Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   I don't think that's true. Maybe it was true 50 years ago, but nowadays
> > IQ tests are specifically designed to be detached of all cultural backgrounds.

> One example I remember was something like "You've lost your ball in a 
> circular field. How can you more efficiently look for it."  If you grew up 
> in a rain forest, with neither balls nor fields, this is a difficult 
> question to consider.

> The IQ tests I had in grade school (maybe 35-40 years ago) definitely had 
> culture components. Pictures from a cartoon that had to be put in the right 
> order, involving leaving the house, seeing it's raining, going back for the 
> umbrella, missing the train because of that, etc. Granted, this wasn't 
> *supposed* to be applicable to cultures outside where I went to grade 
> school; I'm pretty sure that even disadvantaged black children knew what 
> umbrellas were, for example.

  I think your comparison is not very relevant. You are basically comparing
the cultural backgrounds of person who have grown in a western civilization
to that of a bushman who has grown in the jungle.

  I mean that it's not very relevant in the specific context of this thread,
where the question is why black people in the US are failing the fireman
test more often than white people. I don't think the implication is that
the black people were raised in a jungle.

  IQ tests always assume certain basic knowledge. They have to. You can't
make an IQ test which works the same for Einstein and a fish. Even those
tests which try to be as culture-agnostic as possible still make some
assumptions (such as that you can recognize the shape of a circle, for
instance; or heck, that you can *see*).

  I can well imagine that an aptitude test in the US could make some
assumptions that cannot be made about foreigners, such as for example
the applicant knowing who the first president of the US was, or the
name of the 50th state. Depending on the job, such cultural knowledge
might be necessary (not those two things precisely, but similar things
which most US citizens should know).

> > all people have had the exact same education for quite many decades.

> Not here. People from poor neighborhoods with crappy schools and overworked 
> teachers get worse education than those from rich neighborhoods with 
> expensive lab equipment and books and plenty of teachers per pupil.

  As I have been saying, the solution to that problem isn't dumbing down
aptitude tests. That's one of the worst possible solutions.

  Anyways, it would be interesting to know what is it that it's being taught
at the "rich" schools that is not being taught at the "poor" schools, which
make the "rich" people more apt to become firemen.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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