The Argument
Shenk
describes the early eugenics involved in standardized testing, such as the IQ
test and the National Intelligence Test, which served as a precursor to the SAT
(40). Shenk contradicts the idea of innate intelligence and claims that
children develop the environment demands development. Using the notion of GxE
and the importance of the environment in genetics, are these tests an accurate
representation of one’s intelligence? Define intelligence and determine whether
or not these standardized tests truly measure intelligence. Use the biological
theme of evolution as support; can a person who receives a 22 on the ACT increase
their score to a 36 merely with hard work? Even if they could, wouldn’t this task
take more than a few years, especially on the reading portion that measures
lexile levels, which cannot easily be increased?
- Akshay Ramachandran (ramachandran.akshay11@gmail.com)
Standardized tests do not accurately represent ones intelligence for several reasons. First of all, intelligence needs to be defined. According to lexicons at Webster.com, intelligence is the ability to learn or understand. Because of the huge differences in quality of education between schools, students are not exposed to the same environments. Students at Stevenson are exposed to much more than students in rural South Dakota, and therefore, according to the standardized tests, have a higher intelligence. This is not true. The students from South Dakota may have the same ability to learn as students from SHS do, but they just haven’t been taught or exposed to that knowledge yet. Since intelligence is not how much you know, but your ability to learn, these tests can not accurately represent your intelligence compared to a large area. The tests can however represent your intelligence compared to students who went to the same school as you and were exposed to the same educational environment as you. According to fairtest.org, standardized tests “reward the ability to quickly answer superficial questions that do not require real thought” (http://www.fairtest.org/facts/whatwron.htm), not a person’s intelligence quotient.
ReplyDeleteYes it is possible to increase your ACT score drastically by hard work. Through the process of doing practice ACT’s your brain is making more and more connections, allowing you to solve the math problems faster and read the passages quicker and retain more information. By practicing, a person begins to know how the ACT is graded and what to look for specifically in reading passages and develop more efficient test taking strategies. According to Dweck’s study, “90 percent of kids praised for their hard work chose the more difficult” (Shenk 98) option, allowing themselves to grow and expand their “incremental intelligence”(Shenk 98)
The biological theme of evolution relates to this topic. As a person studies and devotes time to studying for the ACT, their brain’s grey matter is evolving based on the demands placed on it. The more repetition a person does, the more used to doing an action the body becomes. People evolve to excel in their environments. Millions of years ago, organisms just began to be able to “sense and react” (Campbell 1064), and since then organisms such as mammals have developed into having complex brains and central nervous systems.
Josh Gerber (grbr_jsh@yahoo.com)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe IQ test, National Intelligence Test, and similar tests are not accurate indicators of intelligence. The IQ test supposedly measures “a person’s fixed, innate intelligence [which supposedly …] remain the same throughout people’s lives” (214). However, according to Robert Sternberg, intelligence “is only a crude symbol for a snapshot of the process in motion” (235). Consequently, the IQ test is only an indicator of a person’s intelligence at a set point in time. Considering GxE, the IQ test would be flawed because influences from the environment such as improved learning resources and a tutor could greatly influence the outcome of IQ tests. Furthermore, according to Howard Gartner, intelligence can be categorized into eight separate types, linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist (http://www.multipleintelligencetheory.co.uk/); therefore, with the IQ test only broadly focusing on intelligence as a whole, a person’s intelligence cannot be accurately assessed as they may excel in some forms of intelligence and fail in others.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Josh, I believe a person who receives a 22 on ACT can increase their score to a 36. As stated before, since intelligence is only a snapshot in time, with hard work intelligence can be improved, so a 22 can become a 36. Furthermore, like Josh also stated, the ACT tests the same subjects each year, so through associative learning such as operant conditioning (Campbell 1127), test takers can learn from their mistakes and improve their score the next time. However, I believe improving a person’s score from 22 to 36 would take multiple years because if everyone could instantly improve their scores to a 36, there would be no point to taking the ACT as it would not be an accurate indicator of academic progress. In relation to the biology theme of evolution, improving one’s score on the ACT from a 22 to a 36 would show that intelligence is truly a selective advantage for humans because it can dramatically change.
-Edward Wu (edwardwu0@gmail.com)