Selection procedures

The attitude towards Intelligence Quotient tests has shifted a lot over the past half century. Fifty or more years ago ardent socialists regarded IQ testing as a major step forward towards promoting social mobility and equality of opportunity for all. I well remember the zest with which an old mathematics master of mine did research into the reliability of IQ tests in the very early 1920s and had the results published. He was an ardent left winger and earned a brief mention in a recent book on Harold Wilson who, years later, also learnt his mathematics from him. This schoolmaster saw IQ tests as a way of helping able children from poor backgrounds, for the tests were supposed to be culture‐free and absolutely fair to the bright, the average, and the not‐so‐bright child. Here then was an instrument of social justice to be used in our effort to improve society. Yet today left‐wingers seem to have nothing good to say about such tests, presumably because they show that all men are not equal. Equality of opportunity has given way to equality. Selection is felt to be anti‐social and unfair.