SATURDAY'S POST Intelligence tests show middle-class bias

Last week's demands in Renault's huge assembly hall on the lle Seguin that they prolong the four-hour strike echoed the jeers and shouts that greeted their cowardly proposals of 18 months before.

A letter from an engine plant worker at Renault's Cleon plant, printed in October 24's 'Le Monde,_ brings out the Communist Party's role very clearly.

A three-hour strike in the factory's department No. 41 recently, explains the letter, spread quickly to other sections and the CGT instructed all its members to go home.

Then in a joint leaflet issued with the Confederation Franthe next mornint impossible caise Democratique de Travail 'mistake'• made to see if the strike was to be indefinite or not.

The CGT, the letter alleged, 'tried more to contain than organize the action, and this without great success because one could count between 1,500 and 2,000 strikers. It then tried to minimize the action by distributing a leaflet telling workers to go back to their shops and decide the form and duration of the action with their leaders'.

At the Flins factory last week, only the CFDT (Catholic union) called on workers to support the Boulogne-Billancourt action.

Other T be made in conclusion. •WO other points should The first is that besides conditions on the track, low wages and long hours, Renault workers have many other grievances. For instance the eating facilities.

Despite the increase in the labour force over the last few years of from 30,000-37,000, there has been hardly any increase in the already-overloaded restaurant accommodation. One restaurant has in fact been shut.

The restaurant workers themselves work in impossible conditions, with only five minutes between sittings.

Yet the state management has refused to change the meal-schedule in order to alleviate this.

Secondly, there are indications that the management may not remain a state management for very long. France's standard of living is estimated to be one-third higher than in Britain and still rising. Above : Renault workers buy much of their goods at the market outside their factory Billancourt.

Workers draw their conclusions about this trend towards denationalization from the recent practice of farmingout work to factories where the conditions of exploitation are even higher than at Renault itself, and from its link-up for the production of certain parts with Peugeot.

A joint engine plant with Peugeot 1s being built, and it has allangements with the private company for training, research and development.

Some components common to Peugeot and Renault are already being made at SaintOuen, to the north of Paris, under a Peugeot manager. Part of the Billancourt factory is to be closed down as a result.

An important feature of the All Trades Unions Alliance's November 8 conference will be a discussion on the French car industry.

Workers from Renault will be present.

They hope to present a detailed report on the situation in all the maior plants. 6.50 7.25 8.15 10.25 10.35 11.20 7.25 8.15 10.00 10.05 10.45 11.30 11.35 THE USE of intelligence tests to bolster up the arguments of the Tory Black Paper Two underlines once again the reactionary nature of these tests.

More than this, it underlines the reactionary nature of the philosophy behind them; the philosophy of 'don't probe any deeper than you have to'.

The capitalist class and its agents in the middle class have traditionally used this philosophy. The development of intelligence tests is a case in point.

These tests were designed to measure 'mental developThis was to assist in the efficient selection of children to be trained in the grammar schools and universities as the managers and professionals of capitalism.

What this 'mental development' was, no one bothered to consider as long as the tests appeared to cut down educational 'wastage' During the 1950s and early 1960s some testers began to wonder if there might not still be 'wastage' going on. The following exerpt from the Great Cities Improvement Studies Project financed by the Ford Foundation makes this clear:

'As long as the problem of the culturally deprived remains unsolved, potentially great scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, FIRSTLY, can I express belated congratulations on the daily-a wonderful achievement. Robin Black's articles are excellent. Can I suggest that your articles on the front and back pages are not split up as at present: it makes for difficult reading to be referred to page four every article. But that's just a technical objection: the Workers Press is an outstanding gain for I want to inform you of the existance of a History Critical Group at Manchester University. Although the Stalinists are attempting to take us over, we are keeping our organization tight to combat them.

We shall be holding seminars, 9.00 a.a. Nai Zindagi-Naya Jeevan. 9.30 Repondez S'Il Vous Plait. 10.00-10.30 Wie Bitte?

11.00 Seeing and Believing. 11.30 Buying A House. 12 noon Know How. 12.30-1.00 p.m. Representing The Union. 1.25 Farming, Weather For Farmers. 2.00 Ten Classic Dishes. 2.29 News Headlines. 2.30 Day Time. 3.05 Film Matinee : 'Lights Out'. 4.40 Hobbyhorse. 5.05 Going For A Song. 5.30 Dombey and Son. 5.55 Ken Dodd and the Diddymen.

6.05 News, Weatherman. 6.15 Malcolm Muggeridge asks The Question Why.

Songs of Praise.

Detective.

British Film Night: "This Sporting Life'. Starring Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts.

News, Weather.

Omnibus.

Weatherman.

All regions as BBC-I, except following times:

Mileather doF Midlands and East Anglia.

North of England: 11.22 p.m. NorthHern News Summary, Weather.

Wales : 10.30-11.30 a.m. Investiture Year Youth Service. 1.05-1.25 p.m. Addola Dduw. _1.25-1.50 Farming In Wales. 2.30-2.55 The Newcomers. 2.55-3.30 Rugby Union. 3.30-3.50 The Newcomers. 3.50-4.10 Dwedwch Be Fynnock Chi. 4.70-4.40 Maes A Mor.

