Thanks to a mentality ruled by ideas of mechanism, efficiency, and
authority, many came to believe that everything in life needed to be measured.
Lord Kelvin, a 19th century physicist and astronomer, stated: “If you
cannot measure it, if you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is
of a very meager and unsatisfactory kind.” Born in this era was Charles
Spearman’s theory of general intelligence. His theory was based on the idea
that intelligence is inherited through genes and chromosomes and that it
can be measured by one’s ability to score sufficiently on Alfred Binet’s
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, yielding a static and relatively stable IQ
score (Perkins, 1995, p. 42).
Immersed in the “efficiency” theories of the day, educators strived for
the one best system for curriculum, learning, and teaching. Into this scene
of educational management entered Edward L. Thorndike from Columbia
University. He went beyond theory to produce usable educational tools
including textbooks, tests, curriculums, and teacher training. Thorndike
continues to wield a tremendous influence on educational practice. His
“associationist” theory suggests that knowledge is a collection of links
between pairs of external stimuli and internal mental responses. In this