June 15, 2022 • 60 mins
Each and every year, billions of children take some form of standardized tests. In theory these tests help measure how much a child has learned, allowing educators to gauge each kid's progress. Yet standardized testing in the US has a troubling origin story, one that's not often talked about. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As we record, it is
a dark and stormy afternoon here in Atlanta, Georgia. I
(00:45):
love it, honestly. You know, you guys know that I
just live for dark, rainy weather and I feel like
Ghostbusters weather because it reminds me of like the scene
when the Traveler kind of shows up at the end
of the first movie and everything's kind of swirling around
and like a weird Cathulian Maelstrom. That's what it feels
like here in Atlanta right now. I want it to
be this weather all the time. Your mileage may vary,
(01:08):
but this weather is strangely appropriate. Uh. I was talking
about this on Twitter, where you can follow me on
Twitter and Instagram for spoilers, with episodes, but I felt
like we needed a disclaimer for this one. For all
our conspiracy realists, this episode is going to be surprisingly
(01:29):
not boring, guaranteed, and uh, the best way to start
talking about it is to say, you know, no matter
who you are or who you want to be, life,
when you think about it, for everyone, can be defined
as a series of tests. In the United States many
other countries, your path from childhood through adolescents to adulthood
(01:50):
is marked by test formal or informal. If we talk
about formal ones, you know immediately everybody thinks about the
school year. Since the industrial revel Ouan and the the
age of public schooling, you have to pass a series
of tests to move up to the next grade, and
you just rents and repeat until you graduate or drop out.
(02:11):
If you want a driver's license, you got to get
an exam. A huge part of your college career depends
upon your performance or used to depend upon your performance
on tests like the S A T or the A
C T. And those tests don't stop here. You know
after you get out of college. If you go to college,
then when you get a job, you are gonna have
different testing and qualification regimens. For that if you work
(02:35):
in certain fields of government, you have a background check.
It's a test you take all the time, and you
need industry specific qualifications. These are necessary, These are valid,
But that's not the whole story. When we're talking about this,
we need to talk about the much darker story behind
what's called standardized testing. Here are the facts, dude. I
(02:58):
was in line for some food at our former office
location behind a guy who's talking about is UH testing
for Google, like, you know, a multiple level you know
interview process that involved incredibly rigorous testing, and it was
like code this thing in thirty seconds, and it was
just fascinating hearing kind of the inside scoop of some
of these very industry specific tests. So to your point, Ben, no,
(03:22):
they don't stop, and they just get more specific and
kind of esoteric. And thank goodness for the stand all
the folk everywhere. I mean, this is the thing before
it sounds like a hit piece on stardized testing, which
this episode kind of is. In the interest of full transparency,
we do have to admit you're absolutely correct that standards
(03:44):
are a good thing. It is objectively great that doctors, pilots, teachers, plumbers, truckers,
anybody doing anything important has some kind of standard and training.
I mean, you don't want you don't want a surgeon
who just says, I kind of go with the vibe,
dearie Oregon trans plants. You know, I put on like
some low fi chill hip hop instrumental channels and I
(04:05):
just sort of go at it. You end up with
a kidney at the end. Uh. And you know some
people love taking tests. I take tests for fun. Um.
Yeah yeah, oh yeah. Tests are are great. They can
be I feel like every video game I play is
a little test. You know the same thing. Oh yeah,
we've all been in test mode with elden Ring. It's
(04:26):
about testing our metal and our ability to deal with
absolute frustration and like push through. Yeah. But but even
think about standards in a more general way, think about
a Phillip's head and a flathead screwdriver. My goodness, thank
goodness that we have those kinds of things where every
every screw that you encounter it actually it's not true.
(04:47):
There are a lot of less apple but mostly the
ones you encounter are going to be standardized, which is
very nice, and it means you don't have to spend
you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars on screwdrivers. Yeah,
and it might surprise people to to know that even
even us here at stuff they don't want you to
know because of our parent company. Uh, we have testing
(05:10):
that we have to do every year, and some of
it is frankly hilarious. It's the workplace training videos where
they oh, there's the lightning where they ask uh weird
questions that have obvious answers like, Hey, you found out
employee A is uh stealing cars. That's what employee A
(05:30):
does on their lunch break, embezzling from the pension fund,
which the following actions. Will you take A I am
not a snitch. B I would ask them to stop
selling stealing cars see all of the above, right, or
asked to get cut in on the scam. That's always
(05:52):
so these tests that you have to take throughout your life,
they're gonna have very levels of rigor, but they are
This is crucial for us to establish. They are important.
You do need to have as a society some sort
of standardization, some sort of testing. And other societies realized
this long long, long before the United States was a thing. Yeah,
(06:14):
ancient cultures understood this from the jump because it makes
sense they underst of the importance of standards. UM. Some
of the earliest examples you might see go all the
way back to the Han dynasty in China. UM they
had standardized tests called Imperial examinations that were incredibly difficult
um also pretty corrupt in terms of identifying light who
(06:37):
you know might be in the pocket of the rulers.
Kind of reminds me of things like the knowledge. You
know that that test that all the cabbies have to
take in London because of all the crazy routes and
things they have to commit to memory. Um not the
case here with cab drivers or uber drivers. Also thank
god for GPS. But those tests, the Imperial examinations, weren't
(07:00):
credibly important because passing them meant that you'd get a
job working for the state. And it's also probably the
corruption angle. Oh yeah, and there were super super corrupt
and super difficult. Objectively, you had to know a ton
of things. I like that you shouted out the knowledge.
That's one of the most interesting tests that I'm aware
(07:20):
of in the modern day. If you want to learn
about what affect the knowledge has on the drivers who
pass it, then do check out our mind over Matter episodes.
You can also check out the car stuff episode the
Knowledge spoiler. If fundamentally changes physiological aspects of their brains,
like pathways right like they're in the nerves, the pathways
(07:42):
that neurons fire and such and this, and even the
size of regions of the size and density of regions
of the brain is associated with spatial location and geography
and geometry. It's nuts. You can also see similar brain
changes in Buddhist monks who practice non violence and intense meditation.
(08:04):
I'm telling you, it's amazing. See. I wonder if the
opposite is true, though, because I'm so bad at directions,
that part of my brain is probably already pretty atrophied.
But the fact that I just rely entirely one and
fifty on maps, I think that part of my brain
has either gone away entirely or been replaced with like
music trivia. At this point, the memorization stuff gets gets
(08:26):
a little tricky because the idea of consciousness we're all
sort of songs that we sing to ourselves. That's probably
the best way to to, uh, to poetically define the
idea of consciousness. But your brain is busy and uh
that and pretty much everybody is very intelligent in one
way or another. So like, if you're not using those
(08:46):
parts of your brain, then yeah, it's a muscle kind
of you'll fall out of exercise. But your brains do
another stuff too. And I bet it's more than just
just trivia, because we're all we're all sponges for trivia.
But I bet, I mean, why would you don't need
the knowledge? That's why it's so impressive. Anyway, I can
talk about that one for hours, but okay, sorry, sorry,
(09:09):
before taxis before the amazing knowledge. Right before these studies
of the brain, other people and other cultures picked up
on the Han dynasty's testing idea, and they have many,
many other iterations of this. As government's changed in that
part of the world. Fast forward to the eighteen hundreds,
the continent of Europe picks up this idea and runs
(09:30):
with it and says, all right, we're gonna we're gonna
test people too. And then, of course, because the US
got a ton of its ideas from Europe and the
United Kingdom specifically, they had some form of standardized testing
in the education system since about the eighteen hundreds, but
right now, ever since about the nineteen hundreds, the US
(09:52):
has become increasingly dependent on standardized testing. Some people think
that's great. Some people have a huge problem with it.
I kind of bet some of those early tests, the
standardized tests in the US were more functional tests, like
if you're a journeyman or you know, an apprentice or something,
your tests would necessarily be written, but you'd have to
like make like a box or something, and then your
(10:13):
you know, your boss would watch you and grade you
visually make a masterpiece. Yeah, I want to quickly shout
out something called the Committee of Ten. It was a
group of educators from universities and colleges that got together
here in the US everywhere from the University of Michigan
to Harvard to Vassar. A bunch of representatives got together
(10:36):
from these universities and they they decided, basically, here's what
needs to be taught to kids from you know, kindergarten
to twelfth grade. Basically, here are recommendations at least of
what kids need to learn on a basic level to
be able to function within a university setting, which is
really interesting to think about. So that was like one
(10:57):
of the first times that within the U s there's
some kind of standard for what needs to be taught.
And then, as Ben is saying, in the early nineteen hundreds,
we start looking at, well, how do we actually test
these kids on an individual level to see if they're
matching up to the standards we want them to meet well.
And I think we all know that, like Germany is
really focused on standards and tests, and the education system
(11:19):
in Germany even to this day, I believe follows the
models that were probably set out way back when, like
the idea of gymnaseum, you know, and like you know,
kindergarten and all of that stuff, Like everything kind of
led to the next thing in a way that was
much more efficient than I think what we have here
and much more standardized than we have here in the
United States today. Trades and vocational school are also not
(11:39):
as vilified as they are in the modern United States,
which is a whole other bag of badgers for anybody
playing the bingo drinking game. So yeah, so let's let's
look at college. That We're going to talk a lot
about the testing for college and the military, because they
are hand in hand and there is a dark genesis
for both them. So there's this thing called the College
(12:02):
Insurance Examination Board. Um. They picture them as like the
same demographic of people in the committee attend like they
kick it. They kind of know about each other. And
this board offered their first exams in nine one. This
was entirely for the elite. UH. It was meant to
(12:22):
standardize admission requirements for UH POSH boarding schools and for
the IVY leagues. All well and good people, dug it.
Fast forward, World War one hits. The military institutes a
number of aptitude and placement tests, specifically the Alpha and
the Beta test. The idea here is that they will
(12:44):
match new recruits to specific appropriate roles in the military
based on their perceived intelligence. And I hope you hear
the italics when I say perceived, because that comes back
in a big, big way. And of course, you know,
whenever you about standardized tests, you think of the i
Q test, the Stanford Binet intelligence test that comes around
(13:06):
in nineteen sixteen. It's been controversial ever since because parts
of it are broken. Uh. There's the what was originally
called the Scholar Aptitude Test or s A T. And
don't just know that saying s A T test is
like saying a T M machine or VIN number. You
could just call it s A T. Right. Uh, that's
nineteen six. It's invented by a guy who is a
(13:28):
main character of our story, but by no means a protagonist.
It's actually a tragic figure. His name is Carl Campbell Brigham.
When he invinced the s A T six. He's doing
it based on those Army tests because he created those.
And we'll Carl's gonna come back. Keep your mind on Carl,
and and don't make friends with him. Uh. Then there's
(13:50):
this guy, Everett Lindquist. He created the A C T
American College Testing in nineteen fifty nine. All right, So
now we're in the nineteen seventies. Individual states, that's what
the US is all about, and they kind of have
their own fiefdoms when it comes to education. So if
you are a kid in Massachusetts, you're getting a different
(14:12):
education from a kid in Hawaii, or a kid in
Texas or a kid in you know, Washington or something.
