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I.Q. Redux

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

John L. Rury
John L. Rury*
Affiliation:
DePaul University
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Type
Essay Review
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Winter 1995 , pp. 423 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Terman, Lewis M., ed., Genetic Studies of Genius , vol. 1, Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted Children (Stanford, Calif., 1925), v.Google Scholar

2 Terman, Lewis M., in Whipple, Guy Montrose, ed., The Twenty-Seventh Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Nature and Nurture , part 1, The Influence upon Intelligence (Bloomington, Ill., 1928), ch. 1: “Introduction.” Google Scholar

3 See, for instance, the statement signed by more than fifty scientists, supporting the general assumptions of Herrnstein and Murray, and some of their conclusions (though not all), published in the Wall Street Journal, 13 Dec. 1994.Google Scholar

4 At least two compendia of reviews and commentary have been published to date: Fraser, Steven, ed., The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America (New York, 1995); and Jacoby, Russell and Glauberman, Naomi, eds., The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

5 On the early years of this debate, see Cravens, Hamilton, The Triumph of Evolution: American Scientists and the Heredity-Environment Controversy, 1900–1941 (Philadelphia, 1978), parts 1 and 2; on the development of mental testing and ideas about intelligence as a heritable trait, see Evans, Brian and Waites, Bernard, IQ and Mental Testing: An Unnatural Science and Its Social History (London, Eng., 1981); for the Jensen debate see Block, N. J. and Dworkin, Gerald, eds., The I.Q. Controversy: Critical Readings (New York, 1976), part 2 and part 3; on more recent developments consult Degler, Carl, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York, 1991), part 3.Google Scholar

6 Block, and Dworkin, , eds., The I.Q. Controversy; and Jacoby, and Glauberman, , eds., The Bell Curve Debate, are both useful guides to these debates as they have occurred over the past ninety years or so. Also see the essays in Montagu, Ashley, ed., Race and I.Q. (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

7 Wooldridge, Adrian, “Bell Curve Liberals: How the Left Betrayed I.Q.,” New Republic, 27 Feb. 1995, 22–24.Google Scholar

8 Perhaps the best brief discussion of early ambivalence about testing can be found in Cremin, Lawrence, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York, 1961), 189–92. For a characteristic popular reaction, see, for instance, the response by organized labor described in Hogan, David John, Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Philadelphia, 1985), 185–87.Google Scholar

9 On the army tests and their effects, see Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man (New York, 1981), 192–233.Google Scholar

10 Cravens, , The Triumph of Evolution , part 3; Degler, , In Search of Human Nature, chs. 6, 7, and 8. Also see Cravens, Hamilton, Before Head Start: The Iowa Station and America's Children (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993), ch. 4.Google Scholar

11 For a somewhat critical overview of this period, see Ravitch, Diane, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York, 1983), ch. 5 ch. 5.Google Scholar

12 Block, and Dworkin, , eds., The I.Q. Controversy, part 3. Herrnstein became infamous for his article, “I.Q.”, published in the Atlantic Monthly, Sep. 1971, 43–64.Google Scholar

13 Jencks was the principal author but had different groups of collaborators on each book. Jencks, Christopher, Smith, Marshall, Acland, Henry, Bane, Mary Jo, Cohen, David, Gintis, Herbert, Heyns, Barbara, and Michelson, Stephan, Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York, 1972), ch. 3; Jencks, Christopher, Bartlett, Susan, Corcoran, Mary, Crouse, James, Eaglesfield, David, Jackson, Gregory, McClelland, Kent, Mueser, Peter, Olneck, Michael, Schwartz, Joseph, Ward, Sherry, and Williams, Jill, Who Gets Ahead? The Determinants of Economic Success in America (New York, 1979), chs. 4 and 6. Herrnstein and Murray discuss Jencks's work at only one point in The Bell Curve (on p. 53) and misrepresent it as suggesting that cognitive ability is irrelevant to occupational differences.Google Scholar For a summary of Sewell's work on the “Wisconsin Model,” see Sewell, William H. and Hauser, Robert M., Education, Occupation, and Earnings: Achievement in the Early Career (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

14 Jencks, et al., Inequality, 226–29. This would account for the low R square on their equations, noted by Stephen J. Gould in his review of the book, which appears in the New Yorker, 28 Nov. 1994, 139–49. Some of the arguments made in The Bell Curve were voiced in part in an earlier volume Herrnstein coauthored: Wilson, James Q. and Herrnstein, Richard J., Crime and Human Nature (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

15 See Michael Olneck's discussion in Jencks, et al., Who Gets Ahead?, ch. 6. Also see the deft treatment of why I.Q. might have an effect on crime and other forms of anti-social behavior, because of educational differences, in Jencks, Christopher, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 108–9.Google Scholar There is a long history of hereditarians ignoring the effects of education. See the discussion of this at the time of the army I.Q. test in Gould, , Mismeasure of Man, 218–20. For an empirical examination of the effect of education on racial differences in test scores, consult Rury, John L., “Race, Region, and Education: An Analysis of Black and White Scores on the 1917 Army Alpha Intelligence Test,” Journal of Negro Education 57 (Winter 1988): 51–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Wilson, William Julius, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1987); Massey, Douglas S. and Denton, Nancy A., American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).Google Scholar

17 See the discussion by James Crouse in Jencks, et al., Who Gets Ahead?, 99–101.Google Scholar

18 These data were taken from the following two sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population and Housing: Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, Chicago-Gary-Lake County, IL-IN-WI CMSA, Chicago, IL PMSA, section 2 (Washington, D.C., 1993), Table 17; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population, vol. 1, Characteristics of the Population, part 15, sections 1 and 2, Illinois (Washington, D.C., 1973), tables 83 and 103.Google Scholar

19 Murray, Charles A., Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York, 1984). For a discussion of issues in Murray's earlier work which parallel many of the problems in The Bell Curve, see my review essay: Rury, John L., “The New Moral Darwinism,” Urban Education 21 (Oct. 1986): 316–24.Google Scholar

20 For a revealing account of Murray's background and social predilections, see DeParle, Jason, “Charles Murray: Daring Research or ‘Social Science Pornography’?” New York Times Magazine, 9 Oct. 1994, 48–53, 62, 70–71, 74, 78, 80.Google Scholar