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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: j g cordes who wrote (34501)	4/12/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

In our minds eye we remember dating the pretty girl, the athletic star, the achievers in society's value system. This is precisely what makes the addiction to standardized testing, the results of which are totally divorced from any real-world achievement, so odd. The SAT, for example, is designed for a limited and specific purpose: to predict academic performance during the first year of college. Numerous studies have demonstrated that it does no such thing, and that personal discipline and attitudes have far more impact on academic performance than any measurable "aptitude". Yet people and institutions continue to treat the test as something approaching a religious ritual, and to treat the scores with intense gravity. Obsession, perhaps, with the illusory precision of the numerical score? Who knows. Certainly not I. BTW, I have no idea what my IQ is. I have no idea what the IQs of my children are, and I will not have them tested unless I have to. I simply don't care.

To: j g cordes who wrote (34501)	4/12/1999 12:32:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I think I probably exaggerated (unintentially) the range in IQ scores on standardized tests. The following is from MENSA International's Web Page: >>>>>The term "IQ score" is widely used but poorly defined. There are a large number of tests with different scales. The result on one test of 132 can be the same as a score 148 on another test. Some intelligence tests don't use IQ scores at all. Mensa has set a percentage as cutoff to avoid this confusion. Candidates for membership in Mensa must achieve a score at or above the 98th percentile (a score that is greater or equal than 98 percent of the general population taking the test) on a standard test of intelligence.<<<<< Of course I care about intelligence, I cherish being intelligent, I enjoy the company of intelligent people. I just don't accept IQ tests as the way to determine who is intelligent. I don't know my own IQ, and I refuse to find it out. I know I qualify for MENSA on the basis of other standardized tests, e.g., SAT, and I know I don't want to join. I don't want to join because I used to print the New Orleans MENSA Newsletter, and interacted with several MENSAns for that reason, and they were dull, dull, dull. The MENSA newsletter was dull, dull, dull. I have heard reports from a number of intelligent, interesting people, who tried MENSA, and found it dull, dull, dull. IQ is interesting, but it's not that interesting. Intelligence is interesting, too, much more interesting than IQ. What really matters to me, though, is what people do with what they've got. And an IQ test can't tell you a thing about application.