The education system is decentralized. This means that states control
their own systems, and frankly, some do a better job
than others. So this national testing regime that comes out
(14:33):
is a way for the federal government to get like
a bigger, high level view of American over education overall,
and then very soon, like increasingly as the years went on,
funding for schools got tied to test performance, which meant
that things like the No Child Left Behind Act of
(14:53):
two thousand and one would say, hey, if you're if
your student body isn't doing well on these specific test,
then your funding will be in trouble. Uh. If you
have any teachers in your family, you know this was
tremendously unpopular. Teach the test, yes, the test well. And
a lot of that goes back to a report that
(15:14):
came out titled A Nation at Risk the Imperative for
Educational Reform, which occurred in ninety three, just after the seventies,
as you said, Ben, after the push for a need
to see how the nation is doing, especially when compared
to other countries, and this report, A Nation at Risk
basically stated, hey, the US is following way, way behind
(15:36):
on its standards for what each individual kid knows. Yeah,
an education gap, which is something that honestly is a
calculated framework because you can take people who might ideologically
say we don't want to fund more stuff unless it's
a defense initiative. But then if you phrase education as
(15:58):
a matter of national defense, which very much is. Then
you are you have a higher chance of getting those
people on board. I wrote an essay many years ago
that was entirely phrasing public healthcare as an issue of
national defense. Believe it is well. And also, like you know,
(16:19):
a buzz phrase or like a program title like no
Child Left Behind gives this sense of this egalitarian kind
of like equality for all children and education. But the
reality is just because the program exists doesn't make those
individualized kind of legacy school systems with their various resources
depending on where they're located, and then who is going
(16:41):
to the schools, and what kind of money is flowing
in and out of them, whether they're private, whether they're public,
it doesn't make them fundamentally change. How do I hear?
Do I hear the Senator from Georgia? Right? Is he
against no Child left behind? Oh? You are against no
child left behind? Day? So you don't like children? Is
(17:02):
that what you're saying? You don't want children to succeed?
Sir the gentleman, Welcome back to a b conspiracy or
news at ten. We have just received word that the
Senator from Georgia has left hundreds, if not hundreds of
thousands of children behind in the homes and farms across
the good state, who will find them found again? And
(17:26):
see um. At this point you might be thinking, Okay,
this makes sense. I understand the point standards testing, et cetera.
But why are you guys talking about it on stuff
they don't want you to know a show that applies
critical thinking to troubling subjects. Well, it's because standardized testing
is a massively troubled subject. First, just to put it plainly,
(17:49):
the dumbest thing, and I say this truly in a
truly affectionate manner, is that right now? For the entirety
of human history, no, not once, not never has been
able to make a real, fair and effective definition of
intelligence that everybody accepts, as evidenced by how many different
(18:13):
tests there are, and how many different flavors of tests,
and how much debate there is around what they're actually measuring.
In which one is liquid end quote best, because there
isn't one, otherwise there'd be like one. But there's a
ton and capitalism plays a role in that too, just spoiler,
but there's there's uh. You know, it is interesting. There
are people who have done brilliant people have done brilliant
(18:36):
work on this, at least in my dumb opinion. And
you'll see competing models like is intelligence multidimensional? Meaning should
we say that um quantitative intelligence is different from interpersonal
intelligence or Kinnecticut's intelligence. And then you'll have people who say, well, functionally,
intelligence should just be defined as the ability to uh
(18:59):
to op rate well and given circumstances or environments. That
means that someone like Albert Einstein would be very unintelligent
in the Paleolithic era because he doesn't know how to
do the things they are important to being alive at
that time. So there's a lot of understands him. He's
just he's a gibberator the whole time. You know, they
(19:20):
sacrifice him to like whatever uh nature thing they're worshiping
at the time. They would have just shaved his mustache
and head hair for like, you know, warmth, you know,
to make like a tiny sweater out of it, or
burning a pyre of some sort. Well, okay, first there
would have been disease spread and then secondly they probably
would have preserved his clothing as well as they could anyway. Anyway,
(19:45):
so many things to unpack about Albert Einstein is just
turning up in Paleolithic era. So many questions he's a
wild womanizer there, I think you would have. I don't
think you're wasted some time, um too much time before
he started chatting up the locals. But here's the problem.
The reason we're making a big deal about the attempts
to define intelligence are because at a very basic level,
(20:09):
you can't really test for something if you don't understand it.
That's one of the problems with ghost hunting. If there's
no way to measure a phenomenon and people have tried,
then how what are you hunting for exactly? You have
to define You have to be able to understand define
what you're looking for. And people have done this. And
we're not saying they're all flim flam artists. We're just
(20:30):
saying it's really difficult problem and it bears scrutiny. Second,
even though we know these tests are imperfect, we have
to acknowledge they're also based on previous tests. The s
A T comes to you courtesy of the same guy
who wrote those tests for the Army of World War One,
So they carry improvements right with each success of iteration.
(20:50):
There are new improvements and they are made in good faith,
but I would argue those iterations often carry the sins
of previous generations as well. It's like we were talking
about earlier. You can test whether someone can build a
wooden box by making them build a wooden box and
then watching them and seeing if they like all the
sides are the same, you know, length and all of
that stuff. Um, But it's a lot harder to test
(21:13):
a bigger picture intellect, something that would encompass many potential skills,
um and abilities and things that you haven't even necessarily
learned yet, right right, Like the s a t UH
is theoretically designed not necessarily to test memorization abilities so
much as to test one's ability to learn, which is
(21:36):
kind of what the i Q test originally is. I mean,
it's what it's aiming for as well. But this kind
of testing in the US in particular can be wildly
unfair due to numerous factors both inside and outside the classroom.
And though you won't hear about this in your high
school s a T prep course, a lot of these
(21:57):
tests have a profoundly, deeply unclean origin, and we're going
to dive into it. After a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, here's the kicker,
the guy we mentioned Carl, Carl Brigham. He's more or
(22:20):
less the father of American standardized testing, and he's an
absolute He's a real pill. Yeah, and even worse, you
could say he's not good at his job. He was
just kind of the guy. He just became the guy.
When you invent the idea of a thing, you get
to do it kind of however you want. Gosh, well,
(22:41):
are you saying he's like a eugenicist or something. He
is exactly a eugenicist math. Yeah, he was super into it.
It's like eugenics was like a baby he had just had.
And every conversation you try to have with him goes
back to eugenics. It doesn't matter what you could be
talking about, you know, brunch, and he would be like, well,
(23:01):
of course the Nordic racist make the sup or something.
I don't know if that's what sounds like, but you
have a better relationship with the egg. Check out our
upcoming Ridiculous History episode on phrenology. Uh teaser um. So yeah.
From pretty much day one, this guy, Carl was convinced
(23:24):
that some people were just better than others. By any metric.
He was a psychologist, but he was a psychologist for
the purposes of being a die hard eugenicist. He wrote
a book in nine called a Study of American Intelligence.
So we're not we're not quoting propaganda by his enemies.
He wrote this stuff. You can read it. Uh. And
(23:45):
he said that, based on the test he had conducted
for the army, native born, white Americans were the intellectual
top dogs. And then he said also the quote Nordic
race is better than what he called the Alpine race.
The Alpine race, in Carl's mind is anyone from Eastern Europe.
(24:10):
It's it's very like, not wide enough for him. Wow,
But Carl seemed to know what he was talking about
for enough people who seemed to be like minded enough
that his ideas just took on like wildfire. Isn't that nice? Yeah? Oh?
He also, by the way, said that um quote Mediterranean
(24:31):
and uh, and black people are at the bottom of
of the hierarchy. Yeah. And you make a good point, Matt,
because it's dangerous psychologically. We know that folks like hearing
good things about themselves so much so that they won't
stress too much about whether this is actually true. This
(24:52):
is garbage science. But the people in power consider themselves
native born white Americans, probably descended from a New Grace,
and so they think, Okay, yeah, this makes sense. Is
why I'm at the top, because I'm just I'm just better.
Shout out to that. Does being wealthy make you a
bad person? Episode? So all right, so why are we
(25:12):
saying he's bad at his job? Though? Well? Uh? He
he lacked a very important facet of being a scientist, objectivity.
He lacked that entirely. Um, he had absolutely pre existing
prejudices and ideas things that he wanted to confirm with
(25:32):
his research. Um. And this is not how you do science.
That yields bad science almost every single time. It is
a foundational component of science that you are supposed to
not have advanced ideas of what result you are going
to get, because then it makes you kind of change
things in order to get that desired result. This is
(25:53):
something called confirmation bias, but on a much larger kind
of like institutional level. So in particular, he was a
big fan of eugenics, like you said, Ben, and he
wanted to support these ideas with his weird hack science. Also,
he was really against immigration, surprise, appression, And we're not
(26:14):
just saying like, oh, he liked eugenics. This dude was
on a board, right, Yes, yeah, he's on the advisory
Council of the American Eugenic Society. He is about that life, uh,
and he was a big wheel in the movement. So
his test, like you were saying, you all his tests
aren't really meant to objectively determine a person's mental prowess.
(26:37):
They're meant to give him his masters and his cronies
ammunition for their existing socio political goals. It's a conspiracy.
He thinks that he is the good guy fighting for
some sort of shining beacon on a hill. His view
of what America should be, which is namely, uh, Protestant
(26:57):
and white extract from Northern Europe. So he also thought
American intelligence was in a crisis point. He thought the
nation as a whole was becoming dumber because so many
people were immigrating from Eastern Europe in particular. So a
lot of the stuff he created was meant to be
a response against and an attack on that tendency. Luckily,
(27:23):
there are a lot of other smart people in the space,
and even they knew this was kind of screwy uh.
In ninete, we got to introduce this guy. I thought,
I almost texted you all. It's the best name we're
gonna talk about in the show. I don't want to
hype it up too much. But this Harvard professor named E. G.
Boring said that Brigham is not collecting data with scientific purposes.
(27:48):
This just biased his results in favor of his own ideas.
So he's like ginning up data that makes him sound
a little less crazy, at least per doctor Boring. Gad's boring.
Dr B is in the mix. I didn't know people
are the last name boring. Well, you learned something every
(28:10):
every time. So he said that. So Carl responds, and
he says, look, some of these results, true, might be
affected by the quality or level of education that someone
received before they took the test. Right, He's saying, I
grant you that if someone completed tenth grade, they're probably
(28:32):
going to be doing better on a test than someone
who completed fourth grade. Right. But after extending that very
paltry denuded Olive Branch, he doubled down and said, the
real big difference, though, is genetics. It's just you you
if you are not born a white American or a
(28:53):
Nordic race. Then you're just not going to be You're
not gonna be as good. Uh and end. He soldiered on,
and he found greater success because he took his whack
and do ideas and baked them into the s A
T when he invented that in nineteen six. So this
is uh, this is a real thing. This is not
(29:15):
a conspiracy theory. He did this, if you're and he
didn't do it alone. He had a lot of institutional support,
and he had a lot of fans, including you know,
fans in Germany who would later take the idea of
eugenics and and institutionalize it on a level that the
modern world had never encountered. If you're familiar with the
world of education, you probably heard about the controversy surrounding
(29:39):
modern day testing. Like I I want to defer to
you guys. Um. I know we'll talk about teaching the
test in a moment, but I know there's a lot
of stress on kids, especially as they get into like
middle school, and they get into high school and they
started thinking about college and the future of vocational school,
(29:59):
et cetera. Do do do you guys feel that your own
children have encountered stress due to testing or did you
have stressful experiences when you were kiddos? Let me go
really fastinal, just because my son has two more years
until he gets a Georgia standardized test, So we're good there,
at least for now. And weirdly enough, the state of
(30:22):
Georgia suspended standardized testing for the year, and I believe
one at least in general, they did. I don't know
what happened this year. Do you have any insight? Real
they're back. They're called the milestone tests, UM, at least
in my kid's age range. She just finished sixth grade. UM.
