For the past week, I've been sitting in my 9:05 psychology class listening to my professor lecture about the topic of IQ tests. No, not the silly ones you take on the internet that take only 7 minutes to complete and provide insane numbers that cause your self-esteem to elevate. I'm talking about extensive but accurate tests performed by clinical psychologists that take about 3 hours to complete.
During my professor's lecture, my ears began to perk when she mentioned that an intelligence test called The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test can catch intellectual disability as low as age 2. This sparked my interest because I was diagnosed with an intellectual disability in the 4th grade. I began to think, "What if I was tested at 2? Would this have made a difference in my academic career today?"
I think it would have.
The Stanford-Binet intelligence test originated in France and was created by Alfred Binet. It was used to identify intellectually disabled children in order to rehabilitate them rather than locking them away in asylums. This shows the origin of IQ testing was used to seek out what a person knows and where they can improve as opposed to measuring only their intellect alone.
If I was tested for disability at age 2, I wouldn't have wasted previous academic years. For example, I struggled with math for as long as I could remember. In first grade, I was taught basic adding and subtracting and would go through numerous flash cards and could never get them right. As much as I tried, I could never wrap my brain around them and the same happened with multiplication and division. Hell, I still can't multiply and divide passed 6 without using a calculator. Because I wasn't able to get it back in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, I had to move on to elementary algebra relying on the use of multiplication charts and when they weren't allowed, I was lost.
A crucial reason to consider IQ testing in young children is the risk of a child falling behind in school due to being discouraged. By becoming discouraged, it is possible that years of learning could be wasted if the disability isn't diagnosed soon enough. Therefore, it is wise to test children before they begin school.
My professor's lecture changed my perspective about IQ tests because I thought that they were only used to measure intelligence rather than used to improve yourself. I believe that these tests would be beneficial for anyone, especially children just entering elementary school.
