Academically Talented” Student: “Intelligence,” Intellligence Testing, and Educational Opportunity in the Era of Brown V
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CONSTRUCTING THE “GIFTED” AND “ACADEMICALLY TALENTED” STUDENT: “INTELLIGENCE,” INTELLLIGENCE TESTING, AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE ERA OF BROWN V. BOARD AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT By James Wynter Porter A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History—Doctor of Philosophy 2017 ABSTRACT CONSTRUCTING THE “GIFTED” AND “ACADEMICALLY TALENTED” STUDENT: “INTELLIGENCE,” INTELLIGENCE TESTING, AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE ERA OF BROWN V. BOARD AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT By James Wynter Porter This dissertation analyzes debates about intelligence and educational opportunity in the post-World War II US, from 1945- 1965. I examine how “intelligence”--as an idea about human difference--was constructed in this period in response to a shifting complex of social and scientific pressures and moreover, how it functioned through policy to regulate educational opportunity. This was a period dense with events that rapidly transformed the educational landscape, including the fitful early years of desegregation following Brown v. Board, the Sputnik Crisis and the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). Such rapid transformations readily evoked the ordering principle of “intelligence.” While exploring larger Cold War/Civil Rights contexts, my research focuses on specific networks of collaboration between ETS, the National Education Association (NEA), Eisenhower administration architects of the NDEA, and James Bryant Conant, via his widely disseminated study of US public high schools, The American High School Today. These actors formed a largely sub rosa collaboration that worked to the political and financial advantage of the NEA and ETS. As well, they positioned The American High School Today as a seemingly independent, scientifically objective endorsement of the NDEA. To wit, The American High School Today and the NDEA both pressed—yet without observable affiliation—the need to identify “highly able” high school students through augmented guidance and testing programs, and to afford these students selective curricula in the sciences, math and foreign languages. While the NDEA contained broad and neutrally stated initiatives addressed to these aims, The American High School Today followed six months later mapping well-defined, naturalized thresholds of individual intelligence to proposed sequences of ability-tracked science, math and foreign language curriculum. This collaboration propelled the subsequent explosion of a new strain of discourse across a range of national media and popular literatures that worked to construct the category of the “academically talented” and “gifted” child, and advocate for this student’s access to select curricula in the public schools. Furthermore, while calls to identify and selectively educate high “intelligence” drew explicit justification from the Sputnik Crisis and the science race with the Soviets, I find that white anxieties about “race”--and, specifically, desegregation following Brown v. Board--were a powerful tacit driver. Copyright by JAMES WYNTER PORTER 2017 To my parents, my first and best teachers, for their unflagging support and abiding belief. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee, David Bailey, Richard Bellon, Lewis Siegelbaum, and Helen Veit, and my advisor, John Waller, for their wise counsel, expert guidance, phenomenal teaching, and careful reading of this dissertation. I owe them a great debt of gratitude. I would also like to express my sincerest thanks and appreciation to my funders who have believed in the importance of this research and helped to sustain it over many steps along the way: Michigan State University, MSU Department of History, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES.............................................. x KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS........................................ xi INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY............................. 1 INTRODUCTION........................................... 3 BACKGROUND............................................. 5 METHODS, AIMS, AND APPROACH............................ 18 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND RELATED THEORY ............. 24 HISTORY OF PSYCHOMETRICS, INTELLIGENCE AND MENTAL MEASUREMENT .............................. 27 NATURE AND NURTURE..................................... 29 GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL................................... 35 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE US COLD WAR AND COLD WAR EDUCATION ........................................... 40 CHAPTER SUMMARIES...................................... 52 CHAPTER I: DEBATING THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE: 1900-1950................................................... 58 THE DAWN OF THE INTELLIGENCE TEST: THE DOING OF TESTING, THE FORGING OF BELIEF ................... 