But yeah, because of that, you know, waving of all
(30:45):
those tests during COVID and because my kid already has
some kind of anxiety stuff probably they was exacerbated by COVID. UM,
she qualifies to get some extra time for testing because
she freezes up big time, you know, because of these
high pressure tests. And actually she was able to we
were able to get them to waive some of the
(31:05):
milestone testing for her again this year because of you know,
stuff that we submitted that that proved that she was
absolutely you know, struggling with this stuff more so than
just like, oh, tests suck. I'm scared of taking tests
like in like a very psychologically crippling kind of way. Well,
I know, John Oliver did a piece on standardized testing
in and one of the things that he's of course
(31:26):
joking about, but it's deadly serious. Is it within the
materials that anyone who's giving some of these standardized milestone tests? Uh?
Within those materials are procedures if a child happens to
vomit while taking the tests, to distress and that stuff like,
it's crazy you think about that. Yeah, And you know,
(31:50):
we've talked about some controversy there. I hesitate to use
this phrase because it's primarily used to manipulate people, but
in this case, it's true. It a dinner table conversation.
Testing and how you or your kids doing school is
a commonplace conversation that many many families have. But back
in the day, the problems with Carl's weird ideology and
(32:16):
his supremacism, those problems and how they reflected and the
test they invented were considered features. Universities loved rolling out
the s a t uh. And they loved it not
necessarily because they thought it was a good test defined
by like objectively good at measuring ability. They thought it
(32:36):
was a good test because it helped them filter out
what they called undesirables. As a guy named Eric Jacobson,
I think we should quote, he broke it down um
by saying, for some college officials, and aptitude test, which
is presumed to measure intelligence, is appealing because at this time,
(32:57):
intelligence and ethnic origin are thought to be connect it
and therefore the results of such a test could be
used to limit the admissions of particularly undesirable ethnicities. So
they knew it was rigged, the boffins at the university
in the Ivory Towers, and they loved that it was
rigged because it gave them an excuse, flimsy as it
may be, to keep their schools as white as possible,
(33:20):
as wasp as possible. Really, Uh tut tut. That is
not necessarily critical thinking. But but but we're talking about
modern debates. So before we talk about how this game
actually gets rigged, I think we can. I think we
should go back to the idea of teaching for the test.
Let's talk about some of those modern problems. Like Matt,
(33:42):
you you have teachers in your family. I do too,
Uh nol I believe your mom has taught people, um,
the finer points of of singing right of opera for sure. Yeah,
and she's taught in school settings as well, in college
and high school teaching for the test, at least the
experience I have with my mom and watching her she
(34:04):
was an elementary school teacher for a long time, it
was you're teaching formulas. You're teaching how to do a
specific task, or to put things together in a certain way,
or the rules that apply even in language arts or
things like that. It's not how to think critically or
creatively you know, of how to come up with an answer,
(34:25):
or how to you know, think innovatively about a subject.
It's all about what are the things I need to
know how to do and then be able to apply
those two questions asked on a standardized test. It's awful. Yeah,
it's a real thing. Though. Teaching the test is a
real thing. And because because of the way that funding
(34:47):
gets tied into test performances, uh, this this almost becomes
an existential matter for schools and teachers are just the best.
You know, A good teacher can make a can set
the course of someone's life. Right, you have to I'm
not saying there aren't bad teachers, but um, good teachers
(35:09):
can change the world. And the idea of teaching this
like teaching for the test, means that you give kids
multiple kind of dummy runs at it. You take a
practice s A T. Right, you take your practice g
R E. And critics say that the kind of multiple
choice format of things like the S A T don't
(35:30):
really teach what Matt is talking about. They encourage route memorization,
they encourage systematized guessing. I know that four answers in
a row won't be a so I'm gonna switch one
of them up. Now I just have to figure out
which one, and I can eliminate A and C so
I know the answer is B or D. You know, yeah,
(35:56):
exactly who wants to be a millionaire? I mean, it
really is like learning the four Matt. Remember those Scantron cards.
They used to be bubbles and then they switched to
little tiny rectangles. Yeah, a little weird. Yeah that was
a weird one. I want to say, like, I know
we're starting to get into the deep water here, We're
already there, but I want to say, um, now, I
(36:17):
think the reason that I love taking tests and I
did as a kid is because it's so validating in
in adult life. People don't give you an ad of
boy just because you know something. If you're like you're like, well,
actually the history of Morocco is blah blah blah blah blah,
they'll say, okay, but why why are you telling me?
(36:39):
You know? And if you're in a classroom setting, they're like,
great job, you get a letter with a plus signed
by a badass. So I think maybe that's just nostalgic
color in it. But this this idea I love. They
brought up scantron all because this idea of testing for
format or learning a format, memerizing things, systematizing your guessing.
(37:03):
This is not something that occurs justin you in the US,
and people don't stress out about testing just in the US.
Other countries across the world have students who are very
anxious or stressed out about the importance of an exam,
a single exam, determining, as they see it, their life
from that point. Hence uh and then there are also
(37:25):
tremendously stressful situations. The US is, in fact not the
most extreme example of the dangers of standardized testing. There's
a um A related case not quite the same thing
that we have to talk about. Let's go across the Pacific.
Let's talk about what happens to society with standardized testing
(37:46):
in Japan. So in the Government of Japan studied forty
years of data and found that more people under the
age of eighteen in fact commits suicide on September one,
more so than any other date. So why September? Why
the first of September? UM? It is typically around the
start of a new semester in Japan, UM right after
(38:10):
the summer holiday. UM. And it wasn't the only time too,
because there's you know, there's another semester that begins it's
in early April. And they also noticed that suicide numbers
for children under eighteen were high at that time as well.
So it's just it's not good, right. It does show
you that pressure that we keep describing that I know
(38:32):
that we've all felt. I certainly felt it. And not
to nag on Japan, but I mean culturally, you know,
ritualized suicide due to a family shaming event is is
literally part of their culture, UM, and there is a
high emphasis placed on honoring you know, your ancestors and
your family and not bringing on some sort of shame
(38:52):
um and in the modern era, that has more to
do with success and rising through the ranks of the
educational system than just anything else. Yeah, this is tragic.
It's ongoing, and in Japan's defense, the government is aware
of this, and they've made substantive efforts to help prevent
these tests related deaths, because that's what they are, their
(39:13):
test related deaths. But there's a lot writing on these exams,
so parents with the means still, of course, spend loads
of time and money trying to set their kids up
for success. Extra courses, mandatory study time, tutors galore. It
is inarguably true that knowing the format of a test
(39:34):
and practicing that format will improve your overall scores. This
is why so many parents in the United States and
again in other countries have their kids study for tests
outside of school. It's a great opportunity for families that
can afford it, But what about the children who can't.
This is part of how the game gets rigged. We're
(39:54):
gonna go into the nuts and bolts of it. After
a word from our sponsor. All right, hey, shout out,
by the way, fellow conspiracy realist, to everyone who has
been thinking about their old test scores during this episode.
We're right there with you. We were talking about it
(40:16):
before we recorded, right, yeah, yeah, And I mean, you know, uh,
the the s A T that I remember. I mean,
I don't. I don't know why I would have changed significantly.
It's fifty you know, language skills and and in literature
and things like that and math. I was quite good
on the the verbal portion and really bad on the
(40:37):
math portion. But because I was so good on the verbal,
it was not an embarrassing score. Mine was embarrassing compared
to you guys, at least. I'm not gonna say what
it was. But you guys are smart. Well, we uh learned.
What have we been talking about this whole time? Dude?
None of this? Okay, Well, we're gonna you know, we're
(41:00):
gonna go back. We're gonna make our own tests with Blackjack. Uh.
I'm not going to do the rest of the quote
shout out to Futurama. But yeah, if you are thinking,
if you're listening to this episode, you're thinking back about
your performance, whether you feel like it was really good
or really bad, we have some news that maybe a
bit of a comfort to you, especially if you're unhappy
(41:21):
with your performance on things like the A C T
or the S A T. The problem is this, it
may have well have been something with that was wrong
with the test, not wrong with you, is the test taker.
True story. S A T scores have been found to
directly correlate with family income levels, like very closely correlate.
(41:45):
But you can probably correlate that with the type of
college that you get into because those are often also
correlated directly with income levels, I imagine I'm just conjecturing
here for some time. Yeah, that's been the tendency. Yeah.
We've got a quote from Kim Ellisessor who's writing for Forbes,
and she says this quote. A analysis found that students
(42:07):
with family income less than twenty thousand dollars scored lowest
on the test, and those with family income above two
hundred thousand dollars scored highest. And we're not talking about
just a couple of points. The average reading score for
those students whose family income was below twenty thousand is
four hundred and thirty three, So four thirty three, but
(42:29):
the average for those with income above two thousand is
five seventy. Clearly, there is a disadvantage and it's so
glaringly obvious. First Carl would have loved this for a while.
But what it means in general is that there are
intervening variables right that have a measurable effect on how
(42:50):
kids react to these testing regimes. Kids from wealthier backgrounds
first have more opportunities to prepare for testing and more
of a support network. And at the same time, not
only do they have those, um, you know, those expensive
tutoring classes and things like that, they also have a
lower likelihood of encountering obstacles that could impede their performance,
(43:14):
so they wouldn't have to do or They're less likely
to have to take care of siblings right to be
the child labor babysitter. They're less likely to have to
hold down a job while they're in high school. They're
less likely to have to transport family members to regular
medical care. The list goes on and on and on,
because of course education doesn't stop outside of the classroom.
(43:36):
Both the opportunities for and the obstacles in your way.
Evidence also, we have to point out, indicates strongly racial
inequality in the s A T. I think in the
s A T in particular, that's what I read most
of the research I read at least UM. I don't
know what you guys have on the A C T
or maybe other tests like uh, the L s AT,
(43:57):
but numerous researchers have gone back and forth about the
cause of this performance gap. Not everyone agrees, just to
be very clear with you, but the numbers are there.
The numbers are themselves in arguable. They've been verified multiple
times by multiple independent research institutions. So what happens next, Well,
(44:19):
in at least one state, this has led to lawsuits,
that's right, the lawsuits that were found on behalf of
the Compton Unified School District, specifically, in which four students
in six community organizations in twenty nineteen claimed that the
University of California was in fact violating state civil rights
laws by requiring applicants to take the S A T
(44:40):
or A C t UM and other standardized tests as
they believed. The argument was that these tests unlawfully discriminated
against disabled, low income, multi lingual, and underrepresented minority students.
