What is Human Being

Sociology 1301
1B
What is a Human Being: Option B

After completing both the 1917 IQ test and the Mensa Workout IQ test I would have to say that to some extent they do provide some level of accurate measurement of intelligence. Most of the pictures in the 1917 test seem to as if they would be common sense. Almost nothing of that test was needed to be learned from schooling; experience is the only thing that is necessary really for that test. I do not agree however that they should be used to dictate any type of legal "actions" as they were used to in the past. Getting a decent score on one of these test would make you more knowledgeable, than intelligent; the human mind is aware of most of these common sense questions that are asked. Also the mind is very responsive to patterns, but this still is not showing a level of intelligence as much as just common sense. Now the second test is much more based on your level of intelligence, almost every question in this test would have to have been taught how to answer. Actual schooling is absolutely necessary to make a decent score on this test. As for the fact of the 1917 test a few of the pictures may be unrecognizable for people that have not experienced them. Such as tennis; some one that may be extremely poor may have never had the luxury of ever playing or experiencing tennis in their life. Not only would poverty change the outcome of the scoring on this test but where people lived will also. Someone that had lived on a farm for their whole life away from any type of social recreation may not know many of the sports on these pictures. Like I had said before knowledge of these pictures are dictated by how much you have experienced in your life. Not knowing didn’t make you necessarily unintelligent, but ignorant. In the past how eugenicists used these tests is wrong. The fact that the only way that you could make a decent score is to have seen or experienced all of these pictures, or on the Mensa IQ test you would have to have been legitimately taught what is to be answered on every question is not fair. If you never had seen any of these objects or items before than it didn’t necessarily mean that you're feeble minded, it just meant that you had not experienced as much as others had. Ignorance does not mean in any way that you are necessarily unintelligent, only that you have yet to learn about that subject in particular. Just as a master plumber could plumb your house inside and out with ease but at the same time he could know absolutely nothing about carpentry. That doesn’t make him unintelligent considering he has a license to be a MASTER of something when he's clueless as to what a master carpenter would need to know. I think that the current researchers today do believe that there is a racial and ethnic difference in intelligence because of what they test for, and who they test. Difference in education plays a big role in the measure of intelligence of these IQ tests. For example two individuals could have graduated from high school and both have a high school diploma and even had the same GPA. One could score higher than the other but nothing was mentioned of the actual "quality" of their education. This all depends on the quality of the teachers, and material with which they had been taught by. I do not agree that these are differences are innate what so ever, I believe that their education and experience is sometimes not to the same standards as others and that is all. The success rate can also do with the fact that there are still biased corporations and businesses that could possibly choose someone of one race to another. For example two men, one white one black, who both graduate with the same GPA from Harvard apply to a new law firm with identical resumes. The law firm leans more towards the white applicant solely because they wanted to keep their image as a firm the same as it has always been in the fact that they had never hired a man of color. I do not believe that these IQ tests are proving that there are racial and ethnic differences in intelligences because of these factors.