Terman on the
Intelligence of Diverse Individuals
The History of Intelligence
Testing
The following extended quote is attributed
to Terman, who was one of the founders of the psychological testing movement
in the United States and the original author of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence
Scale. For an introduction to Terman by Henry Minton from Terman's classic
text Terman, Lewis M. (1916). The measurement of intelligence. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, link to http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Terman/intro.htm.
A low level of intelligence is very,
very common among Spanish-Indians 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 come. The fact that one meets
this type with such extraordinary frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and
Negroes suggests quite forceably that 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 segregated
into special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical.
They cannot master abstractions but they often can be made efficient workers,
able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at the present
in 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, 1916, as cited in Baca &
Cervantes, 1984, p. 147)
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