If a six-tentacled alien anthropologist slithered into a classroom filled with children busily scribbling into test booklets with their #2 pencils, what might they think was going on? Would they understand that adults were trying to "see" something invisible called the "mind," and that by asking children a series of questions we could create a number that described their "intelligence?"
So much of what we take as common practice in schooling is built from historical construction. Some of it begins as far back as Plato and Descartes (e.g., the concept of mind/body dualism). Some are relatively recent inventions (e.g., the pencil-and-paper test as a way of measuring one's "intelligence" with a single number). Was this journey was as inevitable as we might think? Answering this question is, in part, the mission of The Measure of Merit. I found it a fascinating exploration of how intelligence came to be conceptualized and used as a means of ranking and comparing in two societies: the U.S. and France. This comparison demonstrates that two countries, that, in many ways are alike, nonetheless approached the question of merit in very different ways for a host of philosophical, social, and cultural reasons. The result is that today, these two western democracies (and much like our tentacled alien anthropologist) look at each other's means of measuring its citizens askance. For the reader, it helps reveal that so much of what we take for granted in the measurement of merit, is in fact historically contingent and incredibly political. In other words, it didn't have to be this way, and we must continue searching for other ways for organizing society more equally.
If you're someone interested in understanding the historical conditions that led to how contemporary society decides its winner or losers, I strongly recommend reading this book.
