A Measure of Intelligence, page 14
Jensen also offered an explanation for racial differences in IQ scores. On average, people who identify as Black score fifteen points lower on IQ tests than people who identify as white. While these statistics illustrate the bias of IQ tests for many, those who believe in the genetic basis of intelligence double down, suggesting that this provided evidence of the intellectual inferiority of non-European, non-white races. Jensen claimed that there is a genetic correlation between race and intelligence. He explained the generally lower IQ scores of people of African descent in this way: “There are no ‘black’ genes or ‘white’ genes. There are intelligence genes, which are found in populations in different proportions, somewhat like the distribution of blood types.” Published in 1969, his theories clashed with a moment of intense civil rights protests across the country that demanded that everyone should have a right to the opportunities afforded to those with high IQ scores.
The late twentieth century brought efforts to remove systemic discrimination, like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. But progress was challenged by the cyclical return of Jensen’s claims, which were originally the claims of Galton, Terman, Goddard, and others. Ideas about genetic determinism, the rule of nature, were perennially revived by the belief in the irrefutable objectivity of statistics. In 1994, Richard Herrenstein’s and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve resuscitated Jensen’s argument that IQ scores explain—rather than cause—who gets ahead in society and who is doomed to a life of dependency. It was an enormous popular success; more than 200,000 copies were sold weeks after it was published. The book describes “the cognitive class,” those who have the highest IQ and are rightfully destined for a life of privilege. They exist at the top of a caste system that is structurally stable, according to Herrenstein and Murray, because our genes make it so. Those placed at the bottom of the caste system are genetically determined to stay there. Put another way, poor people are poor because they have low intelligence. The Bell Curve argues that low intelligence is a reason why Black Americans are disproportionately poor, incarcerated, and dependent on government welfare. It cited IQ scores as evidence for these claims, as if IQ tests were objective indicators of human value rather than the apparatus of a system of discrimination and suppression. “For many people,” they write, “there is nothing they can learn that will repay the cost of teaching.” Following Jensen’s work, The Bell Curve claims that federally funded programs like Head Start and Help Me Grow—the preschool program for children with developmental disabilities that Louisa attended—are a waste of time and money. The policy suggestion was consistent with eugenicists of the early twentieth century, like Terman’s belief that “imbeciles” should be removed from classrooms to avoid squandering resources or Jensen’s belief that IQ tests help everyone find where they belong in the social hierarchy and, presumably, stay there.
Many psychologists think intelligence tests predict things, but it is the general liberal position to believe otherwise. Prediction pigeonholes its subjects and contradicts the American sense of free will, that each of us can control our own life path. The Bell Curve’s unfounded conclusions about what is to be done about genetic differences still resonate in our own hyper-polarized political moment, in which free will seems to be under threat to so many. In 2017, months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States, Charles Murray was invited to speak at Middlebury College by a politically conservative student group. Murray was shouted down by students in attendance. When he took the stage and began to speak, the crowd stood up and turned their backs to the stage while reciting a chorus of prepared comments. The media portrayed the event as a shocking example of the inability of liberal young adults to listen to opposing viewpoints. Their behavior was juvenile. Students in the audience shouted and booed every time Murray’s name was spoken by Middlebury’s president and other introductory speakers. But I don’t blame the students for asserting a limit to how far patience and tolerance should be extended.
There is still no evidence that the disparity in IQ scores among racial groups is due to genetic differences, as Jensen, Herrenstein, and Murray led us to believe. One reason for the lack of evidence seems obvious to me. Race, much like intelligence, is a cultural invention. Almost all Americans have a racially mixed genetic profile, complicating any effort to define precisely what is meant by correlations between racial identity, genetic heritability, and intelligence. After all, it is possible to accept the scientific evidence that intelligence—one’s ability to perform well on an IQ test, one’s ability to excel in the kinds of tasks on an IQ test—might be related to genetics and also acknowledge that those genes have nothing to do with the cultural construction of race.
Decades of research has now found that Head Start and other early intervention programs improve educational outcomes, increasing the probability that participants will graduate from high school and attend college. Putting aside for a moment the fact that The Bell Curve’s conclusions are based on strikingly threadbare evidence, something about the return-on-investment mentality in The Bell Curve reminds me of the approach to education—especially higher education—today. If learning or education is not going to yield a direct, measurable outcome as IQ points or post-education salary earnings, then why do it? Why nurture, why try, if nature ultimately wins? We make decisions about education in terms of what it will yield in the future. But we might consider what is lost in the present. We miss opportunities to nurture and care for one another as a deeply valuable way of living now, if we are constantly expecting the payoff to emerge in the future.
Many psychologists today still believe that nature is far stronger than nurture, although most do not agree with the social policy conclusions of The Bell Curve. There is a general consensus among psychologists that intelligence is about 80 percent heritable, meaning that a person’s IQ score is determined in large part by their genes, while only 20 percent is determined by environmental factors like socioeconomic class, access to good schools, and clean air and water. Intelligence is heritable, like many other aspects of human behavior. But the effects of genes on intelligence are not nearly as clear or assertive as Galton, Terman, Jensen, Herrenstein, and Murray claimed.
