• Panini@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      8·
      3 days ago

      It’s real, it’s just almost never used for its intended purpose, and almost always used in a malignantly irresponsible and unhelpful manner. It’s not even meant to be scored to an individual.

      The whole point was to have a score that can be aggregated across communities, and then used to allocate educational resources to help communities with poor scores. The entire premise is that IQ scores come primarily from education, socioeconomic status, and culture. Nothing innate to individuals or genetics whatsoever. So you send extra resources to places that are struggling.

      Sounds great until you hand it over to a racist, classist, ableist, colonialist, bigoted society and governments with no interest in helping communities they intentionally oppressed (in the 1800s, no less). Then it becomes another tool of oppression.

      • Of the Air (cele/celes)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        18 hours ago

        The whole point was to have a score that can be aggregated across communities, and then used to allocate educational resources to help communities with poor scores.

        Source please :)

        • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          The point of the original Binet–Simon test that all modern tests are derived from was to help children with developmental delays get better help from educators. It was far more well intentioned and well thought out than most other attempts to measure intelligence at the time, but it had obvious limitations that were rarely accounted for when future psychologists tried to generalize it.

          The tests need to written for a specific language and culture, meaning people from different cultures or with different primary languages will score worse. It also doesn’t really identify what the child’s problem is, just that their performance in school likely won’t match their peers. Most importantly, it was conceived to measure children to help them get the help they need, not earn normal scoring people opportunities or assign social status to insecure adults. If it becomes a system like the United State’s SAT that can be gamed with test taking strategies taught by private tutors, the test just reinforces inequalities and systemic injustice while giving the illusion of being fair.