Measuring IQs served a useful purpose

Measuring IQs served a useful purpose

I’m pleased to note that Ms. Cohen (The Acorn, Aug. 29) approves of the SAT—but not IQ tests—as a tool for evaluating the ability of college freshmen. The SAT was designed to find bright, capable people who were not part of the "old boy" network and who had been ill-prepared by their local schools.

And surprise, SAT originally meant Scholastic Aptitude Test, an IQ test, until it was dumbed down in the last decade. It is now the Scholastic Achievement Test, and a large part of the objective questions that measured intelligence have been replaced this year by a subjective writing exam that is vulnerable to grading bias. We are now almost back to pre-SAT days when bright kids from poor schools were buried in the onslaught of their dumb compatriots.

What a shame! What a loss!

As for emotional intelligence, usually shortened to EQ, I’ll let Ms. Cohen travel in airplanes designed by those types. I won’t. Mother Nature responds to objective ability and couldn’t care less about subjective touchy-feely attitudes. She also ruthlessly and mercilessly punishes fools.

Being sensitive about IQ is a modern fad. In the 12th grade (pre-WWII, when I went to school), every kid in my graduating class took the Ohio State Psychological Exam (OSP).

It too was an IQ test, but that was nothing new to any of us; we all knew our approximate IQs by which class we were in. The OSP results were posted on the school’s bulletin board. No one got upset; those were the numbers that colleges would use to determine which students would be selected and which would not.

Today IQ is taboo.

Perhaps that is because the hard sciences—physics, chemistry, mathematics and medicine—as distinguished from the soft sciences, teaching and social work, require bright people (otherwise, civilization collapses), and most people don’t have the requisite talent.

Or perhaps it’s because busybodies compare and publicize the IQ distributions of racial and ethnic groups. The latter is a despicable practice. What matters is the ability of each individual kid. It is personal ability that overcomes bad environments and bad schools.

Teachers need a good EQ; they don’t have to be bright. They merely need to teach what the doers do! And they must stop trying to impose their naïve and unproven views of reality on their students. Bright people must be found and nurtured; without them, the United States would soon be a Third World power.

The definitive book on IQ and success is the monumental work by Herrnstein and Murray, "The Bell Curve." Experts in the field acclaim it, but its measurements and conclusions are unpopular with the politically correct crowd. Its fundamental thesis is that individuals matter, but groups are extraneous.

Wm. O. Felsman

Woodland Hills