And regardless of how you may feel about these particular
tests today, I think we've put enough stuff out there,
(45:01):
you know that stems from Carl Brigham and how he
kind of was the base level of these types of tests.
And then you mentioned that every subsequent test is ultimately
going to be a victim of its predecessor, and that DNA,
even if it's diluted, kind of remains as time goes on.
So lawsuits discrimination, They said, there's something wrong with this test,
(45:26):
and these these approaches are unfairly hindering the progress of
of other American children, just like your children, just like
anybody else. And California appears to have listened. As of
March of two, UH, the university system in California has
(45:46):
dropped both the S A T and the A C T.
This is huge because california It's university system is itself
the largest university system in the US, so they can
set press it. We don't know if it's going to
be just an experiment or if it ends up being
a harbinger bigger changes on the horizon. But before we
(46:07):
get to the future, let's return to our pal, Carl B.
Because he is the originator of this conversation. UH. And
it turns out that Carl has one last thing to
add about the entire quagmire we find ourselves in. Yes,
in nineteen thirty, Carl wrote a little thing, a paper
(46:29):
titled Intelligence Tests of Immigrant groups, in which he responded
to the criticism that have inhaled at him with all
of his writings in the twenties. Uh, and he admitted
something that those critics were actually correct. What yeah, my
(46:50):
bad guys. It's like party foul, I know, I know.
Uh yeah, he did something that I think speaks to
his lack of scientific acumen. Uh. He never stopped throughout
all his test making. He never stopped to ask himself
(47:11):
whether all the people taking the test spoke English New English,
read it fluently and the results of his test. Further,
so that's a big thing to miss. But further, the
results of his test apparently had no correlation with real
world achievements or social success. The best way to put it,
(47:32):
or put it crassly, is that people he thought were
dumb sometimes did absolutely gangbusters, and people he thought were
brilliant or whatever his idea of Nordic was could also
just as easily end up being absolute knuckleheads. The test
was not able to correlate to real world success, or
indeed to real world acts of intelligence you could call them.
(47:54):
So the test is in a very real way broken.
And of course, yes, we know that intelligent and worldly
success are not synonymous. Some of the people in your
life that you know, uh and think of as the
most intelligent people that you've ever met, they may not
be successful by society's metrics. They're just two very different things. Anyhow. Yeah,
(48:17):
so he's wrong. This led him to finally acknowledge that
his results were without foundation. That's a quote from him,
and that his whole concept of racial differences was therefore
basically bunk. And good on you, Carl, because that was
your life's work. You worked really hard on it, and
you realized it was wrong, and you had the strength
(48:37):
of character at least to come clean about it. But
the damage was done. He had already poured high octane
gas on the idea of eugenics, on the anti immigration movement,
and those folks active in those movements, they already heard
the part that makes them feel good and right, and
just so, they didn't really pay attention to the retraction.
(48:59):
You know what I mean, we don't need that part.
It's usually how retractions go. It start to put that
genie back in the bottle. I mean, you know, whenever,
like a big blockbuster headline makes the rounds and then oops,
we made a mistake and they print some little retraction.
People just remember the headline. Yeah, but so does that
mean the nineteen thirty one s a T came out
with a subtitle now less racist? What happened? Like because
(49:23):
we all still took it. I still took the s
A T. I know we all did. Like, why did
we still take it? If that happened? In Well, I
mean surely that surely the test is adjusted every year
based on something, right, I mean I can't imagine. Of
course it's not the same test that it was in
in the thirties, But like what rubric is going into
those and are they in any way changing it to
(49:47):
be more inclusive? We don't really have any way of
of knowing them. Oh, because you're not allowed to see
the actual questions on the s a T. You can
see questions ample questions, but it's not untill you're working live. Yeah,
I mean, I don't think a lot of the questions
now are blatantly discriminatory, Like you're not going to see
(50:09):
some math problem that says two filthy left handers are
out stealing children again, and one has seven children, the
other has forty two divided by seven. How many children
have been stolen this night? Um, those are the ones
that have been left behind that we have to go find.
No child left behind unless the left handed. Uh so
(50:34):
the sorry, we made up that problem that we're problem
left handed. I was definitely left behind. But here I am.
I was. I was unt handed till I wasn't on
a flex B it's not a flex My hand is
terrible with both hands, but uh, it was. It was
(50:54):
beat out of me in school when it was bad
to be left handed by the schoolmaster with this, with
this ruler, wrap your knuckles and you wrote with the
wrong hand. A little close to that. Yeah, but I
mean that's something that's happened to people in you know,
preschool and kindergarten and stuff back in the day. But
(51:16):
the question now becomes this, we know there's a problem.
There's all sorts of evidence indicating that these tests, however
well intentioned, have some fundamental flaws. So why hasn't there
been more changed? That's the question. Well, a big part
of it, unfortunately goes down to money. That's right, Like
almost everything else in the United States, standardized testing is
(51:37):
an industry, and uh, it's a pretty big when one
of the statue here get thrown around is that one
point seven billion dollars are spent in the US on
standardized testing every year. Uh. The originator of that of
that number, by the way, doesn't like it to be
thrown around casually. So you need to know that there
are a lot of different ways to come up with
(51:59):
that fin old figure. You know, are you going to
count are you going to count the time of the teachers,
the you know, instructing on the format of the test.
Are you're going to count the extracurricular activities? What do
you count as an expense that goes into that figure?
So just so you know, we know that's a little
bit loose. UM. But then if you see problems of
(52:20):
this magnitude and you wonder why stuff isn't changing as
we say all the time, start following the money, you
know what I mean, as as far as you can
see where the financial interests lie. I just googled is
Scantron a publicly traded company? UM. I didn't get a
very clear answer, but it was founded in Egan, Minnesota
(52:41):
in nineteen seventy two UM and they operate in cent
of the U s school districts, fifty six countries, forty
eight ministries of education, and ninety four of the top
one U S universities. So there's definitely money to be
made um whether or not their public. I don't believe
that's the case. They owned by something called Trance, some
capital group which I bet is public. So there you go. Yeah,
(53:05):
and then this doesn't even touch Pearson right, uh, which
will be familiar to anybody in the academy or anybody
has had to h pay out the nose for a
textbook because one appendix is different from last year's uh,
last year's edition. Thank you. And and to be clear,
(53:27):
we're dunking a little. But to be clear, the concept
of standardized testing alone is not inherently sinister, and you
need something like it. It has a lot of value,
and it has a lot of supporters. The system is
it stands now, and not all of them have a
financial horse in the race, because they understand that when
the system works, it becomes this huge meritocratic opportunity. You're
(53:48):
a kid from a disadvantaged background, Now you can succeed
based on your abilities instead of like that rotting web
of nepotism that determines so much success quote unquote in
this country. No one's arguing about that, but we're saying
the case of the specific test is clear. They were
designed by a guy who only wanted a certain type
(54:09):
of person, people who looked like him, to succeed. He
was also very upset about the idea of mis engineation,
which is the fancy word for interracial relationships. He was
super terrified of that, just like Anslinger, the guy who
made a cannabis illegal. He hated fun and he hated
the idea of anything that was not really really white
(54:32):
folks in charge. And these these tests. Of course, people
don't agree with this guy. Nowadays they're not You're not
ever gonna see somebody an educator say, I like how
these tests discriminate against people. Um, but we know that
these specific tests need to be fixed. There are problems
(54:54):
with them, and they are rooted in some very deep
demons of American society. That's why society needs to find
a better way not to make children memorize facts, but
to encourage their independent thought and their curiosity, and to
empower them for success in the future, to open not
closed doors ahead. I yield my time. Sorry, sorry, I
(55:18):
was ranting. No, Ben, thank you for being upon that soapbox,
because I think many of us listening agree with you, sir.
I want to shout out a few people who definitely
do who have given ted X talks in the past
several years. One is from Nikki Adelhi I think is
(55:38):
how you say it. I can't remember, has been a
while since I watched it. It's titled what standardized tests
don't measure? Uh? It is worth your times from and
another one titled Prepare Our Kids for Life Not Standardized
Tests by Ted dinter Smith. That's from both. Both of
them are ted X talks, right. They're locally put together
(56:00):
events for the TED group. They're not the official like
TED talk, if that makes sense, not the official gathering.
But they're both great speakers and they have great messages
that are very similar to yours. Ben. Hey, I think
that's our collective message though you know we're big fashion teachers. Yeah,
and that's why that's why one thing we can end
on here, even though there are lots of problems with
(56:23):
the education system in every country. To be fair, we
want to give a heartfelt thanks to all the teachers, professors,
educators in the audience. This is personal does because we
all have we all have educators in our family. But
right now, if you want to have an action you
can do after hearing this, one of the easiest and
(56:44):
most important things you can do is think back on
one of your favorite teachers from the past, and I
highly encourage you, you remember their name, to reach out
to them. It's easier now than it ever was at
any point in history. Just reach out to them, drop
a note and thank them directly you can. It will
make their day because God knows they're not in it
(57:04):
for the money. I'll just add my kid just got
an A plus in math, and she admittedly hates math,
but said that it was the teacher that that was
like her favorite teacher, and that just I think that
says it all. You know, she is not a fan
of math, does not think she has an acumen for
and yet she did better in that class than she
did just but any other class, uh, some of which
(57:25):
the subjects she loves, even if she doesn't think. She
likes language arts, she likes to read, she enjoys culture.
She does enjoy language arts, but felt that her language
arts teacher was a little less effective, less just say,
than her math teacher. Therefore she did not get nearly
as much out of it, and so with that we pass.
We passed the scantron to you, folks. What do you think, uh,
(57:49):
is standardized testing overall? Is it just fine and hunky dory?
Or are there clear steps that could help address the
shadow of conspiracy haunting this origin story? Uh? What kind
of sage is there to burn? Right? Clearly, testing in
some form has to exist, But what if anything do
you think could improve or replace the current system. We
(58:11):
can't wait to hear from you. There will not be
a quiz when you contact us. Just we're not those
sorts of dudes. But we are easy to find online,
maybe like a fun Instagram survey or a quiz, but
that's just more like, you know, for fun. We will
not hold any of those results against you, and we
we don't store them. I don't know what Instagram does
with that stuff. That's a good question. Uh. That destorbs
(58:33):
its own episode. Um, what happens to all those quiz
results that are in fact telling the Instagram about people's tastes? Um,
Maybe we'll get to that one day. But you can
find us on Instagram. Um, we are at conspiracy stuff
show on that one. All the other ones were at
conspiracy Stuff That includes Facebook, um, Twitter and YouTube of course. Yes,
(58:53):
and if you like to use your mouth to talk
at us, at least in our general direction, you can
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t K. When you call in, give yourself a nickname,
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excited to hear what you choose. You've got three minutes
to leave a message. At some point in there. Let
us know if we can use your name and voice
(59:15):
on the air. If not, that's fine. If yes, who
and we'll be hearing from you in an episode hopefully,
or you'll be hearing from one of us calling you back.
