Pepper Stetler is a writer, professor, mother, and disability advocate. She is an Associate Professor of Art History and the Associate Director of the Humanities Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She has written extensively about the lived experience of people with intellectual disabilities in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Ploughshares, and Gulf Coast. Stetler also writes exhibition catalog essays for the Museum of Modern Art and the Lost Angeles County Museum of Art.
Below, Pepper shares five key insights from her new book, A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test. Listen to the audio version—read by Pepper herself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. IQ test values shape our world.
I never really thought about IQ tests until Louisa, my amazing daughter, took one before she started kindergarten. Louisa has Down syndrome, and the IQ test was required for her first Individualized Education Plan (IEP), a document that helps her access the support she needs to learn and grow in a classroom with her peers.
I was unnerved that my daughter’s education depended on the results of this test. But through research and dozens of interviews with psychologists, I soon learned that IQ tests are a highly valued tool for educational and psychological evaluation. I also realized that our modern world has been shaped to value the kinds of skills and abilities—like speed, efficiency, and short-term memory—that are evaluated by an IQ test. Beyond the more structured context of psychological evaluation, IQ tests have shaped the design of our education system, what we deem “good” parenting, and, generally, what it means to be a successful person.
The psychologists who developed IQ tests in the early 20th century did more than draft assessment tools. They established how we understand and value intelligence, who is and is not given opportunities for success, and who gets access to the best education.
2. IQ tests developed as a tool of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century.
In many ways, our understanding of intelligence in the 21st century holds on to ideas from the past. IQ tests emerged at a moment of great social upheaval and shifts in American identity due to immigration and the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to industrial cities in the North. IQ tests became a tool to identify genetic inferiority and degeneracy, thanks in large part to the efforts of Henry Goddard, who served as Director of Research at the Training School in Vineland, New Jersey.
In 1912, the United States Public Health Service invited Goddard to Ellis Island to administer IQ tests to the wave of immigrants entering the country. He concluded that a whopping 79 percent of Italians, 80 percent of Hungarians, and 83 percent of Jews were feeble-minded. These absurdly high percentages did nothing to temper the nation’s belief in the accuracy of IQ tests. Goddard and other psychologists presented IQ tests as scientific evidence that some children were unable to learn. He encouraged educators to stop wasting their time and resources educating the “feeble-minded,” who were often recent immigrants or Black Americans. Goddard also advocated for the forced sterilization of those with low IQ scores.
“These absurdly high percentages did nothing to temper the nation’s belief in the accuracy of IQ tests.”
Despite deep flaws in the methods and accuracy of the test, low IQ scores justified the segregation and mistreatment of kids with intellectual disabilities and children of color in the American school system. These practices have not fully disappeared. For example, a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office in 2018 found that Black students, boys, and students with disabilities were disproportionately the focus of disciplinary action in public schools. In 2007, the US Department of Education found that Black students were three times more likely to be identified as intellectually disabled than white students. Psychologists rarely acknowledge the dark history of IQ testing, but the power of IQ tests has created an education system that privileges the most advantaged: white, upper-middle-class students.
3. IQ tests both limit and facilitate opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities.
As I learned more about the history of IQ tests, I grew more anxious about whether I wanted Louisa to take them. But I also realized the bind that this evaluation system put us in. If I objected to the IQ test, it could threaten Louisa’s access to educational support in a classroom with her peers. However, I worried that I was exposing her to a lifetime of judgment and determinations based on stereotypes and assumptions. Her IQ might be noted by any case worker, job coach, employer, or doctor she encounters later in life. Yet, if my daughter’s school record failed to show the expected evaluation on her IEP, there might be questions later about her eligibility for certain services she might need.
I wrote A Measure of Intelligence to fight back against a system that offers few options for my daughter to be seen as an individual rather than a number. The way we understand intelligence restricts her potential. To create a more equitable world, we need to restructure how we value intelligence.
4. Intelligence is as much a product of our society’s values as it is an inherited genetic trait.
Psychologists like Goddard developed IQ tests because they believed intelligence was a measurable biological trait, like a heartbeat or a breath. This belief persists today. Many researchers today seek what specific combination of genes determines intellectual capacity. However, A Measure of Intelligence examines intelligence as a product of history rather than an outcome of nature.
“If we shift the way we value and define intelligence, we can provide opportunities to more people.”
This does not mean that I deny that some people do better on IQ tests than others. And it certainly does not deny that my daughter Louisa’s particular struggles with the skills tested on an IQ test are not a result of her genetic differences. But if we shift the way we value and define intelligence, we can provide opportunities to more people, especially to those whose worth is rarely acknowledged under our current regime of intelligence.
5. We can rethink the definition of intelligence.
What if intelligence testing did not measure human worth, but how well we take care of one another? Or how well someone is being supported by their family, their school, and their community? I talked with psychologists who are changing perceptions about what we think we learn about a person from IQ tests. Many of them envision a future in which we emphasize assessing how well a person is getting their needs met in a certain environment. This shift in emphasis crucially puts the burden on an environment or social circumstances to change rather than the person.
While traditional ideas about intelligence prioritize superiority, independence, and self-sufficiency, new ways of assessment value interdependence and social connections. Many psychologists I talked to don’t care about overall IQ scores. Instead, they are working to improve how IQ tests can provide information about particular cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Their work gives me hope that Louisa’s amazing abilities will be seen and valued in the future more than her test score. But psychologists are only involved in intelligence up to a point. Real change will require a concerted effort by educators, physicians, policymakers, support providers, and really every single one of us to rethink how we measure intelligence.
To listen to the audio version read by author Pepper Stetler, download the Next Big Idea App today:
