Immigrants flunk draft intelligence test

Copenhagen Post:

Draftees with immigrant background stand a worse chance of passing the required intelligence test then ethnic Danes, the Danish Defence Academy said in a report on Monday.

The report, which based its conclusions on 22,646 reviews of conscripts tested between September 2003 and June 2004, found that 28 percent of draftees with an immigrant background failed the military's intelligence tests, compared with only seven percent of ethnic Danes, national television news channel DR reported.

The academy said the difference in test scores could not alone be explained by differences in reading skills, and that possible causes could be lack of motivation, or that the average immigrant parent was not as educated as the Danish counterpart.

The academy's chief psychologist, Stig Mencke, said he believed that the results could partly be that children of immigrants did not receive the same mental stimulation at home or in kindergarten as ethnic Danish children.

'They're not stimulated in the same way that Danish children are,' said Mencke. 'You need to be stimulated to develop a talent, and that's not easy if you are often alone or not in contact with other people.'

Mencke said children and teenagers met with demands and challenges in kindergarten or after-school activities.

'Society must ensure that immigrants enter kindergarten and after-school centres at an early age, and become integrated in Danish community,' he said.

Principal Olav Nielsen from the Humlehave School in the minority-dominated area Vollsmose in the city of Odense, said many children of immigrants often lacked both linguistic and conceptual skills, and mastered limited vocabularies.

'Many of these young people grow up in families with many children in an environment offering relatively poor stimulation,' he said. 'And if you neither have language nor concepts, then you'll find it difficult to solve complicated tasks.'

Nielsen said many immigrant homes showed little interest in their children's education, and said society must help immigrants to get an education.

'It's the key to solving many of the social problems which dominate the headlines in the press all the time,' he said.

Integration Minister Rikke Hvilshøj said steps had already been taken to improve education condition for young immigrants, and asked everyone to remain calm despite the academy's conclusions.

Hvilshøj said she expected immigrants to reach ethnic Danes in 10-15 years.

Immigration And The Unmentionable Question Of Ethnic Interests