Who knows uh. If you don't want to do that,
or you've got more to share they can fit in
that three minutes. Why not instead send us a good
old fashioned email. We read everything where you receive at
(59:36):
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want
(59:58):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As we record, it is
a dark and stormy afternoon here in Atlanta, Georgia. I
(00:45):
love it, honestly. You know, you guys know that I
just live for dark, rainy weather and I feel like
Ghostbusters weather because it reminds me of like the scene
when the Traveler kind of shows up at the end
of the first movie and everything's kind of swirling around
and like a weird Cathulian Maelstrom. That's what it feels
like here in Atlanta right now. I want it to
be this weather all the time. Your mileage may vary,
(01:08):
but this weather is strangely appropriate. Uh. I was talking
about this on Twitter, where you can follow me on
Twitter and Instagram for spoilers, with episodes, but I felt
like we needed a disclaimer for this one. For all
our conspiracy realists, this episode is going to be surprisingly
(01:29):
not boring, guaranteed, and uh, the best way to start
talking about it is to say, you know, no matter
who you are or who you want to be, life,
when you think about it, for everyone, can be defined
as a series of tests. In the United States many
other countries, your path from childhood through adolescents to adulthood
(01:50):
is marked by test formal or informal. If we talk
about formal ones, you know immediately everybody thinks about the
school year. Since the industrial revel Ouan and the the
age of public schooling, you have to pass a series
of tests to move up to the next grade, and
you just rents and repeat until you graduate or drop out.
(02:11):
If you want a driver's license, you got to get
an exam. A huge part of your college career depends
upon your performance or used to depend upon your performance
on tests like the S A T or the A
C T. And those tests don't stop here. You know
after you get out of college. If you go to college,
then when you get a job, you are gonna have
different testing and qualification regimens. For that if you work
(02:35):
in certain fields of government, you have a background check.
It's a test you take all the time, and you
need industry specific qualifications. These are necessary, These are valid,
But that's not the whole story. When we're talking about this,
we need to talk about the much darker story behind
what's called standardized testing. Here are the facts, dude. I
(02:58):
was in line for some food at our former office
location behind a guy who's talking about is UH testing
for Google, like, you know, a multiple level you know
interview process that involved incredibly rigorous testing, and it was
like code this thing in thirty seconds, and it was
just fascinating hearing kind of the inside scoop of some
of these very industry specific tests. So to your point, Ben, no,
(03:22):
they don't stop, and they just get more specific and
kind of esoteric. And thank goodness for the stand all
the folk everywhere. I mean, this is the thing before
it sounds like a hit piece on stardized testing, which
this episode kind of is. In the interest of full transparency,
we do have to admit you're absolutely correct that standards
(03:44):
are a good thing. It is objectively great that doctors, pilots, teachers, plumbers, truckers,
anybody doing anything important has some kind of standard and training.
I mean, you don't want you don't want a surgeon
who just says, I kind of go with the vibe,
dearie Oregon trans plants. You know, I put on like
some low fi chill hip hop instrumental channels and I
(04:05):
just sort of go at it. You end up with
a kidney at the end. Uh. And you know some
people love taking tests. I take tests for fun. Um.
Yeah yeah, oh yeah. Tests are are great. They can
be I feel like every video game I play is
a little test. You know the same thing. Oh yeah,
we've all been in test mode with elden Ring. It's
(04:26):
about testing our metal and our ability to deal with
absolute frustration and like push through. Yeah. But but even
think about standards in a more general way, think about
a Phillip's head and a flathead screwdriver. My goodness, thank
goodness that we have those kinds of things where every
every screw that you encounter it actually it's not true.
(04:47):
There are a lot of less apple but mostly the
ones you encounter are going to be standardized, which is
very nice, and it means you don't have to spend
you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars on screwdrivers. Yeah,
and it might surprise people to to know that even
even us here at stuff they don't want you to
know because of our parent company. Uh, we have testing
(05:10):
that we have to do every year, and some of
it is frankly hilarious. It's the workplace training videos where
they oh, there's the lightning where they ask uh weird
questions that have obvious answers like, Hey, you found out
employee A is uh stealing cars. That's what employee A
(05:30):
does on their lunch break, embezzling from the pension fund,
which the following actions. Will you take A I am
not a snitch. B I would ask them to stop
selling stealing cars see all of the above, right, or
asked to get cut in on the scam. That's always
(05:52):
so these tests that you have to take throughout your life,
they're gonna have very levels of rigor, but they are
This is crucial for us to establish. They are important.
You do need to have as a society some sort
of standardization, some sort of testing. And other societies realized
this long long, long before the United States was a thing. Yeah,
(06:14):
ancient cultures understood this from the jump because it makes
sense they underst of the importance of standards. UM. Some
of the earliest examples you might see go all the
way back to the Han dynasty in China. UM they
had standardized tests called Imperial examinations that were incredibly difficult
um also pretty corrupt in terms of identifying light who
(06:37):
you know might be in the pocket of the rulers.
Kind of reminds me of things like the knowledge. You
know that that test that all the cabbies have to
take in London because of all the crazy routes and
things they have to commit to memory. Um not the
case here with cab drivers or uber drivers. Also thank
god for GPS. But those tests, the Imperial examinations, weren't
(07:00):
credibly important because passing them meant that you'd get a
job working for the state. And it's also probably the
corruption angle. Oh yeah, and there were super super corrupt
and super difficult. Objectively, you had to know a ton
of things. I like that you shouted out the knowledge.
That's one of the most interesting tests that I'm aware
(07:20):
of in the modern day. If you want to learn
about what affect the knowledge has on the drivers who
pass it, then do check out our mind over Matter episodes.
You can also check out the car stuff episode the
Knowledge spoiler. If fundamentally changes physiological aspects of their brains,
like pathways right like they're in the nerves, the pathways
(07:42):
that neurons fire and such and this, and even the
size of regions of the size and density of regions
of the brain is associated with spatial location and geography
and geometry. It's nuts. You can also see similar brain
changes in Buddhist monks who practice non violence and intense meditation.
(08:04):
I'm telling you, it's amazing. See. I wonder if the
opposite is true, though, because I'm so bad at directions,
that part of my brain is probably already pretty atrophied.
But the fact that I just rely entirely one and
fifty on maps, I think that part of my brain
has either gone away entirely or been replaced with like
music trivia. At this point, the memorization stuff gets gets
(08:26):
a little tricky because the idea of consciousness we're all
sort of songs that we sing to ourselves. That's probably
the best way to to, uh, to poetically define the
idea of consciousness. But your brain is busy and uh
that and pretty much everybody is very intelligent in one
way or another. So like, if you're not using those
(08:46):
parts of your brain, then yeah, it's a muscle kind
of you'll fall out of exercise. But your brains do
another stuff too. And I bet it's more than just
just trivia, because we're all we're all sponges for trivia.
But I bet, I mean, why would you don't need
the knowledge? That's why it's so impressive. Anyway, I can
talk about that one for hours, but okay, sorry, sorry,
(09:09):
before taxis before the amazing knowledge. Right before these studies
of the brain, other people and other cultures picked up
on the Han dynasty's testing idea, and they have many,
many other iterations of this. As government's changed in that
part of the world. Fast forward to the eighteen hundreds,
the continent of Europe picks up this idea and runs
(09:30):
with it and says, all right, we're gonna we're gonna
test people too. And then, of course, because the US
got a ton of its ideas from Europe and the
United Kingdom specifically, they had some form of standardized testing
in the education system since about the eighteen hundreds, but
right now, ever since about the nineteen hundreds, the US
(09:52):
has become increasingly dependent on standardized testing. Some people think
that's great. Some people have a huge problem with it.
I kind of bet some of those early tests, the
standardized tests in the US were more functional tests, like
if you're a journeyman or you know, an apprentice or something,
your tests would necessarily be written, but you'd have to
like make like a box or something, and then your
(10:13):
you know, your boss would watch you and grade you
visually make a masterpiece. Yeah, I want to quickly shout
out something called the Committee of Ten. It was a
group of educators from universities and colleges that got together
here in the US everywhere from the University of Michigan
to Harvard to Vassar. A bunch of representatives got together
(10:36):
from these universities and they they decided, basically, here's what
needs to be taught to kids from you know, kindergarten
to twelfth grade. Basically, here are recommendations at least of
what kids need to learn on a basic level to
be able to function within a university setting, which is
really interesting to think about. So that was like one
(10:57):
of the first times that within the U s there's
some kind of standard for what needs to be taught.
And then, as Ben is saying, in the early nineteen hundreds,
we start looking at, well, how do we actually test
these kids on an individual level to see if they're
matching up to the standards we want them to meet well.
And I think we all know that, like Germany is
really focused on standards and tests, and the education system
(11:19):
in Germany even to this day, I believe follows the
models that were probably set out way back when, like
the idea of gymnaseum, you know, and like you know,
kindergarten and all of that stuff, Like everything kind of
led to the next thing in a way that was
much more efficient than I think what we have here
and much more standardized than we have here in the
United States today. Trades and vocational school are also not
(11:39):
as vilified as they are in the modern United States,
which is a whole other bag of badgers for anybody
playing the bingo drinking game. So yeah, so let's let's
look at college. That We're going to talk a lot
about the testing for college and the military, because they
are hand in hand and there is a dark genesis
for both them. So there's this thing called the College
(12:02):
Insurance Examination Board. Um. They picture them as like the
same demographic of people in the committee attend like they
kick it. They kind of know about each other. And
this board offered their first exams in nine one. This
was entirely for the elite. UH. It was meant to
(12:22):
standardize admission requirements for UH POSH boarding schools and for
the IVY leagues. All well and good people, dug it.
Fast forward, World War one hits. The military institutes a
number of aptitude and placement tests, specifically the Alpha and
the Beta test. The idea here is that they will
(12:44):
match new recruits to specific appropriate roles in the military
based on their perceived intelligence. And I hope you hear
the italics when I say perceived, because that comes back
in a big, big way. And of course, you know,
whenever you about standardized tests, you think of the i
Q test, the Stanford Binet intelligence test that comes around
(13:06):
in nineteen sixteen. It's been controversial ever since because parts
of it are broken. Uh. There's the what was originally
called the Scholar Aptitude Test or s A T. And
don't just know that saying s A T test is
like saying a T M machine or VIN number. You
could just call it s A T. Right. Uh, that's
nineteen six. It's invented by a guy who is a
(13:28):
main character of our story, but by no means a protagonist.
It's actually a tragic figure. His name is Carl Campbell Brigham.
When he invinced the s A T six. He's doing
it based on those Army tests because he created those.
And we'll Carl's gonna come back. Keep your mind on Carl,
and and don't make friends with him. Uh. Then there's
(13:50):
this guy, Everett Lindquist. He created the A C T
American College Testing in nineteen fifty nine. All right, So
now we're in the nineteen seventies. Individual states, that's what
the US is all about, and they kind of have
their own fiefdoms when it comes to education. So if
you are a kid in Massachusetts, you're getting a different
(14:12):
education from a kid in Hawaii, or a kid in
Texas or a kid in you know, Washington or something.
