E HEREDITARIAN THEORY OF IQ 221that the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be
taken up anew and by experimental methods. The writer predicts that
when this is done there will be discovered enormously significant racial
differences in general intelligence, differences which cannot be wiped out
by any scheme of mental culture. Children of this group should be segre-
gated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and prac-
tical. They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be macfe efficient
workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present
of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce,
although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem
because of their unusually prolific breeding.Terman sensed that his arguments for innateness were weak.
Yet what did it matter? Do we need to prove what common sense
proclaims so clearly?
After all, does not common observation teach us that, in the main, native
qualities of intellect and character, rather than chance, determine the
social class to which a family belongs? From what is already known about
heredity, should we not naturally expect to find the children of well-to-do,
cultured, and successful parents better endowed than the children who
have been reared in slums and poverty? An affirmative answer to the
above question is suggested by nearly all the available scientific evidence
(1917, p. 99).Whose common sense?Terman recants
Terman's book on the Stanford-Binet revision of 1937 was so
different from the original volume of 1916 that common author-
ship seems at first improbable. But then times had changed and
intellectual fashions of jingoism and eugenics had been swamped
in the morass of a Great Depression. In 1916 Terman had fixed
adult mental age at sixteen because he couldn't get a random sam-
ple of older schoolboys for testing. In 1937 he could extend his
scale to age eighteen; for "the task was facilitated by the extremely
unfavorable employment situation at the time the tests were made,
which operated to reduce considerably the school elimination nor-
mally occurring after fourteen" (1937, p. 30).
Terman did not explicity abjure his previous conclusions, but a
veil of silence descended upon them. Not a word beyond a few
statements of caution do we hear about heredity. All potential rea-