What's your opinion of IQ tests and testing? Do you feel that they are accurate? Some argue that they are biased and are no longer relevant today, do you agree?

I think they're a bit dumb.

So FM, despite your feeling that they are a bit dumb, would you be for or against your child taking one?

Chris wrote:

So FM, despite your feeling that they are a bit dumb, would you be for or against your child taking one?

Depends why they are taking one I guess. For fun? Sure, why not? As something that will actually mean something, I'd probably pass unless I was sure they could get them all right and be classified as a genius! But yeah, if I can't use them to my kids' advantage, I say to hell with them. IMO, they're as useless as memorizing stuff for a test.

They may be useful as a guideline at least in the field that Shale is involved in but some so called normal person with a measured IQ of 100 could still be a lot "smarter" than someone with a score of 150. Maybe they aren't a good test-taker. I had a distant cousin who was a physist at Los Alamos but couldn't boil water. I don't think students should even be told what their score is. It could make some rationalize that they shouldn't try hard because they're "dumb" and others not to because they're "smart".

I'd place a lot more value on IQ tests if people who scored so highly on them didn't often prove to be incapable of seeing some basic non-textbook things.

I don't know how accurate they are, because they depend on so many things. My friend's son was tested not long after they adopted him and came out profoundly developmentally delayed with little chance of leading a normal life and with little change of learning to dress himself, use the bathroom, learn to speak, etc. They said he was basically non-verbal and wouldn't be capable of learning much.. What the testers didn't bother to take into account was that the kid barely spoke English, had never seen or used a toilet before coming to Canada, had never had enough clothes to worry about knowing how to dress himself, had grown up on the streets, surviving the best he could, despite living in an orphanage. The list went on and on, but these dear idiots who administered the test didn't bother taking anything into account, other than the test results.

my friend's son does have some developmental delays (mainly in language) and he also has dyslexia. Other than that, he's a pretty normal 11 year old who talks non-stop, gets jokes, responds and has made up almost 3 years of school in just 1 year. He's learning to read, can do math at a 3rd grade level and by the end of middle school, it's predicted that he'll be at almost the same level as his peers. He's a bright, engaging child with an amazing memory. So much for the IQ test that classified him as severely mentally handicapped. Then again, if I took an IQ test in China, my results would be pretty dismal, too, as I don't know the language or the culture.

It does depend on the IQ test, and they are useful, but there are many other factors, as well.