The education system is decentralized. This means that states control
their own systems, and frankly, some do a better job
than others. So this national testing regime that comes out
(14:33):
is a way for the federal government to get like
a bigger, high level view of American over education overall,
and then very soon, like increasingly as the years went on,
funding for schools got tied to test performance, which meant
that things like the No Child Left Behind Act of
(14:53):
two thousand and one would say, hey, if you're if
your student body isn't doing well on these specific test,
then your funding will be in trouble. Uh. If you
have any teachers in your family, you know this was
tremendously unpopular. Teach the test, yes, the test well. And
a lot of that goes back to a report that
(15:14):
came out titled A Nation at Risk the Imperative for
Educational Reform, which occurred in ninety three, just after the seventies,
as you said, Ben, after the push for a need
to see how the nation is doing, especially when compared
to other countries, and this report, A Nation at Risk
basically stated, hey, the US is following way, way behind
(15:36):
on its standards for what each individual kid knows. Yeah,
an education gap, which is something that honestly is a
calculated framework because you can take people who might ideologically
say we don't want to fund more stuff unless it's
a defense initiative. But then if you phrase education as
(15:58):
a matter of national defense, which very much is. Then
you are you have a higher chance of getting those
people on board. I wrote an essay many years ago
that was entirely phrasing public healthcare as an issue of
national defense. Believe it is well. And also, like you know,
(16:19):
a buzz phrase or like a program title like no
Child Left Behind gives this sense of this egalitarian kind
of like equality for all children and education. But the
reality is just because the program exists doesn't make those
individualized kind of legacy school systems with their various resources
depending on where they're located, and then who is going
(16:41):
to the schools, and what kind of money is flowing
in and out of them, whether they're private, whether they're public,
it doesn't make them fundamentally change. How do I hear?
Do I hear the Senator from Georgia? Right? Is he
against no Child left behind? Oh? You are against no
child left behind? Day? So you don't like children? Is
(17:02):
that what you're saying? You don't want children to succeed?
Sir the gentleman, Welcome back to a b conspiracy or
news at ten. We have just received word that the
Senator from Georgia has left hundreds, if not hundreds of
thousands of children behind in the homes and farms across
the good state, who will find them found again? And
(17:26):
see um. At this point you might be thinking, Okay,
this makes sense. I understand the point standards testing, et cetera.
But why are you guys talking about it on stuff
they don't want you to know a show that applies
critical thinking to troubling subjects. Well, it's because standardized testing
is a massively troubled subject. First, just to put it plainly,
(17:49):
the dumbest thing, and I say this truly in a
truly affectionate manner, is that right now? For the entirety
of human history, no, not once, not never has been
able to make a real, fair and effective definition of
intelligence that everybody accepts, as evidenced by how many different
(18:13):
tests there are, and how many different flavors of tests,
and how much debate there is around what they're actually measuring.
In which one is liquid end quote best, because there
isn't one, otherwise there'd be like one. But there's a
ton and capitalism plays a role in that too, just spoiler,
but there's there's uh. You know, it is interesting. There
are people who have done brilliant people have done brilliant
(18:36):
work on this, at least in my dumb opinion. And
you'll see competing models like is intelligence multidimensional? Meaning should
we say that um quantitative intelligence is different from interpersonal
intelligence or Kinnecticut's intelligence. And then you'll have people who say, well, functionally,
intelligence should just be defined as the ability to uh
(18:59):
to op rate well and given circumstances or environments. That
means that someone like Albert Einstein would be very unintelligent
in the Paleolithic era because he doesn't know how to
do the things they are important to being alive at
that time. So there's a lot of understands him. He's
just he's a gibberator the whole time. You know, they
(19:20):
sacrifice him to like whatever uh nature thing they're worshiping
at the time. They would have just shaved his mustache
and head hair for like, you know, warmth, you know,
to make like a tiny sweater out of it, or
burning a pyre of some sort. Well, okay, first there
would have been disease spread and then secondly they probably
would have preserved his clothing as well as they could anyway. Anyway,
(19:45):
so many things to unpack about Albert Einstein is just
turning up in Paleolithic era. So many questions he's a
wild womanizer there, I think you would have. I don't
think you're wasted some time, um too much time before
he started chatting up the locals. But here's the problem.
The reason we're making a big deal about the attempts
to define intelligence are because at a very basic level,
(20:09):
you can't really test for something if you don't understand it.
That's one of the problems with ghost hunting. If there's
no way to measure a phenomenon and people have tried,
then how what are you hunting for exactly? You have
to define You have to be able to understand define
what you're looking for. And people have done this. And
we're not saying they're all flim flam artists. We're just
(20:30):
saying it's really difficult problem and it bears scrutiny. Second,
even though we know these tests are imperfect, we have
to acknowledge they're also based on previous tests. The s
A T comes to you courtesy of the same guy
who wrote those tests for the Army of World War One,
So they carry improvements right with each success of iteration.
(20:50):
There are new improvements and they are made in good faith,
but I would argue those iterations often carry the sins
of previous generations as well. It's like we were talking
about earlier. You can test whether someone can build a
wooden box by making them build a wooden box and
then watching them and seeing if they like all the
sides are the same, you know, length and all of
that stuff. Um, But it's a lot harder to test
(21:13):
a bigger picture intellect, something that would encompass many potential skills,
um and abilities and things that you haven't even necessarily
learned yet, right right, Like the s a t UH
is theoretically designed not necessarily to test memorization abilities so
much as to test one's ability to learn, which is
(21:36):
kind of what the i Q test originally is. I mean,
it's what it's aiming for as well. But this kind
of testing in the US in particular can be wildly
unfair due to numerous factors both inside and outside the classroom.
And though you won't hear about this in your high
school s a T prep course, a lot of these
(21:57):
tests have a profoundly, deeply unclean origin, and we're going
to dive into it. After a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, here's the kicker,
the guy we mentioned Carl, Carl Brigham. He's more or
(22:20):
less the father of American standardized testing, and he's an
absolute He's a real pill. Yeah, and even worse, you
could say he's not good at his job. He was
just kind of the guy. He just became the guy.
When you invent the idea of a thing, you get
to do it kind of however you want. Gosh, well,
(22:41):
are you saying he's like a eugenicist or something. He
is exactly a eugenicist math. Yeah, he was super into it.
It's like eugenics was like a baby he had just had.
And every conversation you try to have with him goes
back to eugenics. It doesn't matter what you could be
talking about, you know, brunch, and he would be like, well,
(23:01):
of course the Nordic racist make the sup or something.
I don't know if that's what sounds like, but you
have a better relationship with the egg. Check out our
upcoming Ridiculous History episode on phrenology. Uh teaser um. So yeah.
From pretty much day one, this guy, Carl was convinced
(23:24):
that some people were just better than others. By any metric.
He was a psychologist, but he was a psychologist for
the purposes of being a die hard eugenicist. He wrote
a book in nine called a Study of American Intelligence.
So we're not we're not quoting propaganda by his enemies.
He wrote this stuff. You can read it. Uh. And
(23:45):
he said that, based on the test he had conducted
for the army, native born, white Americans were the intellectual
top dogs. And then he said also the quote Nordic
race is better than what he called the Alpine race.
The Alpine race, in Carl's mind is anyone from Eastern Europe.
(24:10):
It's it's very like, not wide enough for him. Wow,
But Carl seemed to know what he was talking about
for enough people who seemed to be like minded enough
that his ideas just took on like wildfire. Isn't that nice? Yeah? Oh?
He also, by the way, said that um quote Mediterranean
(24:31):
and uh, and black people are at the bottom of
of the hierarchy. Yeah. And you make a good point, Matt,
because it's dangerous psychologically. We know that folks like hearing
good things about themselves so much so that they won't
stress too much about whether this is actually true. This
(24:52):
is garbage science. But the people in power consider themselves
native born white Americans, probably descended from a New Grace,
and so they think, Okay, yeah, this makes sense. Is
why I'm at the top, because I'm just I'm just better.
Shout out to that. Does being wealthy make you a
bad person? Episode? So all right, so why are we
(25:12):
saying he's bad at his job? Though? Well? Uh? He
he lacked a very important facet of being a scientist, objectivity.
He lacked that entirely. Um, he had absolutely pre existing
prejudices and ideas things that he wanted to confirm with
(25:32):
his research. Um. And this is not how you do science.
That yields bad science almost every single time. It is
a foundational component of science that you are supposed to
not have advanced ideas of what result you are going
to get, because then it makes you kind of change
things in order to get that desired result. This is
(25:53):
something called confirmation bias, but on a much larger kind
of like institutional level. So in particular, he was a
big fan of eugenics, like you said, Ben, and he
wanted to support these ideas with his weird hack science. Also,
he was really against immigration, surprise, appression, And we're not
(26:14):
just saying like, oh, he liked eugenics. This dude was
on a board, right, Yes, yeah, he's on the advisory
Council of the American Eugenic Society. He is about that life, uh,
and he was a big wheel in the movement. So
his test, like you were saying, you all his tests
aren't really meant to objectively determine a person's mental prowess.
(26:37):
They're meant to give him his masters and his cronies
ammunition for their existing socio political goals. It's a conspiracy.
He thinks that he is the good guy fighting for
some sort of shining beacon on a hill. His view
of what America should be, which is namely, uh, Protestant
(26:57):
and white extract from Northern Europe. So he also thought
American intelligence was in a crisis point. He thought the
nation as a whole was becoming dumber because so many
people were immigrating from Eastern Europe in particular. So a
lot of the stuff he created was meant to be
a response against and an attack on that tendency. Luckily,
(27:23):
there are a lot of other smart people in the space,
and even they knew this was kind of screwy uh.
In ninete, we got to introduce this guy. I thought,
I almost texted you all. It's the best name we're
gonna talk about in the show. I don't want to
hype it up too much. But this Harvard professor named E. G.
Boring said that Brigham is not collecting data with scientific purposes.
(27:48):
This just biased his results in favor of his own ideas.
So he's like ginning up data that makes him sound
a little less crazy, at least per doctor Boring. Gad's boring.
Dr B is in the mix. I didn't know people
are the last name boring. Well, you learned something every
(28:10):
every time. So he said that. So Carl responds, and
he says, look, some of these results, true, might be
affected by the quality or level of education that someone
received before they took the test. Right, He's saying, I
grant you that if someone completed tenth grade, they're probably
(28:32):
going to be doing better on a test than someone
who completed fourth grade. Right. But after extending that very
paltry denuded Olive Branch, he doubled down and said, the
real big difference, though, is genetics. It's just you you
if you are not born a white American or a
(28:53):
Nordic race. Then you're just not going to be You're
not gonna be as good. Uh and end. He soldiered on,
and he found greater success because he took his whack
and do ideas and baked them into the s A
T when he invented that in nineteen six. So this
is uh, this is a real thing. This is not
(29:15):
a conspiracy theory. He did this, if you're and he
didn't do it alone. He had a lot of institutional support,
and he had a lot of fans, including you know,
fans in Germany who would later take the idea of
eugenics and and institutionalize it on a level that the
modern world had never encountered. If you're familiar with the
world of education, you probably heard about the controversy surrounding
(29:39):
modern day testing. Like I I want to defer to
you guys. Um. I know we'll talk about teaching the
test in a moment, but I know there's a lot
of stress on kids, especially as they get into like
middle school, and they get into high school and they
started thinking about college and the future of vocational school,
(29:59):
et cetera. Do do do you guys feel that your own
children have encountered stress due to testing or did you
have stressful experiences when you were kiddos? Let me go
really fastinal, just because my son has two more years
until he gets a Georgia standardized test, So we're good there,
at least for now. And weirdly enough, the state of
(30:22):
Georgia suspended standardized testing for the year, and I believe
one at least in general, they did. I don't know
what happened this year. Do you have any insight? Real
they're back. They're called the milestone tests, UM, at least
in my kid's age range. She just finished sixth grade. UM.
