h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A nice article, but oh so short!

Binet was asked to make a test to find out which children would fit into the french school system, and therefore he emphasised the things that (french) teachers valued.
It was when the test was converted to american usage (was it by Lewis Terman?) that the expression "intelligence quotient" was added, and they had the gall to call it a measure for "brain capacity" (without any scientific evidence of course. It was a school aptitude test, nothing more)
There are a lot of misconceptions about intelligence about, and I hope you can go a way to dispel them

I found a page with some sample questions from the first and second stanford-binet test, does anyone know if I am allowed to link to it here? It was regarding a eugenics programme in some american state. Anyway, an enlightening read, and very revealing about the horrible injustice they did to children

there shouldn't be a problem linking to such a page, and if the links are good, I will add them to the article.

binet did specifically warn of the dangers of using the tests as anything other than a method of sorting the children into groups of varying aptitude, who would need more remedial or advanced work.

I suspect that the thing you are refering to in america was the 1930's eugenics program where the psychiatrist would pay those who scored badly on the tests to be sterilised.

apart from anything else, that approach was scientifically unsound.