This paper advances the argument that, despite their limitations and a history of abuse, IQ tests should play a significant role in programs for gifted students in the schools. In order to put the current IQ controversy into a historical perspective, the substance of the Lippmann-Terman debates of the 1920's is examined. This is followed by an acknowledgment of major limitations of IQ tests as they pertain to programs for gifted children and a discussion of rationales for special programs for the gifted. Finally, an argument is made for the use of IQ tests in an informed manner.
James H. Borland (Ph.D.), is director of the Center for the Study and Education of the Gifted, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. He is a contributing editor for the Roeper Review.
Apologia 1am venturing, with no little trepidation, to say a few kind words about IQ tests and their use in programs for the gifted. This trepidation is not caused by a lack of belief in the tests' utility, at least when they are used properly. Rather, it stems from my awareness that the topic is so controversial and highly charged that to take a stand on it invites glib categorization with respect to whether one is politically a liberal or a conservative, whether one is a believer in the primacy of heredity or of the environment in shaping cognitive development, and whether one is an elitist or an egalitarian.
It would be nice to be able to assert without being disingenuous that such questions do not or ought not to matter in a discussion about what is essentially an issue of educational practice. However, in an era that has seen, among other things, the use of IQ tests to enforce racial and socioeconomic segregation, the threat of physical attack on a leading advocate of the hereditarian point of view, a successful libel action (albeit with an award of one dollar) against the Atlanta Constitution by a proponent of the notion that certain races are genetically inferior to others with respect to intelligence, and, in this writer's opinion, the transformation of the federal Department of Education into a dumping ground for reactionaries and religious extremists, that luxury is effectively denied. To combine, in writing or print, the letters "I" and "Q" in that order is to join a battle already in progress, a battle in which the belligerents on both sides see themselves as the forces of enlightenment and their foes as not merely wrong, but damnably wrong. Caught as we are in the midst of a controversy whose principals often seem more eager to generate heat than light, it is difficult to perceive clearly the dimensions of the issue. It may be instructive, therefore, to take a few steps back in order to view the problem historically.
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