Chapter 2. Why An IQ?

Hardly a day goes by in any school that the question "What's his IQ?" is not asked, orally or mentally, by some teacher or supervisor.

When a teacher attempts to diagnose a pupil's slow progress, she begins by asking:

"What's his I Q?"

When a principal receives a recommendation that a pupil be given remedial work, or that another be promoted to a brighter group, he begins by asking:

"What's his I Q?"

When a school psychologist starts a new file on a pupil who has been referred as a behavior problem, he begins by asking: .

"What's his I Q?"

When a guidance counselor prepared to discuss with a parent the vocational and educational future of a pupil, he begins by asking:

"What's his I Q?"

Of course other questions usually follow, but very often the answers do not leave as strong an impression as the cold, bare statement of the child's I Q score. It is so wonderfully simple and convenient to be able to pigeon-hole someone by means of a number. We are all so used to categorizing people by various numbers-waistline, age, weight, income-that it is not difficult to carry over this practice when dealing with intelligence.

The addiction to IQ scores in the educational world of today is in some ways analogous to the cigarette-smoking habits of many people. Scientific evidence tends to indicate a need for caution and restraint, but the vast majority of users go right on with this deeply ingrained habit. In the same way, most educators pay lip service only to the known limitations of the I Q, agreeing that it is a reliable guide to the potentialities of a child only when a trained person evaluates it in relation to everything that is known about the child-the "whole child," as they say. (This is one reason why I Q scores are never communicated to parents or children by any responsible educator.)

But the frequent reference to the I Q score is by no means its most important use. The most important use of the IQ in schools today is in organizing classes. This was the original purpose for which the I Q test was developed by Alfred Binet some fifty years ago; this has been its most practical use; and this is how it exerts its greatest influence on the lives of children today. It is a powerful tool in the administration of any system of mass public education.

Organizing a school is not a simple task. It involves dividing the large number of children that make up each grade into a small number of classes, in such a way that each child may receive a maximum learning opportunity. Theoretically, each normal class follows the same curriculum laid down by the school system, and thus it should be of little importance in which class a child is placed. True, in many schools there are special classes organized to serve the needs of children who do not come under the educational definition of normal-the intellectually gifted, the mentally retarded, the emotionally disturbed, and the physically handicapped. Obviously, there are special criteria for determining whether a child belongs in any one of these groups.

But what about the normal children? How are they grouped into classes? Can the school be organized so that each class is like the next, and will be able to learn at the same level, and progress at the same rate?

The answers to such questions will depend to a large extent on the facilities and to some extent on the philosophy of the school.

Of course children are first grouped according to age. In the old one-room schoolhouse children of all ages were in one class; there were many disadvantages to this type of organization, but it was dictated by the limits of the facilities available, and it had the saving grace of affording a good deal of individual instruction to its pupils. Today there is no question about the desirability of grouping children by age. A child learns and grows best among children of his own age.

Age alone, however, is not a sufficient basis for organizing classes, because in most schools there are several hundred children of each age group. The age group must be subdivided on some other basis.

How shall the age group be divided into subgroups?

The ideal method would be to make up classes identical in every respect: the same number in each class; boys and girls evenly distributed; each class having the same racial, religious, ethnic, economic and social make-up as the community in general. Then each class could follow the same course of study at approximately the same pace, for either the children in each class would be of equal ability, or each class would represent the same cross-section of ability.

Some schools do organize their classes in this way. The method is known as heterogeneous grouping. The trouble with this selection stems from the fact that the children in any large group are not of equal ability. In fact, in the average large group the range of ability would be very wide. Therefore, in order for all classes to be identical, the children in each have to reflect the same wide range of ability.

Now it is obvious that in a class made up of children with great differences in ability, the children cannot work on the same level, at the same rate, at the same time. Thus, in a heterogeneous class, conditions must permit each child to proceed at his own rate, on his own level, without being held back by classmates who are behind him or pressured by those ahead of him. Such conditions are very rare in the United States today because they include, first and foremost, small classes-classes of no more than twenty-five pupils. Unfortunately the average class today is some fifty per cent larger. And with our rapidly growing school population, increasing shortages of classrooms, and acute lack of trained teachers, the prospects for the future do not seem promising for small classes.

And so, because a public school has the rooms, the teachers, and the funds for, say, six third-grade classes, it must divide its third-graders into groups of perhaps thirty-five each; and because the range of ability among them is very wide, heterogeneous grouping is unfeasible. Another method must be used.

This second method is known as homogeneous grouping. Most classes today are organized on this basis.

Very simply, homogeneous grouping places children of equal or similar ability in the same class. The top thirty-five boys and girls would be placed in one class, the next thirty-five in the second class, and so on, with the slowest in the sixth class. The designation of the six classes may be disguised so that no stigma will be attached to any one of them, but there remain six groups that differ in ability (which the children are usually able to identify anyway).

The most important single factor in determining in which group a child is placed is the I Q; in many schools it is the only factor.

It is no secret that in any given grade in any single school some classes are better than others. Many parents have a tendency to believe that the better classes are produced by better teachers. Of course there are teachers who are more gifted than others, and they can and do make an enormous difference. But usually classes differ because each class follows a curriculum geared to its ability. The brighter classes benefit from an enriched version of the curriculum, an expectation of high achievement by these pupils, and the over-all stimulation that goes along with these two factors.

One can safely say that, in general, the higher the ability level of the class, the better the education a child will get in it. It is also generally true that the higher the I Q of any child, the higher ability level of the class in which he will be placed. It is a simple matter to draw the obvious conclusion-that the higher a child's I Q, the better the education he will get.

And yet there is more to the I Q than that-much more.