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)