The persistence of Terman’s genetic determinism explains some of my devotion to Louisa’s education. I admit it is deeply ingrained in me that everyone can overcome their most formidable challenges, just like the grit and determination claimed in the Charlie Brown poster. Overcoming adversity through hard work persists as a belief at the core of being American. We are all equal, Americans are told; what matters is how hard we work. But living in a country that elects and rewards the privileged while oppressing those without such advantages has shown me otherwise. And still, part of me deeply believes that hard work pays off and challenging circumstances can be overcome. The dream of universal opportunity shouldn’t be abandoned. Rather, access to opportunity should be expanded.
But there comes a point when the question of whether it’s possible to change an IQ score loses sight of what matters. My point is not to raise Louisa’s IQ score or to find loopholes and quibble with the details of tests until I have convinced her teachers that she should have a much higher score. It is clear to me that the IQ test was set up knowing exactly how someone with Down syndrome would perform. It was designed to put her behind the curve. Obsessing about improving her score would capitulate to the power of the IQ test to determine her place in this world. When we shirk the power of the IQ test, we can focus on how she might access knowledge, human experience, reflection, community involvement, all the reasons why we should nurture each other in the first place.
To me, both sides of the nature versus nurture debate come up short. Those on the side of nature say that a person’s fate is in large part predetermined. Hard work, good choices, and free will only takes us so far. Those favoring nurture say that we should all be fully in control of our fate. Our destiny is entirely a product of our environment and the opportunities it makes possible. This perspective glosses over real genetic differences and overlooks the circumstances of people with Down syndrome, in which intellectual differences based on genes cannot be denied.
I feel a dizzying ambivalence toward these views when parenting. I am aware of how difficult it is for Louisa to keep focused on a task, but I still lack patience when I’m waiting for her to get in the car because she won’t stop wiping the snow off the window with her mittens. My head feels like it will explode when I don’t know how to help her, even though all I want to do is say the right words, find the right strategy to make a task easier for her. Galton and his followers overlook that it is possible to accept a person’s particular way of being in the world and also nurture her to be her best self. It is possible to accept her for who she is while also wanting her to learn and know about the world in its most profound complexity and beauty and derive intense pleasure from it. Learning is not just about institutional resources, expenses, and a return on investment. Education improves a person’s life. That is nurture.
Louisa is a walking, dancing, singing, laughing, joking, learning testament to the reality that genetic determinism was cruelly overstated. Andy and I are her greatest champions, yet even I never imagined what she would be capable of doing. She rehearses for dance recital performances, memorizing choreography to be performed onstage. She practices long division in a classroom with her friends. Thanks to the help of audiobooks, she can now read the Harry Potter series and talk to her teachers about Hermione Granger and her spells. Yet listing all of her accomplishments only proves that she is able to play by the rules of the intelligence game, checking the boxes of what a child is supposed to be able to do. And if she could not do these? Would she somehow not deserve to be nurtured and included?
I cannot deny that my daughter’s differences are not just socially and culturally determined. Louisa is an only child, and I don’t spend that much time around other kids. But when I do, I am often shocked by the differences between Louisa and her friends. Louisa seems less mature, less self-conscious than other kids her age. Her extra chromosome is a significant genetic difference, but the outcomes of that genetic information are also dynamic and malleable. Despite this difference, I am also shocked by her ease among her friends, and the ease of her friends around her. I keep waiting for her friends to separate, more interested in their own sense of normalcy and belonging than making space for Louisa. But so far, this hasn’t happened. There is difference, but there is also love and inclusion.
What is more remarkable than her accomplishments is that she proves that the rules of intelligence, achievement, and skill acquisition aren’t nearly as important as the opportunity to have the richest life experience possible. To be included in a dance recital, to work with a peer on math problems and sense how they might understand differently. Over and over again, Louisa shows me it is the nurturing that makes life richer.
When we define intelligence as a product of nature, IQ tests serve as a measure of one’s genetic perfection. But even entertaining the concept of genetic purity—a way of being fully isolated from environmental influence—strikes me as a fantasy with particularly hazardous undertones. To isolate genetic identity means to make things less messy, enabling scientists and anyone else to identify who is truly genetically superior and who is not. We are closer to the disastrous pursuit of this fantasy than I would like to admit. Companies who have invested in gene-reading technology are selling parents predictions about their baby’s innate aptitude and future. Gene-editing technology might someday soon be able to rewrite our genetic code to do more reliably what some scientists claim eating more fish can, boost brain function. Nurture will no longer be needed. This future is particularly terrifying for people with genetic differences like Louisa, who will face even greater challenges finding a place in a world that so deeply values genetic perfection.
