One of the more difficult parts of this assignment for my topic of intelligence and education is finding a specific time where there was a shift and finding research to prove that there was a switch at all. Here is the source that I found, however, that I think will lead to prove that there was indeed a shift, a shift where our nation discovered that testing has its flaws. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2001042004. I think this is relevant to what I am trying to argue because it displays a timeline of what legislation the government put in place from the sixties to now. There is a moment where the timeline states:
| Standards movement aims to improve school curriculums; states add testing, but national test is opposed. |
This the moment where it says that “national test is opposed”. Later, the timeline states “ Congress bans any moves toward national testing in 1998, reinforces prohibition in 1999.” This will act as proof that we indeed have transitioned from the testing frenzy (with the timeline showing the use of IQ tests and the development of the SAT). With this evidence that there is shift away from testing, I will then have to show that there is more of an emphasis on character intelligence. Here is an example of what I mean by character intelligence: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 . It talks about perseverance and how that may be just as important if not more important than having a high SAT score. I also want to emphasize the different types of intelligence; intelligence is simply not about books and academics, but about talent in something, such as art and music or writing. I still need to find a source about that. What this reflects about our culture is that we value character and special quirks over being completely book nerdy. Before, society created this commonplace that intelligence was about getting all As and scoring highly compared to others. Now, if someone doesn’t do particularly well, we do not necessarily categorize them as dumb. Instead we say, hey he or she might be amazing and this or that.
The movement away from the testing frenzy demonstrates the shift towards a different meaning of intelligence, an intelligence that distances itself from the typical brainy and academic version of smart. As a nation, we’ve attempted to put in place national standards that are created by testing every student with a test for the whole country. Kenneth Jost’s chronological timeline shows attention we’ve put on testing. Even before the creation of the SAT in 1926, our nation utilized IQ testing to assess students in public schooling (Jost). However, as we observe the rest of the timeline, the opposition towards testing increases; although testing is still put into place, the movement for national testing is opposed in the 1990’s (Jost). Moreover, in 1998, Congress bans any legislation from putting in place a national test (Jost). Because of this gathering of opposition, not just by certain individuals but by the whole government demonstrates that testing is not the only way to prove that the students in our nation are keeping up with an intelligence standard. The nature in testing has been seen as flawed; the material put on a test, reading, writing, and math, may not be a student’s forte. It may also target a minority group of disadvantaged students who do not have the opportunity to gather the skills to ace this test. Our nation realizes this as government has pushed away any desire for national testing. We are beginning to understand that there is more than testing, that having a low IQ score doesn’t mean that the tester lacks intelligence. It simply means that the material on the IQ score aren’t well known. Because we are seeing that shift away from testing and because testing is associated with that book-smart intelligence, our society is shifting away towards that commonplace of what intelligence means.