THE HEREDITARIAN THEORY OF IQ 209
National Intelligence Tests for Grades 3-8
The direct result of the application of the army testing methods to school
needs.... The tests have been selected from a large group of tests after a
try-out and a careful analysis by a statistical staff. The two scales prepared
consist of five tests each (with practical exercises) and either may be admin-
istered in thirty minutes. They are simple in application, reliable, and
immediately useful in classifying children in Grades 3 to 8 with respect to
intellectual ability. Scoring is unusually simple.Binet, had he lived, might have been distressed enough by such
a superficial assessment, but he would have reacted even more
strongly against Terman's intent. Terman agreed with Binet that
the tests worked best for identifying "high-grade defectives," but
his reasons for so doing stand in chilling contrast with Binet's
desire to segregate and help (1916, pp. 6-7):
It is safe to predict that in the near future intelligence tests will bring
tens of thousands of these high-grade defectives under the surveillance
and protection of society. This will ultimately result in curtailing the repro-
duction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous
amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency. It is hardly nec-
essary to emphasize that the high-grade cases, of the type now so fre-
quently overlooked, are precisely the ones whose guardianship it is most
important for the State to assume.Terman relentlessly emphasized limits and their inevitability.
He needed less than an hour to crush the hopes and belittle the
efforts of struggling, "well-educated" parents afflicted with a child
oflQ 75 -
Strange to say, the mother is encouraged and hopeful because she sees
that her boy is learning to read. She does not seem to realize that at his age
he ought to be within three years of entering high school. The forty-min-
ute test has told more about the mental ability of this boy than the intelli-
gent mother had been able to learn in eleven years of daily and hourly
observation. For X is feeble-minded; he will never complete the grammar
school; he will never be an efficient worker or a responsible citizen (1916).
Walter Lippmann, then a young journalist, saw through Ter-
man's numbers to the heart of his preconceived attempt, and wrote
in measured anger:
The danger of the intelligence tests is that in a wholesale system of
education, the less sophisticated or the more prejudiced will stop when