Intelligence Can Be Taught

Arthur Whimbey has done the environmental side of the nature/nurture debate a tremendous service by writing this most desperately needed book.He provides excellent resources stemming from the research of well-respected scholars, such as Siegfried Engelmann, Benjamin Bloom, and others, whose research has provided a powerful counter-attack to the bleak evaluation given by members of the academic elite who feel that blacks and other minorities are intellectually incapable of learning on the level of whites and Asians. He brilliantly asserts that intelligence is a skill that can be taught, and he has done research himself that suggest that that premise is true. In the book's most defining moment,( in my opinion) Whimbey exposes the fallacies in Arthur Jensen's hereditarian theory, using his own arguments against him. (Read the study on twins, midway through the book.)He ends the book with some samples of IQ tests. He also gives his thoughts on racial inequality, and the part it has played on the conscience, the will, and the academic progress of the Black in America. Anyone wanting to debate him will have to tackle a mountain of statistics, evidence, government research, and evidence, both anecdotal, and non-anecdotal. This book was the perfect answer to the Bell Curve before it was even written!

It's been 20+ years since I read this, but I was much impressed at the time. I no longer have a copy so I hope I'm remembering the facts correctly. Whimbey, a professor of psychology, ran a special school in California for 10-11 year olds who seemed to be getting nowhere in the public schools and who had IQ scores around 85. He concentrated on drilling the students in three principles of thought: 1. Have a reason for everything you say. (Low IQ people do not.) 2. Think long enough about a problem to solve it. (Low IQ people often limited their effort to no more than 5 seconds of thought. Many problems simply require more than that.) 3. Consider all the information available before making a judgment. (Low IQ people jumped to conclusions based on the first observations they made.) What most impressed me about Whimbey's approach was that he was attempting to develop intelligence in general, i.e., reasoning ability. This was not just about reading better or doing better arithmetic. He claimed that, after one school year of intensive drilling in these basic principles, the average child went from an IQ of 85 to an IQ of 115, and the change was permanent! The children were able to do better, because they could think more effectively, in all subjects. The book explains his program for inculcating these principles. Being optimistic, or at least hopeful, about the future of humanity, I found this book gave me renewed hope. Whimbey argues very convincingly that the ordinary human brain is a pretty good instrument for thinking. What is needed is not more geniuses, though genius is always a wonderful thing, but better training of all of us ordinary folk, in order to build a more intelligent community. He backs up his argument with real results achieved with real children. I heartily recommend this book to any teacher or anyone else who wants to develop general intellectual ability, not just teach specific skills. And I hope that all teachers will try to do that.