Chapter 10: Meritocracy: The Experts Take Charge

Part One:

Standardization	Alpha Test
Morrill Act	Educational Administration
Lernfreiheit	Taylorism
Meritocracy	Lehrfreiheit

1. __________________- concept of a society based on the idea that each individual’s social and occupational position is determined by individual merit, not political or economical influence.

2. __________________- the notion that scientific study could determine the proper method of doing every job.

3. __________________- the establishment of uniform procedures.

4. __________________- assessments developed by the US Army during WWI and later used in American Universities.

5. __________________- the right of students to determine their studies, sequence of courses, and govern their own private lives.

6. __________________- Federal law which established land-grant colleges with the purpose of educating the industrial class.

Part Two:

1. According to US Army Alpha tests, what was the average “mental age” of Americans? _____

2. Men constituted what percentage of school boards? _____

3. In what year was the Morrill Act passed? _____

Cultural Domination

· Studies found that men dominated most school boards. Women made up 5-12% of school boards depending on its location (urban areas were more accepting towards female members). (293)

· Intelligence tests blatantly ignored cultural and lingual differences amongst classes and ethnicities which led to the skewed results. (299)

Ideological Management

· Meritocracy- concept of a society based on the idea that each individual’s social and occupational position is determined by individual merit, not political or economical influence. (288)

· Meritocracy worked as “democratic elitism”- the idea that the elite should determine public matters since they’ve already proved themselves successful. (288-9)

· Taylorism- Pioneered by Fredrick Taylor, the notion that scientific study could determine the proper method of doing every job. Scientific management could be used to replace workers’ unsystematic actions with a planned, controlled work environment. (293-4) It also asserted that workers would be scientifically selected and trained for particular jobs (294) & became directly associated with standardization- the establishment of uniform procedures – and cost-effectiveness. (294)

· Scientific measurement was used in US Army tests in WWI to organize the army. (297)

· By 1922, US Army Alpha tests were widely used in American universities because they were cheap following the armistice. (300)

· The results of tests concluded that the average mental age of America was 13.(300)

· Thousands of students went to colleges in Germany following the Civil War.

· The German schools placed an emphasis on science and research and developed the idea of specialized learning (graduate school). (306-7)

· Concepts of Lernfreiheit (the right of students to determine their studies, sequence of courses, and govern their own private lives) and Lehrfreiheit (the concept of professors’ freedom to lecture and report on any type of research conducted). (307)

· Demands for a broader, more liberal education for teachers led to the establishment of Educational Graduate schools in the 1920s. (310)

Racism

· Intelligence tests became popular in America because they appeared to confirm the racial superiority of Nordic and Anglo-Americans compared to Eastern Europeans, American Indians, and Blacks. (298)

· Test results were used to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe (298) (See Quota Act of 1921 & the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924).

· Carl Brigham, developer of the SAT, published A Study of American Intelligence which attempted to confirm the traditional racial theories related to intelligence. (301)

· Brigham believed that the constant racial intermixture caused the decline in American intelligence. The solution to the problem, Brigham claimed, was a strict immigration code.(302)

· Lewis M. Therman, developer of the IQ test, also claimed that certain European groups were mentally inferior to others. (302)

Economic Issues

· School boards would represent the views & values of the business community following reforms at the turn of the century. (291)

· 75% of board members were business or professional people. (293)

· More educators gained degrees in Educational Administration. This shifted the main focus of school administration from scholarship to management principals. (295)

· Test results were used to justify the wealth of the rich based on the grounds of innate levels of intelligence. (298-9)

· The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 established land-grant colleges with the purpose of educating the industrial class. (306-7)

· Many industrial barons endowed universities- Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Clark University, Stanford, Univ. of Chicago (Rockefeller), Carnegie Institute, etc. (308).

· Professors championing socialist or anti-industrial causes often found themselves in trouble. (309)