Free Your Mind

Andrew Anthony on IQ.

I have never taken an IQ test in my life, and I question whether anyone who sets any store by them is sufficiently intelligent to be allowed out alone, if at all. The whole thing depends on “mental age”, whatever that might be. The IQ of children in numerous countries has “improved” dramatically over the years when IQ tests have been set, and therefore taught to, in schools; indeed, this never fails to happen.

The publications of Mensa are a particularly rich seam of amusement. “More people than you might think are above average”? I’m guessing about half of them. “One person in twenty is in the top five per cent”? You don’t say! And so on.

But never try and tell the “I have a high IQ” lot any of this. They are even worse than the Oxbridgers. At least you have to do something first to get into Oxbridge and then to get a degree there, even if you do only have to do it at a very early age (there is no excuse for still dining out on it even a very few years, never mind decades, later), and even if it does only make you the equal of the ninety-fifth best Etonian in his year.

You wouldn’t have to, and indeed never could, do anything to get a high IQ, if such a thing really existed. Having it would be no cause for congratulation, never mind for self-congratulation or for the creation of an international society for mutual congratulation.