Write to understand something better: Before I wrote A Measure of Intelligence I wrote to demonstrate my expertise in a particular subject. But writing is so much more rewarding when it is approached as a process of figuring out what we know. You don’t have to be an expert to write. In fact, the process of learning and thinking can make for a very compelling narrative.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Pepper Stetler.
Pepper Stetler is the author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test. She is also a professor of art history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She has written extensively on issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers, in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Slate. She lives in Oxford, Ohio.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Thank you so much for having me! I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri in an upper-middle class neighborhood. I wasn’t aware of this when I was growing up, but Kansas City was very segregated, racially and economically. I don’t remember interacting with many children who weren’t white like me, nor do I remember being aware of Kansas City’s rich Black cultural history as I grew up. And what is so relevant to my life now is that I don’t remember interacting with people with intellectual differences either. It’s really disturbing to me now, which I think is a small part of what motivated me to write A Measure of Intelligence. I want people to see the history of the IQ test and how it contributed to the deep segregation in American culture.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
One summer when I was in college I picked up The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It is an incredible book, but what I found so capitvating was this leader’s evolution throughout his life. He constantly learned and experienced new things that made him question what he thought he knew and understood about the world. And he was open to that change. I think it’s one of the most important stories of humanity that I’ve read.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I started researching the IQ test, I went straight to the academic psychology journals to try to learn how it worked. I was immediately overwhelmed — and a little frustrated — by how impenetrable all of the scientific research was to me. I never took a statistics class. I had to remind myself what a standard deviation was. It was a way of thinking that was completely foreign to me, a writer and an art history professor. But I eventually got the hang of it, and I began to see my position as an outsider to the field as psychology as a strength rather than a limitation. I can respect and understand the way that they view IQ tests while having something important to contribute too. IQ tests and cognitive assessment impacts people’s lives, and I think it is important for information about what those tests are telling us to be accessible to everyone.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
If we want to change the way that this country thinks about human value and who gets the most opportunity to succeed, we need to rethink how we frame intelligence. Despite their enormous impact on our education system and values, I don’t think many people have given IQ tests much thought. I mentioned my interest to many friends when I was researching the book and their response was often, “Is that still used?” Most people probably associate them with the “are you a genius?” click-bait we see on the internet. But my daughter Louisa, who has Down syndrome, has to take one every three years as part of her Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, a legal document that defines the special needs, goals, and accommodations to help her learn in a classroom with her peers. So there’s a way in which IQ tests are put in this position of assessment to presumably help her, but there are also so many ways in which they assess her worth unfairly and limit how her potential is understood.
My book and argument for social change also ended up being about something much broader than whether or not Louisa should have to take an IQ test. Whether you have taken an IQ test or not, its logic and values shape our systems of modern education and ideas of professional success with which everyone interacts. They have provided our world with a statistical justification to value intelligence over morals, productivity over empath. It was designed to make a person’s worth measurable and comparable.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
In A Measure of Intelligence I share my memory of something very ugly I witnessed when Louisa was in preschool. One morning we waited on a wooden bench outside the school bathrooms. A long hallway separated us from the classroom. The preschool aide was trying to coax a boy down the hallway to class. (I call him Amal in the book.) Amal was unwilling and collapsed to the floor in the middle of the hallway in a heap. A classroom aide, that I call Tracey, dragged Amal down the hallway by his leg for a few feet, until one of the preschool teachers heard Amal’s screams and came out of the classroom.
