246 Storm of Intelligence Testing
246 智力测试风波
About the time that schools and others quite reasonably became interested in seeing to it that all children, whatever their background, were fairly treated, intelligence testing became unpopular.
当学校开始十分关注所有的学生，不论他们有什么家庭背景，都能公正对待他们的时候，智力测试就不再受欢迎了。
Some thought it was unfair to minority children. Through the past few decades such testing has gone out of fashion and many communities have indeed forbidden it.
一些人认为智力测试对少数民族学生不公平。在过去的几十年，这种测试已经变得不再受欢迎，许多机构都已经禁止实施智力测验。
However, paradoxically, just recently a group of black parents filed a lawsuit in California claiming that the state's ban on IQ testing discriminates against their children by denying them the opportunity to take the test. (They believed, correctly, that IQ tests are a valid method of evaluating children for special education classes.) The judge, therefore, reversed, at least partially,his original decision.
然而矛盾的是，就在前不久，一些黑人家长向加州法院提出诉讼，声称加州取消智力测试的法令歧视了他们的孩子，因为这剥夺了他们参加此类测验的机会。（他们相信智力测试是一种能在某些特殊的教育课程方面评价孩子的正确有效的方法。）法院最终多多少少更改了最初颁布的法令。
And so the argument goes on and on. Does it benefit or harm children from minority groups to have their intelligence tested? We have always been on the side of permitting, even facilitating, such testing. If a child of any color or group is doing poorly in school it seems to us very important to know whether it is because he or she is of low intelligence, or whether some other factor is the cause.
因此，争议就不停地继续着。让少数民族的学生参加智力测试对他们究竟是好，还是坏呢？我们一直都站在允许，甚至推行这些测试的立场上。如果一个某种族或团体的孩子在学校表现不好时，我们会认为很有必要了解一下这 是否是他的智力低下引起的，还是因为别的什么因素。
What school and family can do to improve influenced by its cause. It is not discriminative to evaluate either a child's physical ondition or his intellectual level.
学校和家庭对于改善孩子在学校的表现能做什么要受到导致孩子表现不佳的原因的影响。估测孩子的生理状况和智力水平并不是歧视。
Unfortunately, intellectual level seems to be a sensitive subject, and what the law allows us to do varies from time to time. The same fluctuation back and forth occurs in areas other than intelligence. Thirty years or so ago, for instance, white families were encouraged to adopt black children. It was considered discriminative not to do so.
然而，不幸的是，智力水平似乎是一个敏感的话题，法律允许我们做的事又一变再变，除了智力测验之外，其他领域也存在同样的反反复复。比如，大约30年前，白人家庭被鼓励收养黑人儿童，因为不这样做，便有种族歧视的嫌疑。
And then the style changed and this cross-racial adopting became generally unpopular, and social agencies felt that black children should go to black families only. It is hard to say what are the best procedures. But on the part of all of us is needed.
后来这种趋势变了，这种跨种族收养的做法逐渐变得不再流行，社会团体认为黑人儿童就应该在黑人家庭中成长。很难说哪种做法最好，但可以肯定的是，就我们所有人而言，良好的意愿是需要的。
As to intelligence, in our opinion, the more we know about any child's intellectual level, the better for the child in question.
至于智力问题，在我们看来，我们越了解孩子的智力水平，对孩子就越有益。