But yeah, because of that, you know, waving of all
(30:45):
those tests during COVID and because my kid already has
some kind of anxiety stuff probably they was exacerbated by COVID. UM,
she qualifies to get some extra time for testing because
she freezes up big time, you know, because of these
high pressure tests. And actually she was able to we
were able to get them to waive some of the
(31:05):
milestone testing for her again this year because of you know,
stuff that we submitted that that proved that she was
absolutely you know, struggling with this stuff more so than
just like, oh, tests suck. I'm scared of taking tests
like in like a very psychologically crippling kind of way. Well,
I know, John Oliver did a piece on standardized testing
in and one of the things that he's of course
(31:26):
joking about, but it's deadly serious. Is it within the
materials that anyone who's giving some of these standardized milestone tests? Uh?
Within those materials are procedures if a child happens to
vomit while taking the tests, to distress and that stuff like,
it's crazy you think about that. Yeah, And you know,
(31:50):
we've talked about some controversy there. I hesitate to use
this phrase because it's primarily used to manipulate people, but
in this case, it's true. It a dinner table conversation.
Testing and how you or your kids doing school is
a commonplace conversation that many many families have. But back
in the day, the problems with Carl's weird ideology and
(32:16):
his supremacism, those problems and how they reflected and the
test they invented were considered features. Universities loved rolling out
the s a t uh. And they loved it not
necessarily because they thought it was a good test defined
by like objectively good at measuring ability. They thought it
(32:36):
was a good test because it helped them filter out
what they called undesirables. As a guy named Eric Jacobson,
I think we should quote, he broke it down um
by saying, for some college officials, and aptitude test, which
is presumed to measure intelligence, is appealing because at this time,
(32:57):
intelligence and ethnic origin are thought to be connect it
and therefore the results of such a test could be
used to limit the admissions of particularly undesirable ethnicities. So
they knew it was rigged, the boffins at the university
in the Ivory Towers, and they loved that it was
rigged because it gave them an excuse, flimsy as it
may be, to keep their schools as white as possible,
(33:20):
as wasp as possible. Really, Uh tut tut. That is
not necessarily critical thinking. But but but we're talking about
modern debates. So before we talk about how this game
actually gets rigged, I think we can. I think we
should go back to the idea of teaching for the test.
Let's talk about some of those modern problems. Like Matt,
(33:42):
you you have teachers in your family. I do too,
Uh nol I believe your mom has taught people, um,
the finer points of of singing right of opera for sure. Yeah,
and she's taught in school settings as well, in college
and high school teaching for the test, at least the
experience I have with my mom and watching her she
(34:04):
was an elementary school teacher for a long time, it
was you're teaching formulas. You're teaching how to do a
specific task, or to put things together in a certain way,
or the rules that apply even in language arts or
things like that. It's not how to think critically or
creatively you know, of how to come up with an answer,
(34:25):
or how to you know, think innovatively about a subject.
It's all about what are the things I need to
know how to do and then be able to apply
those two questions asked on a standardized test. It's awful. Yeah,
it's a real thing. Though. Teaching the test is a
real thing. And because because of the way that funding
(34:47):
gets tied into test performances, uh, this this almost becomes
an existential matter for schools and teachers are just the best.
You know, A good teacher can make a can set
the course of someone's life. Right, you have to I'm
not saying there aren't bad teachers, but um, good teachers
(35:09):
can change the world. And the idea of teaching this
like teaching for the test, means that you give kids
multiple kind of dummy runs at it. You take a
practice s A T. Right, you take your practice g
R E. And critics say that the kind of multiple
choice format of things like the S A T don't
(35:30):
really teach what Matt is talking about. They encourage route memorization,
they encourage systematized guessing. I know that four answers in
a row won't be a so I'm gonna switch one
of them up. Now I just have to figure out
which one, and I can eliminate A and C so
I know the answer is B or D. You know, yeah,
(35:56):
exactly who wants to be a millionaire? I mean, it
really is like learning the four Matt. Remember those Scantron cards.
They used to be bubbles and then they switched to
little tiny rectangles. Yeah, a little weird. Yeah that was
a weird one. I want to say, like, I know
we're starting to get into the deep water here, We're
already there, but I want to say, um, now, I
(36:17):
think the reason that I love taking tests and I
did as a kid is because it's so validating in
in adult life. People don't give you an ad of
boy just because you know something. If you're like you're like, well,
actually the history of Morocco is blah blah blah blah blah,
they'll say, okay, but why why are you telling me?
(36:39):
You know? And if you're in a classroom setting, they're like,
great job, you get a letter with a plus signed
by a badass. So I think maybe that's just nostalgic
color in it. But this this idea I love. They
brought up scantron all because this idea of testing for
format or learning a format, memerizing things, systematizing your guessing.
(37:03):
This is not something that occurs justin you in the US,
and people don't stress out about testing just in the US.
Other countries across the world have students who are very
anxious or stressed out about the importance of an exam,
a single exam, determining, as they see it, their life
from that point. Hence uh and then there are also
(37:25):
tremendously stressful situations. The US is, in fact not the
most extreme example of the dangers of standardized testing. There's
a um A related case not quite the same thing
that we have to talk about. Let's go across the Pacific.
Let's talk about what happens to society with standardized testing
(37:46):
in Japan. So in the Government of Japan studied forty
years of data and found that more people under the
age of eighteen in fact commits suicide on September one,
more so than any other date. So why September? Why
the first of September? UM? It is typically around the
start of a new semester in Japan, UM right after
(38:10):
the summer holiday. UM. And it wasn't the only time too,
because there's you know, there's another semester that begins it's
in early April. And they also noticed that suicide numbers
for children under eighteen were high at that time as well.
So it's just it's not good, right. It does show
you that pressure that we keep describing that I know
(38:32):
that we've all felt. I certainly felt it. And not
to nag on Japan, but I mean culturally, you know,
ritualized suicide due to a family shaming event is is
literally part of their culture, UM, and there is a
high emphasis placed on honoring you know, your ancestors and
your family and not bringing on some sort of shame
(38:52):
um and in the modern era, that has more to
do with success and rising through the ranks of the
educational system than just anything else. Yeah, this is tragic.
It's ongoing, and in Japan's defense, the government is aware
of this, and they've made substantive efforts to help prevent
these tests related deaths, because that's what they are, their
(39:13):
test related deaths. But there's a lot writing on these exams,
so parents with the means still, of course, spend loads
of time and money trying to set their kids up
for success. Extra courses, mandatory study time, tutors galore. It
is inarguably true that knowing the format of a test
(39:34):
and practicing that format will improve your overall scores. This
is why so many parents in the United States and
again in other countries have their kids study for tests
outside of school. It's a great opportunity for families that
can afford it, But what about the children who can't.
This is part of how the game gets rigged. We're
(39:54):
gonna go into the nuts and bolts of it. After
a word from our sponsor. All right, hey, shout out,
by the way, fellow conspiracy realist, to everyone who has
been thinking about their old test scores during this episode.
We're right there with you. We were talking about it
(40:16):
before we recorded, right, yeah, yeah, And I mean, you know, uh,
the the s A T that I remember. I mean,
I don't. I don't know why I would have changed significantly.
It's fifty you know, language skills and and in literature
and things like that and math. I was quite good
on the the verbal portion and really bad on the
(40:37):
math portion. But because I was so good on the verbal,
it was not an embarrassing score. Mine was embarrassing compared
to you guys, at least. I'm not gonna say what
it was. But you guys are smart. Well, we uh learned.
What have we been talking about this whole time? Dude?
None of this? Okay, Well, we're gonna you know, we're
(41:00):
gonna go back. We're gonna make our own tests with Blackjack. Uh.
I'm not going to do the rest of the quote
shout out to Futurama. But yeah, if you are thinking,
if you're listening to this episode, you're thinking back about
your performance, whether you feel like it was really good
or really bad, we have some news that maybe a
bit of a comfort to you, especially if you're unhappy
(41:21):
with your performance on things like the A C T
or the S A T. The problem is this, it
may have well have been something with that was wrong
with the test, not wrong with you, is the test taker.
True story. S A T scores have been found to
directly correlate with family income levels, like very closely correlate.
(41:45):
But you can probably correlate that with the type of
college that you get into because those are often also
correlated directly with income levels, I imagine I'm just conjecturing
here for some time. Yeah, that's been the tendency. Yeah.
We've got a quote from Kim Ellisessor who's writing for Forbes,
and she says this quote. A analysis found that students
(42:07):
with family income less than twenty thousand dollars scored lowest
on the test, and those with family income above two
hundred thousand dollars scored highest. And we're not talking about
just a couple of points. The average reading score for
those students whose family income was below twenty thousand is
four hundred and thirty three, So four thirty three, but
(42:29):
the average for those with income above two thousand is
five seventy. Clearly, there is a disadvantage and it's so
glaringly obvious. First Carl would have loved this for a while.
But what it means in general is that there are
intervening variables right that have a measurable effect on how
(42:50):
kids react to these testing regimes. Kids from wealthier backgrounds
first have more opportunities to prepare for testing and more
of a support network. And at the same time, not
only do they have those, um, you know, those expensive
tutoring classes and things like that, they also have a
lower likelihood of encountering obstacles that could impede their performance,
(43:14):
so they wouldn't have to do or They're less likely
to have to take care of siblings right to be
the child labor babysitter. They're less likely to have to
hold down a job while they're in high school. They're
less likely to have to transport family members to regular
medical care. The list goes on and on and on,
because of course education doesn't stop outside of the classroom.
(43:36):
Both the opportunities for and the obstacles in your way.
Evidence also, we have to point out, indicates strongly racial
inequality in the s A T. I think in the
s A T in particular, that's what I read most
of the research I read at least UM. I don't
know what you guys have on the A C T
or maybe other tests like uh, the L s AT,
(43:57):
but numerous researchers have gone back and forth about the
cause of this performance gap. Not everyone agrees, just to
be very clear with you, but the numbers are there.
The numbers are themselves in arguable. They've been verified multiple
times by multiple independent research institutions. So what happens next, Well,
(44:19):
in at least one state, this has led to lawsuits,
that's right, the lawsuits that were found on behalf of
the Compton Unified School District, specifically, in which four students
in six community organizations in twenty nineteen claimed that the
University of California was in fact violating state civil rights
laws by requiring applicants to take the S A T
(44:40):
or A C t UM and other standardized tests as
they believed. The argument was that these tests unlawfully discriminated
against disabled, low income, multi lingual, and underrepresented minority students.
