October 17, 2007

Genes, Intelligence, Literacy, and Racism

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) found that, as with
most general literacy and other broadband cognitive assessments of the last
century, African-Americans scored well below White adults. Perhaps for most
people, this signifies that greater efforts are needed in the education of
African-Americans. But for some others, this may simply reinforce the
belief that African-Americans are genetically lower in intelligence
compared to Whites and this shows itself in the differences in literacy
scores.

According to an article on the web site for The Independent news service in
London, England for 17 October 2007, online at
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece, James Watson, a
Nobel Prize winner for work on DNA and genetics, thinks that Africans are
less intelligent than Westerners. The article states that in a recent
interview Watson "claimed that black people were less intelligent than
white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across
racial groups was a delusion." According to The Independent, Watson said
that "Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an
assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts
when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for
creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade."

In an earlier interview in 2005, another Nobel Prize laureate, this time for
economics, James Heckman discussed his ideas about cognitive skills and
their malleability in later life with  members of a presidential commission
consisting of  former U.S. senators, heads of federal agencies, tax
attorneys and academic economists.  In his comments Heckman expressed his
belief that "IQ is basically formed by age 8, and there are huge
differences in IQ among people. 
 I think these observations on human skill
formation are exactly why the job training programs aren't working in the
United States and why many remediation programs directed toward
disadvantaged young adults are so ineffective."

That these kinds of beliefs by Nobel Prize winners are more widespread and
influential in affecting policies and funding for adult literacy education
is illustrated in a Forbes Magazine article for October 2, 2000. Written by
Dan Seligman, a widely read commentator, the article discussed the National
Adult Literacy Survey (NAL) of 1993  and argued that the test was not about
literacy and said, "The cluster of abilities being examined is obviously a
proxy for plain old "intelligence." Remarking then about the "familiar old
bell curve" Seligman says, "
do not tell us that government or any other
institution is going to transform this situation." This clearly reflects
the belief that the literacy test was actually a test of intelligence, that
the latter is genetically based, and was not going to be changed by adult
literacy programs.

These sorts of comments by Nobel prize laureates and well-placed popular
writers are not good for adult literacy education.  They can convince
policymakers and funding organizations that investments in adult literacy
education are not worthwhile. For instance, the New York Times for January
20, 2000 published an article by Kevin Sack about a gift of $100 million
being given to schools in Mississippi to promote the teaching of reading to
children. The article says that the philanthropist giving the money and
"many experts are less than bullish on the prospects for attacking adult
illiteracy." The philanthropist is then quoted as saying, "What this
program says is that we can't solve the adult literacy problem but we can
work with the children."

In addition to the deleterious effects of these types of comments on adult
literacy education funding, they foment racist thinking and the denigration
of African-Americans and others whose performance on various standardized
tests are below those of Whites. For these reasons it is important for the
adult education field to challenge these beliefs with renewed commitments
to educational practice. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)
of 2003 showed that 67 percent of African-American adults scored at the
Basic or Below Basic literacy levels for prose tasks. Unfortunately
enrollments of African-Americans in the Adult Education and Literacy system
of the United States fell by 13,073 from 548,562 in fiscal year 2000-01 to
535,489 in fiscal year 2003-04, the last year for which I have found data
for the nation. Concerted efforts are needed to attract adult
African-Americans with underdeveloped literacy skills into adult literacy
education programs and to provide the best education possible.


>From researchers in the field of adult literacy education, help is needed in

dispelling these ideas about intelligence. Even discussing conceptual
frameworks such as "multiple intelligences" may give some the impression
that there is something "real" about various intelligences with which one
could be genetically endowed. This includes verbal and quantitative
intelligences of the sort generally used in developing IQ tests and pointed
to as factors distinguishing African-Americans as inferior to Whites in
intelligence. Despite 15 years of federally funded adult literacy research
centers, I have yet to find any research by adult literacy researchers with
which to counter the arguments by the Nobel Prize winners, mal-informed
popular journalists, and philanthropists cited above, and others not cited.
This suggests that there is an urgent need for adult literacy researchers to
fight against the ideological foundations of racism that stigmatize adult
literacy education in general and the literacy education of
African-American adults in particular.

NOTE: For an extended discussion of issues related to ideas that marginalize
adult literacy education see the last of my papers at
http://adulted.about.com/od/adultbasiceducation/a/sticht.htm
This paper deals with issues of IQ, brain science, adult literacy and
debunks myths that hold adult literacy education back.

 Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net