The alchemy of Intelligence test

• In Event: Roundtable Group 15
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Education Policies and Practices

Proposal

The paper is to reveal the mechanism of intelligence test that is not just a tool to prove the ability but a technology of sorting, categorizing people with themes of normalization, inclusion and exclusion. This paper protests those naturalized epistemes/ technologies in the daily practices. Mostly, current research are empirical studies, focusing on how does this “scientific” technology that provides facts evaluates people and plays positive role ( (Han L. J. Van der Maas & Kees-Jan Kan & Denny Borsboom, 2014), and how does it work as well as its effectiveness with normal distribution of bell curve (Bartholomew, 2004). However, I use Foucault’s genealogical approach through historicizing intelligence test, as the history of the present is a strategy to excavate the multiple historical practices that come together to give intelligibility to what is ‘seen’ and acted on as the objects” (Popkewitz, 2011, p. 2). Historically, a technology of taxonomy has been produced to divide population into what we called “genius”, “ordinary”, “feeble-minded”, and “intelligence” itself became a modern concept to define human species. Obviously, intelligence test initially aiming to provide students with additional academic assistance has been transformed into a manner of classification and pushed forward the birth of eugenics. Instead of a specific case, the utilization of testing technologies is a phenomena that is widely penetrated globally. Linguistics, mathematical patterns as representations define who the individuals should be, categorizing and excluding groups of people. For example, etymologically, term idiot originated from Latin word idiota, having meaning of ignorant person. Also, early godfathers used idiota to refer people who lack religious wisdom. Albert pointed to people who cannot make abstractions, since abstracting skills were acknowledged consensus among psychology and psychologists. Through ordering the rank of knowledge, social discriminations come into being. Thus, to be an idiot, at earlier stages, just denotes its position of ordinary rather than one with intellectual impairments. The system of intelligence tests is not simply a way to evaluate individual’s capability but to divide and categorize, exclude and exile certain groups of people in the form of mathematical pattern. It not only identifies who are eligible in the future but also disciplines the thinking of the general public, resulting in that “people’s desires, affects, and bodily practices were normalized, classified, and made the objects of change” (Popkewitz, 1997, p. 22). Importantly, it is naturalized also naturalizes social epistemologies. Population, being observed, could be evaluated within the notion of normalcy and standards which are formalized to regularize bodies in the uniform system. Populations constrained by reason, children in particular, become statistical objects that are calculable and manageable. Hence, a series of principles with regard to who individuals are and should be, what people are qualified, who are dangerous, how ideal ones ought to behave and so on. Recognizing specific groups of people among population is to build differences that is an art of governmentality. The governmentality is future-oriented, preventive, anticipated, comprising both fear and hope for making progress.

Author

• Chengjie Pi