working class argument does not exist in today's class warfare vernacular, now it's the upper class vs. the middle class. Since there isn't an I.Q. discrepancy between those two groups I doubt we'll hear John Edwards citing I.Q. tests in his approach to class warfare.