The IQ Debate (Contd.)

Blacks as a group consistently score lower than whites on standard IQ tests. That is a fact no one can dispute. But the reason for the discrepancy has become a matter of heated dispute --sparked largely by the widely publicized theories of Psychologist Arthur Jensen and Physicist William Shockley. The two men suggest that genetic factors account for the differences. Others, like University of Pennsylvania Anthropologist Peggy Sanday, insist that the differences are environmental. Last week Sanday buttressed her case by reporting the results of her own study.

Sanday's report, financed by a $61,576 grant from the U.S. Office of Education, is based on her 1971 examination of the records of more than 2,000 children (45% black, 55% white) who had just completed the ninth grade in Pittsburgh public schools. After plotting the changes in the students' IQ scores from 1962-70 as they moved through the largely segregated schools, she noted a significant trend. The scores of blacks in schools with mostly black pupils worsened steadily between kindergarten and eighth grade; the scores of whites in predominantly white schools, in addition to being slightly higher than the black scores from the start, improved.

That finding would seem to strengthen the Jensen-Shockley argument. But Sanday also found that the IQ scores of the handful of blacks attending middle-class schools improved, while the scores of whites in lower-class schools declined. For example: scores for whites in schools where most pupils were from middle-class families rose from a mean of 105.5 in kindergarten to a mean of 108.7 in sixth grade; scores for blacks in similar schools went from a mean of 95 in kindergarten to 98.2 in sixth grade. But in schools where most students were in the lowest of the six socioeconomic classes defined in the study, white scores dropped from 91.2 in kindergarten to 89.3 in sixth grade, and black scores from 93.5 in kindergarten to 90.1 in sixth grade.

Sanday therefore argues that it is not race but class that influences IQ. She points out that "IQs are simply a measure of what you need to do well in the mainstream culture of white middle-class America." Because many blacks are excluded from this mainstream by racial prejudice and class segregation, they never have a chance to acquire the information and mental attitudes and skills that lead to success on IQ tests. The same exclusion also has its impact on preschool-age children, she says. That accounts for the lower IQ scores of blacks in kindergarten. In sum, Sanday believes that her study demonstrates that over a period of time, school and community segregation combine to lower the IQs of the nation's blacks.

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