With the ascent of the National Party to power in South Africa in 1948, education reflected apartheid thinking and practices and implemented the ideology of separate development in educational institutions. Pronouncements of the African child's inferiority were reflected in government policy and legislation. The origins of this thinking and…

Focuses on the difference in political efficacy found between black and white pre-adults. Suggests that the racial difference in feelings of political effectiveness is due to intelligence which, in turn, is basically a function of the social and economic environment. Suggests that intelligence may play a significant role in the political…

An analysis, supported by recently published data, which suggests that IQ differences between groups may be explained by environmental factors. (Author/FF)

A discussion of two questions is considered important: (1) why are there different races and how might they have come to be, and (2) given the observed biological differences among races, what, if any, is their significance for society. Discusses the race-IQ question and presents evidence to support environmental influence on IQ results. (DF)

This document is a book review of "Bias in Mental Testing" by Arthur R. Jensen. Jensen discusses intelligence as a phenotypic construct. The problem of ethnic differences in phenotypic intelligence is emotionally charged, which makes rational consideration of the issues difficult. The reviewer disagrees with the author's predisposition…

A DISCUSSION ON THE VARIOUS RACES WAS PRESENTED. STATISTICS SHOWED THAT LIKENESSES AMONG GROUPS WERE ABOUT 95 PERCENT, WHILE DIFFERENCES WERE ONLY 5 PERCENT. FROM THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT, THERE WAS NO PHYSICALLY INFERIOR OR PHYSICALLY SUPERIOR RACIAL TRAITS. THERE WAS NO PROOF THAT "RACE" AND INTELLIGENCE WERE LINKED. RATHER EVIDENCE…

School psychologists, considered experts on intelligence and assessment, have an ethical obligation to read and understand "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in America." Many would rather avoid than confront issues presented. Discusses four questions to consider before dismissing the book: "How helpful is it?"; "Could the…

This study used 126 young adult black and white male inmates to test the comparability of the Pauker and Statz and Mogul short forms with the standard Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). The Pauker form was superior with this population. Findings should not be generalized to other ages, races, or to women. (Author/CP)

As a response to recent public debate about the nature of intelligence, this article reviews the "state of the art" in the study of intelligence, exploring significant conceptualizations of intelligence, the use and interpretation of intelligence tests, racial or ethnic differences in intelligence, and major issues yet to be resolved.…

Lower class black and lower class white first-grade children learned an unorganized and an organized list of words to test Jensen's hypothesis of racial differences in mental abilities. Both groups of children performed significantly better on the organized list with comparable means for each list. Most of the predicted relationships were not…

The controversy over the causes of intelligence--genetic or environmental--is reviewed. More specifically, the subject of the consistently lower intelligence scores for blacks is analyzed. Much attention is devoted to Jensen and his monograph published in the "Harvard Educational Review," entitled "How much can we boost IQ and scholastic…

Seeing intelligence as neither strongly hereditary nor necessarily stable over time, and accepting the notion that it is a significant determinant of future occupational status, liberal psychologists and educators rely on the intervention of social institutions, primarily the school. The liberal view toward testing and intelligence is discussed.…

Briefly reviews the content and impact of Arthur R. Jensen's 1969 Harvard Educational Review (HER) article How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement, noting that "the reaction stirred by this article" in the subsequent issues of HER "was sharp." Among the critics were J. M. V. Hunt, Jerome Kagan, David Elkind, while Carl Bereiter, James…

Charles Spearman originally suggested in 1927 that the varying magnitudes of the mean differences between whites and blacks in standardized scores on a variety of mental tests are directly related to the size of the tests' loadings on g, the general factor common to all complex tests of mental ability. Several independent large-scale studies…