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The Mystery Of The "A" Men

Creator: Walter Lippmann (author)
Date: November 1, 1922
Publication: The New Republic
Source: Available at selected libraries

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The army was interested in discovering officers and in eliminating the feeble-minded. It had no time to waste, and so it adopted a rough test which would give a quick classification. In that it succeeded on the whole very well. But the army did not measure the intelligence of the American nation, and only very loose-minded writers imagine that it did. When men write as Mr. Stoddard does that "only four and a half millions -of the whole population- can be considered 'talented,'" the only possible comment is that the statement has no foundation whatsoever. We do not know how many talented people there are: first, because we have no measure of talent, and second, because we have never made the attempt to devise one or apply one. But when we see how men like Stoddard and McDougall have exploited the army tests, we realize how necessary, but how unheeded, is the warning of Messrs. Yoakum and Yerkes that "the ease with which the army group test can be given and scored makes it a dangerous method in the hands of the inexpert. It was not prepared for civilian use, and is applicable only within certain limits to other uses than that for which it was prepared."

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WALTER LIPPMANN.

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(To be continued.)

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