# The Abuse of the Tests **Status: stub.** Article 4 of six in [[Lippmann Intelligence Testing Series]], published in *The New Republic* on 15 November 1922. The pivot from method to politics, and the essay that most directly answers the question of what the tests would *do* to a society that believed them. [[Walter Lippmann]] concedes a limited administrative use — tests can help a school sort pupils into working groups. The abuse begins when a score is read as a verdict on fixed, innate capacity. Presented that way, he argues, testing "could not but lead to an intellectual caste system in which the task of education had given way to the doctrine of predestination," and an administrative convenience would harden into "a basis for hereditary caste." He is blunt about the human cost: labelling a child a defective type after an hour of puzzles is "contemptible," and risks fixing "a permanent sense of inferiority upon the soul of a child." The real failure, he writes, is that administrators will grade the backward child instead of fighting the causes of his backwardness. This is the essay to cite for the stratification argument. *Stub — expand with: the full text argument in sequence, verbatim passages, and the specific psychometric claims rebutted.* See also: [[Lippmann Intelligence Testing Series]], [[Walter Lippmann]], [[Eugenics]].