Bring back IQ tests and save childhood

The Sacramento Bee reported recently that the personality tests used by an estimated 30 percent of employers as part of the job interview process are essentially worthless. The story mentions that the tests were aggressively marketed to employers starting in the 1970s, when tests for aptitude, intelligence and achievement were criticized as unfair to minorities and women.

Observe the Law of Unintended Consequences in action.

Employers were afraid to test applicants for intelligence, or even judge a prospect's intelligence by a maybe-discriminatory gut feeling, but they didn't lose their desire for intelligent employees. They found a substitute for the IQ test and it wasn't the goofy questionaire about personality traits. It was the degree from a top university.

There was a time in this country when children were not pressured at the age of three to take tests in order to get into the best pre-schools so that they'd have the "credential" to get into the best private elementary school so that they wouldn't miss the cut to get into the best high school so that they would be accepted into the best universities.

Why are parents so stressed about getting their kids into top colleges? Because future employment depends on it.

But why are employers so rigid about credentials from the best universities? Everyone knows there are plenty of capable people without Ivy League degrees and plenty of incompetents with them.

Apparently this is the answer: Thanks to the fear of discrimination, employers aren't allowed to test applicants for intelligence. So they rely instead on top universities to separate the wheat from the chaff, brain-wise.

The trouble with this model for hiring is that it locks everyone into place at the age of eighteen. That means intense pressure on children to succeed at the highest level from the earliest age. And it also means adults who find themselves out of work will have a terrible time finding jobs to replace the ones they got before the world went credential-crazy. Without intelligence or aptitude tests, they have no objective way to demonstrate their ability to a prospective employer in a new field.

So childhood feels like a bar review course and midlife unemployment feels like the 1930s Depression. Employers are stuck in a bidding war for unproven Ivy League graduates. Millions of anxious parents push their kids toward the same small group of top schools, driving tuition costs to the sky and saddling graduates with student loans the size of mortgages. And all because of an irrational fear that intelligence tests discriminate against minorities and women.

Will the 1970s ever end?



Copyright 2005

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