Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

88 Language Diversity in the Classroomimproved health care among them) for very large numbers of children.Zigler and Seitz (1980) went on to note that success could should? beassessed in terms of improved social competence, physical health,educational motivation and achievement, and not only in terms offormal cognitive skills (see also Kellaghan, 1977). Perhaps we ask toomuch of educational programs in terms of future pay-offs; perhaps someinterventions that positively affect children’s lives can be accepted asgood in themselves, regardless of what they may or may not lead to 10years on. After all, we do not provide swings and roundabouts foryoungsters with the view that by so doing we increase social competence,now or in the future; they are seen as pleasant in and ofthemselves.A Forensic Post-scriptIn this chapter, we have seen how important the assessment ofintelligence has been historically: for immigrants, for the lower classessubject to eugenic ideologies, for disadvantaged children in the classroom.The importance, the poignancy and the tragedy have arisen, inlarge part, because assessments have been mis-assessments. These, inturn, have generally rested upon faulty or inadequate testing instruments.Now, in a new contemporary arena of the greatest moment oflife-and-death significance, in fact we are able to see that inadequaciesand mismeasurements persist. It is also relevant to our larger story thatthis arena has been, and continues to be, one in which variousdisadvantaged populations are heavily over-represented. This lastsection is something of a digression, to be sure, but it highlights adramatic chapter in the long and often troubled story of intelligencetesting and its consequences.Following the mid-19th-century M’Naghten rules, a defence basedupon insanity while often a very contentious matter has long beenaccepted principle in British and American criminal justice systems.Similar, and sometimes more liberal, provisions exist in other countries.In what might appear to be a logical extension, the Supreme Court of theUnited States recently reversed a 1989 ruling that mental retardationought not to exempt a murderer from the death penalty: thus, in 2002, theCourt found executing the mentally retarded to be unconstitutional(McKinzey, 2005; Mossman, 2005). 3 While arguing that diminishedintellectual capacities meant that the execution of the mentally retardedwould be ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, the Court opinion left it tostate jurisdiction to develop ‘appropriate ways’ to apply the provisions.