This memory haunts me because, at the time, I didn’t do anything about it. I realize now that I had internalized the idea that it was okay to mistreat and harm people with disabilities. That children with disabilities — especially boy of color — were just somehow naturally deviant and noncompliant. Now I’m disgusted with this assumption and I know that the abuse and mistreatment of children with disabilities has a horrifying history that still lingers in the present. In the early twentieth century, low IQ scores were used to justify that abuse. Still today, so often children with disabilities are not given the respect and compassion that they deserve.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
Honestly it was about fear. I know that the world is going to have a hard time seeing my daughter’s value — as a citizen, an employee, a community member — when she grows up, and I want that to change. Every parent of a child with an intellectual disability is haunted by a common question: What will happen to my child when I am gone? Who will give my child the help they need? In fact, (and yes, I know this puts a lot of pressure on myself) I think that is my purpose as her mother — to make the world see how valuable my daughter is. I want people to see that the very real and pressing struggle of people with intellectual disabilities to find suitable housing, educational opportunities, and live their best and most fulfilling lives is because the world has been structured in deeply flawed ways that values a certain kind of intelligence. In other words, it’s the world that needs to change, not my daughter.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I talked to so many parents, psychologists, and teachers when I was researching A Measure of Intelligence and I learned so much from every conversation. One that particularly stood out was with a psychologist who has spent his career working to minimize the influence of IQ tests on the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and really questioning what psychologists think they know about a person when they evaluate the results of an IQ test. He has spent his career trying to change the field’s perspective from diagnosing and predicting a person’s limitations to supporting a person’s strengths. He is deeply inspiring to me.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Psychologists need to reconsider what they think IQ tests tell us about people who need the most support. There are so many psychologists who are already doing this. Practically, we may not be able to get rid of IQ tests, but we can minimize the impact of the score.
Our education system needs to value empathy, collaboration and community over high tests scores. Standardized tests like the SAT, which developed out of IQ tests in the 1920s, allow a particular kind of learner — usually white and upper middle-class — to access the best educational opportunities. We need to start thinking about education as something everyone should have access to.
Our government needs to eliminate regulations that discriminate against people with intellectual disabilities and minimize their contributions to society. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is most well-known for establishing minimum wage, but did you know that it also created 14(c) certificates, which allow employers to people “whose earning capacity is impaired by age or physical or mental deficiency” at a rate below minimum wage? Employers needs to be incentivized to hire more people with disabilities and begin thinking in new ways about the many strengths they can bring to a workforce.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I think leadership involves the ability to get people to see something important about their world they might have overlooked. It often involved leading people to a new perspective.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
Not everyone is going to agree with the way you see the world: I had conversations with psychologists in which we fundamentally disagreed about what an IQ test measured. A Measure of Intelligence examines intelligence as a product of history rather than an outcome of nature. But many psychologists believe that intelligence is something that can be measured like a heartbeat or a breath.
You don’t have to be an official expert in a topic to have a valuable perspective: But you still have to do a lot of research and a lot of work.
Keep writing: I find it easy to focus too much on the purpose of the words I’m putting down on a page. What is the point of this idea? What chapter will this fit into? Such questions can be really paralyzing when I’m just trying to get words down on the page. Some of the ideas in my book that I’m most proud of emerged at a moment when their purpose wasn’t clear yet. Keep writing. The structure and organization can happen later.
If you can’t stop thinking about something, write about it: I’m an art history professor and for a while I felt like I wasn’t allowed (by who or what, I don’t know) to research and write about something so far out of my professional field. But I just couldn’t help it. It was all I wanted to think about. And the writing came from a place of wanting to figure something out and understanding it better, which was such a purposeful process for me.
Write to understand something better: Before I wrote A Measure of Intelligence I wrote to demonstrate my expertise in a particular subject. But writing is so much more rewarding when it is approached as a process of figuring out what we know. You don’t have to be an expert to write. In fact, the process of learning and thinking can make for a very compelling narrative.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My husband gave me a plaque to put on my desk at work that says, “Hard Things are Hard.” President Obama had the phrase on a plaque in the Oval Office. I have a tendency to easily crumble under the weight and ambition of my ideas. Although the phrase is simple and circuitous, I find it essential to be reminded that it is supposed to be hard. If it’s hard, then you’re probably doing something right. And I’m comforted that President Obama had to be reminded of this too.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
President and Mrs. Obama, without a doubt. Their approach to social change is deeply inspiring to me and I would love to talk with them about how to make the world a better place for people with intellectual disabilities.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I post links to publications on my website pepperstetler.com and readers can follow me on X @PepperStetler.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Thanks so much!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Pepper Stetler Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.