As the telescope once showed that the Roman Catholic Church was somewhat at odds with elementary astronomy, so the arrival of objective tests showed that educators were somewhat at odds with literacy. While the use of stop watches and questions with multiple choice answers was, like the telescope, revolutionary and amazingly simple in concept, most people, to this very day, generally feel that the world is better off, not knowing that success tends to point to a mouthy bonehead with a medium message who regularly wins races without being particularly swift.
It is a rare human being who truly appreciates the nature of averages. In his bag of apples, oranges and bananas everything is above average. So it is that the concept of intelligence quotients passed into general usage without anyone noticing that the intellectual ability of the average person peaks at the age of fifteen, making an IQ of 400 a prerequisite then, for anyone scoring 100 at the age of 60. Nobody noticed the absurdity of labeling illiterates as 'mentally retarded' nor did anyone notice the absurdity of labeling those who had learned to read well as 'mentally gifted'. Since absolutely everything about this new concept had to be a secret, nobody knew who could read and who could not.
Today, almost one hundred years after the invention of intelligence, there is absolutely no way to detect that the ideal job applicant cannot match the language skills of an eleven-year-old nor has anyone noticed that belief in the concept contributes to the prevention of literacy in general and the extermination of English speaking Europeans, in particular.
Prime time audiences around the planet and several ice ages back in prehistory have found that being understood is absolutely essential in the day to day rough and tumble. Now and again great understanding comes up with something useful but mostly, being out of the loop, will run into more than their share of lions and tigers if I interpret the great bell-curve correctly.
If the average person uses an active vocabulary of 3000 words and a passive vocabulary of 6000 words and the upper 2% uses 12000 active and 90000 passive that would account for the sort of comedy we see today as a mob of Mensans passes through a fast food outlet and tries to order burgers and fries.
The notion that intelligence can benefit the world immensely, turns into a rotten apple rapidly when we start thinking about millions of school children who instead of reading are now listening.
Do men and women who happen to be black and of African descent really need to hear that they are genetically inferior to whites on account of IQ scores? How many of them could be claiming to have been born mentally gifted, if they had only read a few more books?
At what point on the bell-shaped curve of language proficiency does a citizen of London, England have less chance of living a further 2 years than a Jewish resident say of Nazi Germany?
Do we really have the slightest idea of how half of the population of Toronto, Canada was replaced by visible minorities in less than forty years? Maybe it's time we stopped polishing IQ scores and try to find out.

This item by George Noviss was included in Montage, September 2001, the Mensa newsletter for Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener/Waterloo, London, Windsor/Sarnia

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