Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation

Chapter 3: Intelligence Testing and the Mexican Child

Chapter 3 Intelligence Testing and the Mexican Child Studies of the intellectual abilities and educational achievement of Mexicans in relation to other races and nationalities in the United States between 1915 and 1950 showed the Mexican child scoring consistently lower than the normal range and the average for the Anglo population. The authors of no fewer than sixteen studies, most dating to the twenties and early thirties, concluded that heredity intellectually handicapped the Mexican. Another seventeen articles attributed the low average scores mainly to environmental, cultural, or language factors. Some studies straddled both positions, and a few argued for neither. Nevertheless, whether the research leaned toward nature or nurture, the findings revealed that Mexican children consistently failed to do as well as Anglo children on one of the key educational tools of the twentieth century: the intelligence test. Although the concept of intelligence developed apart from the concept of the organic society, testing psychologists and proponents of organic social theory had much in common. Both sought to maintain the social order as an efficient, harmonious, and cooperative organization. One 68 Chicano Education & Segregation might even say that the theory of the organic society laid out the longrange objectives and the concept of intelligence in its practical form, the IQ test, facilitated the realization of those objectives. Thus, a principal contribution gained from the extensive application of IQ testing among minorities, Mexicans in particular, involved the efficient social, political, and economic organization of society. The public school provided the main arena for the testing of individuals and for the changing of various cultural acts, beliefs, and sentiments. The adherents of testing, whether proponents of nature or of nurture, generally agreed that the educational process could be centered upon the concept intelligence. Thus, in the case of research and debate on the nature of the intelligence of Mexican people the question of education became the overriding concern. The Development of the Concept of Intelligence and Nature versus Nurture The concept of intelligence, a late nineteenth-century theoretical departure from classical mental theory, became the core of twentieth -century educational practice. According to the classical thought emanating from the Enlightenment, the mind of each individual consisted of abilities or faculties that were similar if not identical within any given population. The zeal, industriousness, labor, or education of the individuals accounted for the differentiation within the population in terms of productivity, talents, abilities, or social standing. Thus, the mind did not determine the range of abilities or social distinctions; the class order developed as a consequence of the nature of the interaction between the individual and the environment. Thus, the classical methods for “getting ahead” included hard work and education, the key elements in the progress of the individual. In the late nineteenth century William James, James McKeen Cattell, and Alfred Binet, among others, theorized that each individual was Intelligence Testing and the Mexican Child 69 endowed with distinctive mental abilities that predetermined his social existence. Theoreticians of intelligence proposed the novel idea that the ability to think determined the life of the individual and therefore became the central force in the organization of society. They further postulated that (1) socioeconomic distinctions reflected the range of the ability to think abstractly, and (2) individual mental ability was an innate trait. Genetics, then, was introduced into social theory. The concept of intelligence strongly implied that a biological factor determined the ability to perform mental processes. Nevertheless, two positions, “nature” and “nurture,” emerged among researchers developing intelligence theory and its practical application, the IQ test. The nature theorists emphasized an immutable genetically based intelligence ; the nurture theorists emphasized the environmental factors (language, culture, and socioeconomic milieu) that may influence innate intelligence and its manifestation. The two sides agreed about the utility and importance of the concept but emphasized differing determinants of the level of intelligence for an individual. In their most controversial conclusion, the adherents of the “nature” position argued that intelligence distinguished the various races and nationalities of the world. Thus, many influential intelligence experimenters concluded that socioeconomic differences naturally reflected the biological trait “intelligence” and that humanity is divided in terms of innate intelligence into superior and inferior races and nationalities. Between 1900 and the 1930s, researchers in support of the nature argument conducted literally hundreds of comparative racial studies with the aim of discovering the precise biological, physical, or intellectual distinctions among the diverse races, nationalities, and cultures of the world...