(^220) THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
(1916, p. 98), confuses probable pathology with normal variation
and is therefore irrelevant, as discussed above: feeble-minded chil-
dren are occasionally born to rich or to intellectually successful par-
ents.
The fifth argument reveals the strength of Terman's hereditar-
ian convictions and his remarkable insensitivity to the influence of
environment. Terman measured the IQ of twenty children in a
California orphanage. Only three were "fully normal," while sev-
enteen ranged from 75 to 95. The low scores cannot be attributed
to life without parents, Terman argues, because (p. 99):
The orphanage in question is a reasonably good one and affords an
environment which is about as stimulating to normal mental development
as average home life among the middle classes. The children live in the
orphanage and attend an excellent public school in a California village.
Low scores must reflect the biology of children committed to such
institutions:
Some of the tests which have been made in such institutions indicate
that mental subnormality of both high and moderate grades is extremely
frequent among children who are placed in these homes. Most, though
admittedly not all of these, are children of inferior social classes (p. 99).
Terman offers no direct evidence about the lives of his twenty chil-
dren beyond the fact of their institutional placement. He is not
even certain that they all came from "inferior social classes." Surely,
the most parsimonious assumption would relate low IQ scores to
the one incontestable and common fact about the children—their
life in the orphanage itself.
Terman moved easily from individuals, to social classes, to
races. Distressed by the frequency of IQ scores between 70 and 80,
he lamented (1916, pp. 91-92):
Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them.
... The tests have told the truth. These boys are ineducable beyond the
merest rudiments of training. No amount of school instruction will ever
make them intelligent voters or capable citizens.... They represent the
level of intelligence which is very, very common among Spanish-Indian
and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes. Their
dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from
which they came. The fact that one meets this type with such extraordinary
frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggests quite forcibly