The Crooked Straight
The housing of the Temple of Dendur complex at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the crooked made straight.
This picture reminds me of an article that I clipped out of a New Yorker from last December, a piece by Malcolm Gladwell about IQs that I missed at the time.
To the I.Q. fundamentalist, two things are beyond dispute: first, that I.Q. tests measure some hard and identifiable trait that predicts the quality of our thinking; and, second, that this trait is stable—that is, it is determined by our genes and largely impervious to environmental influences.
Isn’t it astonishing that “IQ fundamentalism” is so tenacious, in the teeth of so much evidence and, even more, experience to the contrary? The IQ test itself seems like little more than yet another feeble attempt to rationalize the universe by adding epicycles to the epicycles.
Consider this: because the IQ test is keyed to a benchmark of 100 points for intelligence at the 50th percentile, and because — what’s this?! — test scores go up over time, the test has to be “re-normed” every ten years or so. That’s French for “made more difficult.” Why, if IQs are absolute — genetically hardwired and unvarying throughout a lifetime — do test scores go up? Do people really become smarter? Uh, no. What happens is very simple: the tests create a climate in which people do better at them. The assumptions underlying the test, which are, as Mr Gladwell points out, merely “cognitive preferences” that have nothing to do with intelligence — zero relevance — become the assumptions of everyday life. Making the test more difficult simply diffuses a more nuanced set of assumptions throughout the test-taking society — which would be everybody. To the extent that you are socialized and engaged in some kind of competitive activity (i e, work), you receive free tutoring in IQ test skills.
I loved the story about the Kpelle of Liberia. Asked to arrange things in a “smart” manner, they did so functionally, placing the knife with the potato, so that the potato could be peeled and sliced. Asked to arrange things in a “foolish” manner, they put the knife with the other tools. To the spluttering crypto-supremacist, no doubt, this thinking explains the backwardness of Africa. Â
What’s more likely, I think, is that Western-style thinking strips people down to a relatively stupid phase in order to make them much, much smarter. Sadly, it’s the in the stupid phase that a lot of “educated” minds get stuck. Pope’s great lines, from the Essay on Criticism, are well worth repeating.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”
“Largely” there means “a lot,” as in “all one’s life long.”