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!
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Jonathan Marks - Anthropology and the Bell Curve (via mgrable)
Who else remembers the story of the tribe in present-day Cameroon that in the 1920s some researchers tried to measure their intelligence?
“Mister Smith has fifteen goats. Five are white and the rest are spotted. How many goats are spotted?”
“I don’t know a Mister Smith. How am I to know if he was telling you the truth?”
Jonathon Chimakonom Okeke wrote a fitting paper on this: http://www.academia.edu/997772/AFRICAN_LOGIC_AN_EXISTENTIALIST_OUTLOOK
(via liimlsan)
(via witchydarling)