Letters to the Editor
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Ugh
The responses to this cartoon are a thoroughly depressing reminder of the extent of racism still present in this country.
IQ tests have a sketchy history...they have been used to justify all kinds of racism and eugenics. When I taught high school science, I pointed to eugenics as an example of how the scientific method can be perverted in terrible ways (just as religion can). The best refutation I've ever read to all of this bell curve crap is Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, originally published in 1981.
To those posters whining about how race no longer matters or cherry-picking scientific studies to prove some thesis about black people being stupider than white people, you make me want to throw up. But I'm most angry about the teacher that posted to this thread about how black & latino students are less motivated than white students. When you enter the classroom as a teacher and presume that some children are going to do worse than others, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I don't appreciate you & other educators undermining the future of already-disadvantaged groups in this way. See Pygmalion in the Classroom, the 1968 classic study.