Spending the morning with an old friend — The One Best System by David Tyack — and (re) found this quote from John Dewey regarding the use of intelligence tests:

“Our mechanical, industrialized civilization is concerned with averages, not percents. The mental habit which reflects this social scene subordinates education and social arrangements based on averaged gross inferiorities and superiorities….the schools apparently “welcome a procedure which under the title of science sinks the individual in a numerical class…”

Tyack, David. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. 198.

Dewey, John. “Indidviduality, Equality, and Superiority.” New Republic, 33 (Dec. 13, 1922), 61-63.