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The Magic of Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1900–40*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Gillian Sutherland
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Extract

It has been a characteristic of studies of social policy-making in England to lay considerable stress on the importance of quantification, of precise measurement, in the evolution of any given policy. It has been suggested that the power of the evidence, once properly assembled and measured, could on occasion be sufficient to dissolve previous certainties and act as a catalyst of new thought. It is perhaps not entirely fanciful to see links between this aspect of the historiography of social policy and the preoccupation of English social thought with empiricism, a preoccupation which led sometimes to the presentation of empiricism as an alternative to social theory. All of this enhances the importance of attempts to assess the role of measurement in any given field of policy and to confront directly the questions of its autonomy and the power of its advocates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 1977 , pp. 135 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1977

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Footnotes

*

The work upon which this paper is based is being financed by the Social Science Research Council and I wish to acknowledge their generous support. I would like also to emphasize that the paper is an interim report from work in progress. Completion of the research may well lead to modifications in some of the hypotheses advanced.

References

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30 P.P. 1920, xv, Cmd 968, Report of the Departmental Committee on Scholarships, Free Places and Maintenance Allowances (Hilton Young Cttee), para. 13.

31 P.P. 1908, xxvi, Cd 3862, A.R. 1906–07, p. 67.

32 P.P. 1913, xx, Cd 6707, A.R. 1911–12, ch. I, para. 34.

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61 P.R.O. Ed 77/22.

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