I don’t think the Flynn effect is as damning to the validity of IQ testing as many think. IQ is a combination of two things - learned information and innate g. More properly, I should say that it is an indicator of g that is modified by the application of learned information. A good IQ test, however, doesn’t rely on learned information (i.e. book knowledge) as much as it does innate thinking skills - which maximises the contribution from g. The Flynn effect reflects a rise in the absolute education standard in America, but I think it probably represents not so much a raising of actual IQ as it reflects a lessening of the DEPRESSION of tested IQ because of lower education standards.
I agree with your statement on critical thinking skills. Increasing higher order thinking skills is something that needs to be addressed. Instead of outcome-based educational goals, teachers should be taught how to increase critical thinking skills of their students by various means.
Actually, emotional intelligence (EQ) is a better measure of intelligence than IQ, which presumes that one is operating in a social vacuum, because the real intelligence, is learning from the environment and people around them — which allows them to tap the total intelligence and not just regurgitate what was systematically put into their head.
The world of the unknown, is vastly larger than the world of the known (knowledge), and so one operating only from the known (memory), is at a disadvantage to any other individual processing real time information as it happens.
The old IQ test is basically a test of familiarity with the known — while intelligence is how successfully one discovers the present unknown, which is also what the old IQ hopes to measure by how successfully one has learned the old in the past — but that does not necessarily indicate how successfully one can learn in the present.
This is especially true with those who have largely learned everything they know when they were young and in school — and nothing since, and so their emotional growth was also stunted at that level of progress, which is often the case with so-called prodigies, who know a lot of useless information — but have no skills in communicating and reading others directly.
So while emotional quotient implies IQ, IQ does not indicate EQ, and those of high IQ can be some of the most destructive and antisocial personalities in society — as we read about in the the news daily. The individual of high EQ, poses no such problem — and are in fact, society’s problem solvers rather than creators.
It doesn’t take intelligence to create more problems, divisions, arguments, harassments and abuse. That is the disturbing thing of what is championed in popular culture in the mainstream media. That is not intelligence.
You’re right that the Flynn Effect doesn’t invalid IQ testing, but there is no consensus on exactly what the Flynn Effect represents. Claiming that it reflects a rise in the absolute educational standard in America (to be fair, I assume you mean educational achievement in America and elsewhere) is a conjecture that I think would be very hard to support.
The larger point, however, is that the very idea that there might be something like g and that it is to a substantial degree heritable has always been hated by a substantial swath of the left. Consequently, there has been no end of politically driven articles over recent decades “debunking” the concept of g and its heritability, of which the posted piece appears to be a rather mild example.
The more candid and informed opponents of IQ testing don’t deny that the tests are reasonably valid, but rather argue that for the good of society there is some research that shouldn’t be done and that claiming all variations in intelligence are environmentally determined is a “noble lie” that serves a larger social purpose. Of course, the public policy resulting from such views can only be described as a form of social insanity.
Someone posted an article here before the election in which it was reported that genomics researchers were very anxious about their future because they believed that they were not far from identifying the genetic basis for variations in g (and other things that would offend the left) and that the new administration would quietly defund them.
One of the interesting things about threads on FR is the extent to which many posters don’t seem to understand that “science” not only is intensely political, but has been for a long time....I know this doesn’t have anything to do with your post - I’m just throwing it in.