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