What exactly is nature? What does it look like? Nature, in Galton’s sense, is the most unnatural of ideas. There is no form of our being and development untouched by each other and our environment. Another way of saying this is that there is no moment of pure expression of a person’s genetic orientation. Galton’s proposed division between nature and nurture is a myth. What nature is, without our intervention, is entirely unknown. But quite a bit of care has been sacrificed for the sake of preserving this notion of genetic determinism. Our intelligence may well be determined in large part by our nature, but we can choose to take care of one another, which will inevitably lead to a better world.
People who mean well tell me and Andy that Louisa is lucky to have us as parents. If this is true, it means that she has benefited from the blocks and cubes we used to help teach her place value, our insistence that she take art and dance classes in her community with her peers, a focus on reading that may seem obsessive, our flexible jobs that allow us to spend quite a bit of time with her. My resistance to such comments, which are certainly meant as compliments, is more than just modesty. To look these people in the eye and respond with a confident, “thank you,” would align all too closely with what I felt during that pre-kindergarten meeting, when the school psychologist told me that Louisa’s IQ was high for a child with Down syndrome. That comment, too, I believe, was meant to be a compliment. We are doing a good job, they say. Louisa is doing so well. “Whatever you are doing, keep it up,” a doctor told us at one of Louisa’s recent checkups.
These comments are meant to be supportive and encouraging, and I am grateful. But to fully agree would mean that I am somehow in control. I’m sure our particular idiosyncratic approach to parenting has had an impact on Louisa, like all parents on their children. But admitting an especially beneficial environment for Louisa is deeply uncomfortable to agree with. It would suggest that there are ways to improve Louisa. That her disability is something to be overcome or cured. This associates me with a kind of constant effort to improve the functioning and intelligence of my child that I work hard to resist. It would also imply that kids who are not doing as well as Louisa or perform differently on cognitive tests are less lucky to have the nurturing caregivers that they have. And I am sure this is not the case. But the opposite position—that Louisa is who she is because of her genes, and that those genes determine her score on an IQ test—is equally uncomfortable. This would mean siding with the eugenicists and believing that there is nothing to be improved about the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. It would mean that I am unable to meaningfully nurture the life of the person I love the most. It would mean that people like my Louisa are unteachable and unable to learn, and I know that this is not true. Better, I think, is to believe that the truth of what makes Louisa so marvelous is probably somewhere in between. Where exactly in between? We will never know.
Testing Moms
Whether IQ tests measure nature, nurture, or something in between, parents want to control the results. They often buy IQ test materials on eBay, attempting to ensure the placement of their child in the best schools possible. In 2007, Harcourt Assessment Inc., the company that at that time published the WAIS and the WISC, asked eBay to remove the testing materials from their website. But eBay denied the request, stating that there is nothing illegal about selling them. Still today, eBay sells a wide variety of IQ testing material to consumers for anywhere between $100 and $900, encouraging parents to expand their options for “fun at-home activities.”
eBay was right; IQ tests are not legal documents. But the fact that some parents feel the need to prepare their child to do well on them suggests something more is going on here than just finding a bargain price. A high IQ score is meaningful because parents often perceive it as a ticket to their child’s privilege and success, no matter how that number is achieved. eBay is filling a demand, providing parents with access to testing material that they aren’t really supposed to have but feel determined to obtain. Parents care about their child’s IQ score because their identity, their core sense of self, seems implicated. Beyond providing information about cognitive ability, IQ tests serve as symbols of status and belonging within that privileged concept of normal—white, middle-class America—that the tests empower. As Goddard and Terman established, high intelligence and social privilege go together. The former secures access to the latter. And to many parents, this sense of belonging is worth doing whatever they can to achieve it. This is what our parenting culture tells us nurturing is—buying and doing whatever it takes to help your kid win the intelligence game.
Accessing IQ tests from sources other than eBay is not easy. Pro Ed Incorporated, the company that publishes the Stanford-Binet exam, sells the test on its website for $1,361. Even if I wanted to spend that much, I would have to submit credentials to the company before I would be allowed to see a more detailed list of the testing materials it offered for purchase. I consider myself both a parent and a researcher, but neither identity provided me with access to IQ tests through the company’s website.
One of the reasons why psychologists discourage the circulation of IQ tests is because they don’t want people to practice. In theory, IQ tests are supposed to evaluate a person’s innate intellectual ability rather than what that person has learned or prepared. But this distinction is difficult to maintain. And early on, psychologists acknowledged and attempted to navigate the overlap between testing and play. Samuel Kohs developed the Block Design test while a psychology student at Stanford in 1923. Kohs based the test on Color Cubes, a widely available game produced by the Milton Bradley Company, in which children construct patterns and designs from a set of sixteen wooden cubes painted in bright colors. In his instructions, Kohs advised his fellow psychologists that the blocks “may be secured at any of the large department stores.” Psychologists soon recognized that children who had played the game at home were noticeably better at it and advised that some test-takers be given time to practice to offset the advantage of children who had a set of the blocks at home.
