“As early as the 1920s, researchers giving IQ tests to non-Westerners realized that any test of intelligence is strongly, if subtly, imbued with cultural biases… Samoans, when given a test requiring them to trace a route form point A to point B, often chose not the most direct route (the “correct” answer), but rather the most aesthetically pleasing one. Australian aborigines find it difficult to understand why a friend would ask them to solve a difficult puzzle and not help them with it. Indeed, the assumption that one must provide answers alone, without assistance from those who are older and wiser, is a statement about the culture-bound view of intelligence. Certainly the smartest thing to do, when face with a difficult problem, is to seek the advice of more experienced relatives and friends!”
Jonathan Marks - Anthropology and the Bell Curve (via mgrable)
When I was getting my Masters in Education, I was told the story of how Alaska had to request the lower 48 for certain questions on the SAT and CAT tests to be changed, basically every test needs to be ‘Alaskanized’.
Because we don’t know what Lobster are.
No joke- the first instance of them noticing was when they had a question about Lobster in Maine in the math section, and pretty much no one in the bush communities knew what a lobster was, and you can’t ask questions during those tests like ‘WTF is a lobster??’ and it sort of doesn’t come up in a lot of general education, you’d be lucky to find imported lobster in a store in AK. But all these kids got these answers wrong on these tests because some council somewhere thinks that all education and cultural teaching styles should be and are universal.
(via nerdofmany)
(via hungryklaxon)
