Preview of Article:
The Politics of Biological Determinism
The following has been condensed from the introduction to Stephen Jay Gould’s 1996 edition of “The Mismeasure of Man.” Given the growing reliance on standardized testing within education and the origin of such tests in assumptions about the biological innateness of IQ (especially along lines of race), we believe that Gould’s remarks shed some insight into the sociopolitical context of increased calls for high-stakes standardized tests. This is particularly the case when standardized test scores are seen as proxies for intelligence and are used to determine which schools are granted society’s best educational resources and rewards and which students get into the best colleges and universities.