59 NATURE, NURTURE AND THE HERITABILITY OF INTELLIGENCE ........................................ 68 NATURE, NURTURE AND IDEOLOGIES OF GROUP DIFFERENCES: 1920-1950 .............................. 75 ‘NATURE-AND-NURTURE’ AND IDEOLOGIES OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE ............................... 83 CHANGES IN RHETORIC, CONTINUITIES OF ASSUMPTION: HEREDITARIANISM INTO NEO-HEREDITARIANISM ............ 90 THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF INTELLIGENCE: SHIFTING DIFFERENCE FROM “RACE” TO INDIVIDUAL ................ 99 “ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE”.............................. 111 CONCLUSION............................................. 118 CHAPTER II: STUDY DESIGN OF J.B. CONANT’S THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY................................................ 120 LIFE IN MANHATTAN AND RICHMOND HILL, ONTARIO .......... 121 “TALENT,” “INTELLIGENCE” AND THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY (1959) ............................ 131 THE FACE OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY: JAMES BRYANT CONANT ................................. 134 THE STUDY DESIGN: IQ THROUGH AND THROUGH............... 140 vii CONANT’S STANDING BELIEFS ABOUT IQ..................... 156 CONANT’s 21 THESES: RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY ...................... 160 RECOMMENDATION: MORE SCIENCE, MATH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR THE ACADEMICALLY TALENTED .............. 163 RECOMMENDATION: ABILITY GROUPING....................... 165 RECOMMENDATION: GUIDANCE COUNSELORS.................... 170 "PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL": THE DIVERGENT EDUCATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS ............... 175 OTHER “AMERICAN PROBLEMS”.............................. 182 CONCLUSION............................................. 185 CHAPTER III: ACADEMIC TALENT, “INTELLIGENCE” AND A COLD WAR CRISIS IN EDUCATION......................................... 189 PRESS JUNKETS AND PR ROLLOUTS.......................... 190 RED, WHITE AND BLACK: A BREWING CRISIS OVER DESEGREGATION, GLOBAL COMMUNISM, AND THE CURRICULUM OF US SCHOOL ............................. 200 THE RED COMET.......................................... 214 CONANT AND THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY TO THE RESCUE ....................................... 218 CONANT, IKE, AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION VERSION OF THE NDEA .................. 223 CONCLUSION............................................. 240 CHAPTER IV: “INTELLIGENCE” AND ACADEMIC TALENT: RESOLVING THE POLITICS OF PLACE AND “RACE”................................ 242 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE ............................... 244 THE LOCAL COMPREHENSIVE HIGH SCHOOL.................... 247 AN IDEALIZED HISTORY: AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC EXCEPTIONALISM ...................................... 249 “INTELLIGENCE” AS A CHECK TO LOCAL PROVINCIALISM ....................................... 257 “TALENT” AND RACE: EASING WHITE ANXIETIES ABOUT DESEGREGATION ................................. 268 CONANT IN PRIVATE COMMUNICATION: IQ AND THE SPATIAL CODING OF “RACE” .................................... 270 NO “RACE” IN THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY............ 274 DIVERSITY REDEFINED: HETEROGENEITIES OF TALENT .............................................. 276 INTEGRATION REBRANDED: DEMOCRATIC COEXISTENCE OF THE BRIGHT AND NOT-SO-BRIGHT ..................... 281 CONCLUSION............................................. 288 CHAPTER V: UNDER THE CLOAK OF THE EXPERT: ETS, NEA, CARNEGIE, CONANT AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT..... 290 viii BEHIND THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY: DRAMATIS PERSONAE ................................... 293 CONANT, CARR AND GARDNER............................... 295 CONANT, ETS AND THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY ............................................... 311 CONANT, ETS AND THE NDEA............................... 318 ETS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: COOPERATIVE PLAN FOR GUIDANCE AND ADMISSIONS .................... 319 ETS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: NEW TESTS FOR THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES STUDY COMMITTEE AND OTHER NDEA CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS ........... 325 ETS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: THE NATIONAL GUIDANCE TESTING PROGRAM (NGTP) ..................... 327 RECORD GROWTH: TRENDS IN ETS NET WORTH IN THE NDEA ERA ........................................ 332 CONCLUSION............................................. 334 CHAPTER VI: A “PRECIOUS MINORITY”: CONSTRUCTING THE “GIFTED” AND “ACADEMICALLY TALENTED” STUDENT IN THE WAKE OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL TODAY AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT....................................... 336 ISOLATED GIFTEDNESS.................................... 338 GIFTEDNESS: A NATURAL CATEGORY REDISCOVERED............ 342 TESTING AND