Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

354 Educability and Group Differences
should expect that the first hypotheses proposed in what will
necessarily be a long series of investigations leading toward a
more complete and accurate picture will be ‘true’ in any final
sense. Testable hypotheses are the stepping stones on which we
advance toward the kind of knowledge that works, in the same
sense that our knowledge of physics works when we apply it to
the problem of putting a man on the moon. So we must discover
not only the correlates of differences in educability; we must try
to discover their causes as well.
EDUCABILITY AND INTELLIGENCE
Educability is defined here as the ability to learn the traditional
scholastic subjects, especially the three Rs, under ordinary
conditions of classroom instruction. Thus it is apparent that educability
in this sense is a relative concept. At present it is measured
by tests of scholastic achievement. Educability is dependent
upon intelligence, which is a theoretical construct to account for
the consolidation of learning into organized structures which
permit its retrieval, broad generalization, and transfer to the
solution of new problems and to the facilitation of new learning.
A theoretical distinction should be made between learning per se
and the consolidation of learning into cognitive structures that
permit retrieval and transfer. Thus short-term measures of school
learning are less highly correlated with intelligence than cumulative
long-term measures. The physiological structures underlying
intelligence grow from birth to maturity in their capacity to
consolidate learning into the kinds of cognitive structures that
characterize intelligence. Whatever is learned but not consolidated
in this manner is either forgotten or remains a relatively specific
response to a specific set of stimulus conditions; operationally it
will show up in a factor analysis as an item with large specificity
and a negligible loading on a general factor common to a large
number and variety of learned facts and skills. The really functional,
usable part of traditional school learning is that which gets
consolidated into these cognitive structures, and the extent to
which this takes place depends upon the person’s intelligence.
Intelligence is indexed by standard tests, all of which, if valid,
share a large common factor, g. Intelligence as thus measured
correlates more highly with scholastic performance than any other