Scotland: 10.30-11.30 a.m. Morning Se1-6.S0 Sunday ser. 6.50-7.25 Songs 6.50-7.25 Songs of Praise. 10.35-11.15 Braden's Week. 11.15 Weather.

Northern Ireland: 1.25-1.48 Farming.

11.22 Northern Ireland News Headlines, Weather.

South and West: 11.22 p.m. South and West News Headlines, Weather, Road Works Report.

Up.m. News Review, Weather.

The World About Us.

Peter Grimes : An in three acts.

Peter Grimes (continu Show Of The Week.

News Summary.

linguists and others with talent will remain undiscovered and the waste of human resources will continue.

The fact that workers are often able to outwit management was also mentioned as a cause for concern by some testers.

A group of psychologists, centering chiefly on the 'Chicago School' in America, therefore began in the early 1950s to investigate what really was being measured by these tests.

The results were alarming for those who believed intelligence tests were measuring the unfolding of some inborn pattern of mental developIt was found that the tests were largely measuring whether you were middle class or not. The language the tests used was middle class and the working-class child could generally not see the sense in answering such stupid questions.

Once these difficulties were removed, the famous "class differences in intelligence' disappeared.

We have to ask ourselves therefore how it was that these supposedly scientific instruments' for measuring mental development were simply measuring the development of the differences between middle-class and working-class children.

The answer is that the middle-class testers who devised these tests selected this type history group producing bibliographies and writing pamphlets with the aim bourgeois theses we get thrown at us in our lectures and tutorials.

We are very eager to contact any individuals who are at all interested in what we are doing.

We are very interested in producing material for 'Fourth International' as well as other Marxist theoretical publications.

Could any of your readers who are interested in this work please contact me.

Nick Belford 102 Carter Road Greenheys Manchester 15 of question work they began.

Any statistical finement of the tests simply accentuated the bias they had already introduced.

Catholic church leads new attacks on Spanish workers FRANCO'S Cabinet changes, announced on Wednesday, reflect new shifts in the balance of power within the regime over recent years.

The fascist and military 'old guard' who butchered the Spanish workers and peasants in the Civil War of 1936-1939 no longer represent a significant force. They did their counterrevolutionary work for the capitalists, bankers and landowners, and have now finally been pensioned off.

Franco has given official recognition to a process that has been going on for the last ten years at least.

The new men in his cabinet are dominated by the Catholic body, 'Opus Dei' (God's Work). Their strength lies in commerce, banking, industry, administration and the press.

They are considered to be the "modernizers', favouring an up-to-date capitalist Spain linked to western Europe through Admission to the order is highly selective. There are only 20,000 members in the whole of Spain. A spokesman for 'Opus Dei' discounted any political significance for the appointment of its members to the Cabinet:

The victory is not for "Opus Dei" but for people who happen to be members. Our movement has no political policy.' Only hours before the announcement that the old guard had been demoted, 1,000 Spanish fascists clashed with police during a Madrid rally celebrating the 36th anniversary of the foundation of their party, the Fallange.

A group within the party still clings to its original, pre-civil war "radical' programme, and mistakenly believe that Franco has betrayed the cause of Spanish fascism.

Today they are very hostile to Franco's plan of restoring the full powers of the Bourbon monarchy after the dictator's death.

(The founders of the Fallange concealed their reactionary policies with 'radical' propaganda in rough-and-ready procedure plays into the hands of the class enemy.

Unless we are conscious of our assumptions they will inevitably be the assumptions of capitalism. Unless we attempt to change society our understanding of it and of the human beings in it will remain a superficial one.

The question of the ability of the working class is not to be answered in the classroom.

It is not to be answered by the deliberations of liberals and reformers on the educability of the working class, deliberations they have abruptly ceased now capitalism no longer requires them. favour of a republic.)

The obvious shift in power within the regime has created great unrest amongst the frustrated sections of the fascist-influenced middle class, as they now see the Cabinet openly representing the monopoly and banking interests they joined the Fallange to oppose.

This predominance of banking and modernized industrial terests over the landed aristocracy and the old military leaders will not lead to any easing up of the class struggle in Spain.

The appointment of proEuropean' ministers in place of the old-style nationalists and isolationists (who may well have been making their last throw in the recent series of incidents off Gibraltar) means a renewed drive against the Spanish working class. Revolution':

' "Who would believe", wrote one of the Russian generals, "that the janitor or watchman of the court building would suddenly become Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals? Or the hospital orderly manager of the hospital; the barber a big functionary; yesterday's ensign the commander in-chief; yesterday's lackey or common labourer burgomaster; yesterday's train oiler chief of division or station superintendent; yesterday's locksmith head of the factory?"

• Who would believe it?" They had to believe it.' (Trotsky.)

London teacher The modernizers and so-called "liberalizers' of 'Opus Dei', led by Lopez Rodo, Minister with responsibilities for economic development and planning, are the bitterest enemies of the Spanish working class.

Successful competition in Europe against the giant monopolies demands now the most ruthless suppression of the working class at home.

As if to prove that it was 'business as usual', Spanish police opened fire on a demonstration of workers in the Basque city of Bilbao who were protesting against the poisonous effects of industrial fumes in the area.

With the whole of western Europe now in political and industrial ferment, the Spanish working class can take on and defeat the holy bankers of 'Opus Dei.