Is it possible that a person’s environment and culture can affect their IQ score?

Is it possible that a person’s environment and culture can affect their IQ score?

Yes.

When I examine the idea of an IQ test, I believe that they may have validity when it comes to determining how good someone is at taking a test; however, upon examination of the people who create IQ test and subsequently those who study people who take IQ test, I’ve observed that a majority of people in both of those categories are overwhelmingly caucasian males.  Although the goal of the original test created by Lewis Terman was intended to help determine one’s intelligence, I believe it has morphed into a test meant to aid a certain portion of people who take such test and additionally such test are utilized as a tool to discriminate against those who do not take such test or do not “score” high on the test. (Genius Facts)

I would suggest that Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave, was a genius.  He never attended college but held the firm belief that beyond escaping slavery, education was the alternative way out of slavery (Washington 1901).  And the slavery he meant was the mental slavery created by the US industrial slave system.  He created and developed schools and colleges for people of color to attend.  Yet, people like him are intentionally excluded from the list of geniuses to study.  A particular school that he developed is the Anderson Rosenwald School in Mars Hill, NC.   (AR School) It is an active museum and landmark today but in the 1920’s it was one of the few schools in the south that enabled black children an opportunity to attend school.  We will never know Mr. Washington’s IQ score because he would have never taken it because they would have never asked him to.   I would also suggest that Caeser Chavez and Dolores Huerte were also geniuses.  (Biography.com)

How about Obama?  Are we to assume he has a high IQ score because he attended many colleges, including Harvard, and became a US President?  Whether you agree in his politics or not I would say that we can all agree that he is highly intelligent independent of our examination of his IQ scores.  Yet, people look at him and because they have been preconditioned to believe that high IQ geniuses are caucasian males, he would not appear on such a list to study.  (Super Scholar)  He never mentioned his IQ score as a measure of his own intelligence; however, the person who benefited the most from the idea of an IQ score, Donald Trump, did.

The exact same group of people who create those test are also the exact same group of people who graduate high school at the highest rate and attain positions at the highest levels of organizations.   According to the Schott Foundation for Public Education in its 2015 report on black males and education, while graduation rates on the whole are on the rise across the US, only 59 percent of young black men will graduate compared with 65 percent of Latino and 80 percent of white, non-Hispanic males across 50 states in the 2012-13 school year. (Fields 2015)   Although anyone can study and prepare for the IQ test there is only one group of people who the test is principally created for and they also benefit the most from such test.

What if you cannot afford the schooling that helps you prepare to do well on such a test or if the school that you are attending does not have the personnel or resources to support your learning efforts as you prepare for those test?  The way the US system of education is set up, elementary and high schools are designed to prepare students academically for college.  The access key into colleges is the coveted SAT/ACT score.

I met a little girl who attends the “Asheville School”.  She was very eloquent and highly educated for a teenager.  She told me about how her parents worked in US Embassies abroad and they sent her away to boarding schools because there were no “equivalent” US schools for her to attend in the country where her parents were based.  From personal experience I know that embassy personnel will seek out equivalent schools in the community they live in to send their children.  If one is not available, they send them elsewhere.  A perfect example is Cairo American College (CAC) in Maadi, Cairo, Egypt.  The high school tuition for CAC is $24,000/year.

For the Asheville School  “The annual tuition for the 2017-2018 school year is $54,900 for boarding students and $32,375 for day students. For boarders, tuition charges cover all instruction, room and board, student activities, health services at the infirmary, and most athletic equipment. The charges for day students cover instruction, board, student activities and most athletic equipment.” (Tuition 2017-2018)

Given the amount of resources that her parents are expending for her to get “the best education” by the best teachers, tutors, and mentors that money can buy, she will probably do quite well on the SAT because they are preparing her to take the test.

Although I know that Samual who attends Myrtle Beach High School is equally preparing to attend college, due to his lack of financial resources, the environment that he lives in, and lack of access to the teachers and tutors that a $54,900/year per student tuition would draw, he has less of a chance at scoring well on the test than does my friend from the Asheville School.

Going to college and getting good grades may be a measure of intelligence but the proof is in the pudding.  I have successfully produced and distributed feature films and stage plays without having attended college to learn how to produce or distribute them.  Yet I was successful.   And if given another task, I can succeed in that as well.   At the end of the day people are better off measuring their success by validating how close they come to achieving that object which they set out to achieve than by measuring their success by the grades they achieved in a classroom setting.  Neither one of them has anything to do with the other.  Sure, preparing to win is above all else, but due to the myriad of additional forces that can come into play there is nothing compared to real world experience.  "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."  ` Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

I think the most important factor in determining ones success on the SAT's and other "IQ" test even more than ones intelligence, is one's financial resources they can expend in preparation to take the test.

As my new friend Stephanie says “Studying math and doing problems, for me, is helpful to get more experience with the problem, but just looking at it isn't beneficial to me.“

Citation:

The Myth of Genius. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04/Artigas/facts.htm

Washington, Booker T. (1900) Up From Slavery. Garden City, NY: Life Press.

The Vision of Dr. Booker T. Washington and Mr. Julius Rosenwald.  [web log post]. Retrieved from https://andersonrosenwaldschool.com/the-vision-of-dr-booker-t-washington-mr-julius-rosenwald/

Caesar Chavez. [web log post].  Retrieved from  https://www.biography.com/people/cesar-chavez-9245781

30 smartest people alive today.  [web log post]. Retrieved from https://superscholar.org/smartest-people-alive/

Fields, Liz. (2015, February 11). The graduation gap between white and black students is widening [Web log post]. Retrieved June 21, 2018 from https://news.vice.com/article/the-graduation-gap-between-white-and-black-students-is-widening-in-the-us

Tuition [web log post].  Retrieved from https://www.ashevilleschool.org/admission/application-process/tuition

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