Yeah, Binet was researching in order to help identify students who might need extra help because he believed intelligence was fluid. It was the good ol' USA that took the test and said, "Hey, this would be a nifty way to categorize people in order to stratify them and match them up with the hierarchical job system we've formed post industrial revolution!" I have an excellent article about this somewhere. I'll link to it later. We've been studying thus concept a lot at school this year--talking about shifting from a fixed to a growth mindset about intelligence. The parents and students are much harder to convince than the teachers, sadly.

Yes - there's a HUGE difference between saying "IQ tests are flawed and have been used to justify all sort of horrific racism/etc" and saying "No human being is more or less intelligent than any other human being," and she seems to be conflating the two in a big way.

This was what I was taking from it, and why I have a problem with her conclusion. Using any kind of standardized test to determine someone's intellectual capacity and therefore worth as a human being -- not a good idea.

Calling the word "intelligence/intelligent" an ableist word, though -- I can't get behind that.

But can William Shatner?

Exactly. Intelligence is something people can acquire over time, brain research says, so how can it be ableist? It's not like being blind, which is generally a done deal, barring medical miracle.

There was something I was listening on NPR that was talking about the testing for elite kindergarten-- and basily what they found was that the smartest kid in a third grade classroom , would not have passed the test for the kindergarten.

sj: gift card or like, zoo membership.

I can't think of any gift card that she can use when she is back in the UK. Most of them are restricted to within US borders even if it is a chain with locations overseas.

Connie, lots of ~ma and best wishes for your sister.

Sending the ~ma to your sister, Connie.

sj, a book for the plane ride home?

I can't possibly see how 'intelligence' is a disablist term. Any more than phrases like 'going for a walk' (use it all the time, regardless of whether I'm going in the wheelchair), or references to 'sight/seeing' or similar might be disablist. They're just not. We know there's diversity in ability - that's what it is to be human, and diversity is great.

As I worked through it in my discussion with smonster I think it's counterproductive to follow every logical parallel to an offensive phrase to its conclusion. I think that curbing the language use needs to be in response to specific instances of objection, and shouldn't be a broadly generalized principle.

This. And what erika said. (I'm both 'gifted' and 'LD' too. I have dyspraxia, a totally random thing where - among other things - I get a 70 score on some parts of the IQ scale, and a 150 on other parts. And I love that.)

I'm also gifted and LD. I once took an informal poll of the grad students in my department, and of the 20 people I asked, all of whom are studying for a Ph. D. in math, 3 of us had been either identified as or suspected of having a math disability in elementary school. (And it's entirely possible that there were a few more where the teachers discussed it with their parents but the kid never found out.)