Few years ago a psychologist named Harold Manville Skeels, a professor
at University of Iowa, was assigned by the State to advise the State
orphanage. He found that the orphanage was sending babies born of feeble-minded parents to highly intelligent families
for adoption. Horrified, Dr. Skeels hurried forth to see how much
damage had been done. He gave the adopted children intelligence tests.
To his surprise, their average I.Q. was 115, well above normal .
Not one was dull.Dr. Skeels's discovery was one of a series made more or less by chance
during the last 15 years by the University of Iowa's Child Welfare
Research Station. The Station found that when children attended a nursery school or were
transferred from a bleak orphanage to a good home, their I.Q.s invariably improved.
Concluded the Station's director, Dr. George Dinsmore Stoddard: with good upbringing
even a dull child may become bright.Dr. Stoddard's conclusions threw other psychologists into a dither.
Humphed one: “If what you say is true, an intelligent man and wife
should adopt children instead of having their own.” Retorted Dr.
Stoddard: “Their chances of getting bright kids would be just
about as good.” Last week, with blood in their eyes, the nation's leading psychologists gathered in St. Louis.
On their way to the meeting—the annual convention of the National Society for the
Study of Education—they read both sides of the controversy in the Society's
yearbook, Intelligence: Its Nature and Nurture.Said Stanford's famed Psychologist Lewis Terman: “It appears
characteristic of the Iowa group of workers that they . . . find
difficulty in reporting accurately either the data of others or their
own.” Miss Florence L. Goodenough, of University of Minnesota's
Institute of Child Welfare, claimed that Dr. Stoddard's investigators
had made technical errors.But Dr. Stoddard had found supporters. The yearbook reported that identical twins reared in
separate homes had different I.Q.s. Southern Negroes who moved to Harlem raised their I.Q.s. Psychologist Robert Ladd
Thorndike had examined the records
of some 1,100 children in three famed progressive schools , found that in two schools children's I.Q.s
were static, but in the third there was an average I.Q.
gain of more than six points. As the convention opened, bald, husky Dr.
Stoddard rose to report. He twinkled: “Only a confirmed Pollyanna would
say that, as a committee, we have performed our task in a spirit of
loving kindness. …” Listeners looked at each other, wondered when the
fireworks would start. They never did start. Long before the end it had
dawned on the delegates that there would be no debate, because no one
cared to get up and contend that nurture had nothing to do with
intelligence. Said the final speaker, University of Chicago's
Sociologist Ernest Watson Burgess: “[The] consensus [is] that
intelligence, at least as measured by the I.Q., is not a constant and
that it is a resultant both of hereditary and environmental factors.”