And regardless of how you may feel about these particular
tests today, I think we've put enough stuff out there,
(45:01):
you know that stems from Carl Brigham and how he
kind of was the base level of these types of tests.
And then you mentioned that every subsequent test is ultimately
going to be a victim of its predecessor, and that DNA,
even if it's diluted, kind of remains as time goes on.
So lawsuits discrimination, They said, there's something wrong with this test,
(45:26):
and these these approaches are unfairly hindering the progress of
of other American children, just like your children, just like
anybody else. And California appears to have listened. As of
March of two, UH, the university system in California has
(45:46):
dropped both the S A T and the A C T.
This is huge because california It's university system is itself
the largest university system in the US, so they can
set press it. We don't know if it's going to
be just an experiment or if it ends up being
a harbinger bigger changes on the horizon. But before we
(46:07):
get to the future, let's return to our pal, Carl B.
Because he is the originator of this conversation. UH. And
it turns out that Carl has one last thing to
add about the entire quagmire we find ourselves in. Yes,
in nineteen thirty, Carl wrote a little thing, a paper
(46:29):
titled Intelligence Tests of Immigrant groups, in which he responded
to the criticism that have inhaled at him with all
of his writings in the twenties. Uh, and he admitted
something that those critics were actually correct. What yeah, my
(46:50):
bad guys. It's like party foul, I know, I know.
Uh yeah, he did something that I think speaks to
his lack of scientific acumen. Uh. He never stopped throughout
all his test making. He never stopped to ask himself
(47:11):
whether all the people taking the test spoke English New English,
read it fluently and the results of his test. Further,
so that's a big thing to miss. But further, the
results of his test apparently had no correlation with real
world achievements or social success. The best way to put it,
(47:32):
or put it crassly, is that people he thought were
dumb sometimes did absolutely gangbusters, and people he thought were
brilliant or whatever his idea of Nordic was could also
just as easily end up being absolute knuckleheads. The test
was not able to correlate to real world success, or
indeed to real world acts of intelligence you could call them.
(47:54):
So the test is in a very real way broken.
And of course, yes, we know that intelligent and worldly
success are not synonymous. Some of the people in your
life that you know, uh and think of as the
most intelligent people that you've ever met, they may not
be successful by society's metrics. They're just two very different things. Anyhow. Yeah,
(48:17):
so he's wrong. This led him to finally acknowledge that
his results were without foundation. That's a quote from him,
and that his whole concept of racial differences was therefore
basically bunk. And good on you, Carl, because that was
your life's work. You worked really hard on it, and
you realized it was wrong, and you had the strength
(48:37):
of character at least to come clean about it. But
the damage was done. He had already poured high octane
gas on the idea of eugenics, on the anti immigration movement,
and those folks active in those movements, they already heard
the part that makes them feel good and right, and
just so, they didn't really pay attention to the retraction.
(48:59):
You know what I mean, we don't need that part.
It's usually how retractions go. It start to put that
genie back in the bottle. I mean, you know, whenever,
like a big blockbuster headline makes the rounds and then oops,
we made a mistake and they print some little retraction.
People just remember the headline. Yeah, but so does that
mean the nineteen thirty one s a T came out
with a subtitle now less racist? What happened? Like because
(49:23):
we all still took it. I still took the s
A T. I know we all did. Like, why did
we still take it? If that happened? In Well, I
mean surely that surely the test is adjusted every year
based on something, right, I mean I can't imagine. Of
course it's not the same test that it was in
in the thirties, But like what rubric is going into
those and are they in any way changing it to
(49:47):
be more inclusive? We don't really have any way of
of knowing them. Oh, because you're not allowed to see
the actual questions on the s a T. You can
see questions ample questions, but it's not untill you're working live. Yeah,
I mean, I don't think a lot of the questions
now are blatantly discriminatory, Like you're not going to see
(50:09):
some math problem that says two filthy left handers are
out stealing children again, and one has seven children, the
other has forty two divided by seven. How many children
have been stolen this night? Um, those are the ones
that have been left behind that we have to go find.
No child left behind unless the left handed. Uh so
(50:34):
the sorry, we made up that problem that we're problem
left handed. I was definitely left behind. But here I am.
I was. I was unt handed till I wasn't on
a flex B it's not a flex My hand is
terrible with both hands, but uh, it was. It was
(50:54):
beat out of me in school when it was bad
to be left handed by the schoolmaster with this, with
this ruler, wrap your knuckles and you wrote with the
wrong hand. A little close to that. Yeah, but I
mean that's something that's happened to people in you know,
preschool and kindergarten and stuff back in the day. But
(51:16):
the question now becomes this, we know there's a problem.
There's all sorts of evidence indicating that these tests, however
well intentioned, have some fundamental flaws. So why hasn't there
been more changed? That's the question. Well, a big part
of it, unfortunately goes down to money. That's right, Like
almost everything else in the United States, standardized testing is
(51:37):
an industry, and uh, it's a pretty big when one
of the statue here get thrown around is that one
point seven billion dollars are spent in the US on
standardized testing every year. Uh. The originator of that of
that number, by the way, doesn't like it to be
thrown around casually. So you need to know that there
are a lot of different ways to come up with
(51:59):
that fin old figure. You know, are you going to
count are you going to count the time of the teachers,
the you know, instructing on the format of the test.
Are you're going to count the extracurricular activities? What do
you count as an expense that goes into that figure?
So just so you know, we know that's a little
bit loose. UM. But then if you see problems of
(52:20):
this magnitude and you wonder why stuff isn't changing as
we say all the time, start following the money, you
know what I mean, as as far as you can
see where the financial interests lie. I just googled is
Scantron a publicly traded company? UM. I didn't get a
very clear answer, but it was founded in Egan, Minnesota
(52:41):
in nineteen seventy two UM and they operate in cent
of the U s school districts, fifty six countries, forty
eight ministries of education, and ninety four of the top
one U S universities. So there's definitely money to be
made um whether or not their public. I don't believe
that's the case. They owned by something called Trance, some
capital group which I bet is public. So there you go. Yeah,
(53:05):
and then this doesn't even touch Pearson right, uh, which
will be familiar to anybody in the academy or anybody
has had to h pay out the nose for a
textbook because one appendix is different from last year's uh,
last year's edition. Thank you. And and to be clear,
(53:27):
we're dunking a little. But to be clear, the concept
of standardized testing alone is not inherently sinister, and you
need something like it. It has a lot of value,
and it has a lot of supporters. The system is
it stands now, and not all of them have a
financial horse in the race, because they understand that when
the system works, it becomes this huge meritocratic opportunity. You're
(53:48):
a kid from a disadvantaged background, Now you can succeed
based on your abilities instead of like that rotting web
of nepotism that determines so much success quote unquote in
this country. No one's arguing about that, but we're saying
the case of the specific test is clear. They were
designed by a guy who only wanted a certain type
(54:09):
of person, people who looked like him, to succeed. He
was also very upset about the idea of mis engineation,
which is the fancy word for interracial relationships. He was
super terrified of that, just like Anslinger, the guy who
made a cannabis illegal. He hated fun and he hated
the idea of anything that was not really really white
(54:32):
folks in charge. And these these tests. Of course, people
don't agree with this guy. Nowadays they're not You're not
ever gonna see somebody an educator say, I like how
these tests discriminate against people. Um, but we know that
these specific tests need to be fixed. There are problems
(54:54):
with them, and they are rooted in some very deep
demons of American society. That's why society needs to find
a better way not to make children memorize facts, but
to encourage their independent thought and their curiosity, and to
empower them for success in the future, to open not
closed doors ahead. I yield my time. Sorry, sorry, I
(55:18):
was ranting. No, Ben, thank you for being upon that soapbox,
because I think many of us listening agree with you, sir.
I want to shout out a few people who definitely
do who have given ted X talks in the past
several years. One is from Nikki Adelhi I think is
(55:38):
how you say it. I can't remember, has been a
while since I watched it. It's titled what standardized tests
don't measure? Uh? It is worth your times from and
another one titled Prepare Our Kids for Life Not Standardized
Tests by Ted dinter Smith. That's from both. Both of
them are ted X talks, right. They're locally put together
(56:00):
events for the TED group. They're not the official like
TED talk, if that makes sense, not the official gathering.
But they're both great speakers and they have great messages
that are very similar to yours. Ben. Hey, I think
that's our collective message though you know we're big fashion teachers. Yeah,
and that's why that's why one thing we can end
on here, even though there are lots of problems with
(56:23):
the education system in every country. To be fair, we
want to give a heartfelt thanks to all the teachers, professors,
educators in the audience. This is personal does because we
all have we all have educators in our family. But
right now, if you want to have an action you
can do after hearing this, one of the easiest and
(56:44):
most important things you can do is think back on
one of your favorite teachers from the past, and I
highly encourage you, you remember their name, to reach out
to them. It's easier now than it ever was at
any point in history. Just reach out to them, drop
a note and thank them directly you can. It will
make their day because God knows they're not in it
(57:04):
for the money. I'll just add my kid just got
an A plus in math, and she admittedly hates math,
but said that it was the teacher that that was
like her favorite teacher, and that just I think that
says it all. You know, she is not a fan
of math, does not think she has an acumen for
and yet she did better in that class than she
did just but any other class, uh, some of which
(57:25):
the subjects she loves, even if she doesn't think. She
likes language arts, she likes to read, she enjoys culture.
She does enjoy language arts, but felt that her language
arts teacher was a little less effective, less just say,
than her math teacher. Therefore she did not get nearly
as much out of it, and so with that we pass.
We passed the scantron to you, folks. What do you think, uh,
(57:49):
is standardized testing overall? Is it just fine and hunky dory?
Or are there clear steps that could help address the
shadow of conspiracy haunting this origin story? Uh? What kind
of sage is there to burn? Right? Clearly, testing in
some form has to exist, But what if anything do
you think could improve or replace the current system. We
(58:11):
can't wait to hear from you. There will not be
a quiz when you contact us. Just we're not those
sorts of dudes. But we are easy to find online,
maybe like a fun Instagram survey or a quiz, but
that's just more like, you know, for fun. We will
not hold any of those results against you, and we
we don't store them. I don't know what Instagram does
with that stuff. That's a good question. Uh. That destorbs
(58:33):
its own episode. Um, what happens to all those quiz
results that are in fact telling the Instagram about people's tastes? Um,
Maybe we'll get to that one day. But you can
find us on Instagram. Um, we are at conspiracy stuff
show on that one. All the other ones were at
conspiracy Stuff That includes Facebook, um, Twitter and YouTube of course. Yes,
(58:53):
and if you like to use your mouth to talk
at us, at least in our general direction, you can
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to leave a message. At some point in there. Let
us know if we can use your name and voice
(59:15):
on the air. If not, that's fine. If yes, who
and we'll be hearing from you in an episode hopefully,
or you'll be hearing from one of us calling you back.
Who knows uh. If you don't want to do that,
or you've got more to share they can fit in
that three minutes. Why not instead send us a good
old fashioned email. We read everything where you receive at
(59:36):
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(59:58):
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