Word: jensenism
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...bitter controversy over the reasons for low IQs, some psychologists, notably Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein (TIME, Aug. 23) put the blame largely on inferior genes. Others believe that environment-especially the environment of the ghetto -is of primary importance. A recent report on the first five years of an experiment with mentally retarded mothers and their children in Milwaukee supports the latter view. It also offers persuasive evidence that mental retardation in the offspring of mentally retarded mothers can be prevented...
...article implies that if by natural law or genetic selection a group of people are unfit to advance ("intellectually or otherwise"), then why should a society waste resources to aid them. Herrnstein mirrors the Social Darwinist conclusion made two years ago by Arthur Jensen in the "Harvard Educational Review". Jensen argued that compensatory education had failed to remove the "achievement gap" because I.Q. is predominantly inherited. Such views taken out of context hardly seem worth criticizing, but when placed within the framework of today's politically reactionary climate, they become ideological justifications for such policies as the "benign neglect" advocated...
Herrnstein first outlines the development of intelligence testing, often citing the works of Alfred Binet and Lewis Terman. He goes on to conclude using Arthur Jensen's data that 80 per cent of a person's I.Q. is inherited, while all other environmental factors determine only 20 per cent. Although it is difficult to conclusively repudiate his genetic data in the first 90 per cent of the article, many should be shocked by his appalling biases...
...rhetoric, many of us have been driven to a negative answer in recent years by evidence too painful to overlook any more. As Herrnstein himself states, we simply do not know how much, if any, of the current I.Q. difference between social groups is genetically determined. (Herrnstein fortunately avoids Jensen's fallacious extrapolation of heritability from data within a group to a comparison between groups.) If, as is entirely possible, external rather than genetic inequalities are primarily responsible for current I.Q. differences between social classes, and if these external inequalities are not disappearing (please start with prenatal malnutrition or lead...
...condemn as dangerous and unscientific, the racist, sexist, and anti-working class theories of genetic inferiority propagated by R. Herrnstein, W. Schockley and A. Jensen. There is no scientific warrant for ascribing to genetic factors the oppressed conditions of classes and ethnic groups...