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

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Abstract
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.

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