IQ: A History of Deceit

IQ looks at the history of the famous—and often misused—so-called intelligence quotient test, the appeal of which has always been its simplicity in reducing one's smarts to a single number. After opening with clips from a MENSA convention—an organization whose members are admitted solely on the basis of IQ—the film travels back to the early 1900s in France, where Alfred Binet designed a scale to measure the mental ages of children. That original concept remains popular—the Stanford-Binet version used today is an American adaptation of the French prototype—but such assessment tools have often been administered unfairly, as exemplified by practices at Ellis Island, where exhausted, frightened immigrants with little education or grasp of English were given written examinations. In the 1930s, Americans fearful of immigration embraced theories of eugenics and predetermined intelligence, which supposedly could be ascertained using just paper and pencil. Also covered here are Cyril Burt's early 20th-century claims that intelligence is inherited (an assertion “proved” in studies that Burt faked); eugenicist William Shockley's arguments in the 1970s that less intelligent people were having too many children, leading to a general drop in IQ among Americans; and the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, which suggested racial differences in intelligence (co-author Charles Murray appears here to defend his views). Also noted is the fact that claims of the immutability of intelligence have been used to support funding cuts for educational and social programs. Serving up an informative and thought-provoking history of the IQ concept, this is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)