IQ Tests: A Dark Story With an Often Fatal Result
Would you still take an IQ test if you knew what they have been used for?
In this article, I want to talk to you about some of the dark histories behind IQ tests that I certainly wasn’t aware of until recently. I have always had a problem with IQ tests, in my opinion using an IQ test to determine someone’s intelligence is equivalent to using a bank balance to determine someone’s happiness, but doing some research really opened my eyes to just how dangerous the use of IQ tests has been in the past, and the damage they are still causing.
It all began in France
In 1882, the French government passed a law stating that all children had to attend school. Acknowledging that not all children would be capable of the same curriculum, the French government commissioned a collection of psychologists with the task of creating a test to determine which children would require individual attention. In 1905, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon designed a vast collection of tests to measure the cognitive abilities, such as logic and reasoning, of the children that would later form the basis of the IQ test.
