James Elwick, "Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

10 snips

Nov 2, 2025

James Elwick, Associate Professor at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, explores the intriguing world of Victorian examinations and the rise of standardized testing. He discusses how achievement tests became standardized in the 1850s, revealing both the aspiration for merit and the prevalence of cramming and cheating. Elwick highlights how these tests evolved from neutral recordings of ability to powerful tools shaping education. He also addresses the role of women in claiming academic parity through exams and hints at his upcoming research on cheating and academic integrity.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Exams As Infrastructure

Standardized testing became durable only after infrastructure — tools, routines, and organization — standardized exams at scale.
Exams functioned as both cameras (recording achievement) and engines (shaping education via reactive behavior).

ANECDOTE

Wells’ Exam Coaching Enterprise

H.G. Wells taught students to reproduce textbook sequences and wrote exam-focused zoology materials to help them pass standardized tests.
He ran correspondence tutoring that predicted likely exam questions and profited from coaching examinees.

ANECDOTE

The Goffin Technique

Robert Goffin systematically opened exams in advance and drilled students on the answers, a tactic later called the Goffin technique.
He repeatedly escaped full punishment through inquiries and counter-narratives despite strong suspicion of fraud.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing (U Toronto Press, 2025) takes historiographic and sociological perspectives developed to understand large-scale scientific and technical systems and uses them to highlight the standardization that went into "standardized testing."

Starting in the 1850s achievement tests became standardized in the British Isles, and were administered on an industrial scale. By the end of the century more than two million people had written mass exams, particularly in science, technology, and mathematics. Some candidates responded to this standardization by cramming or cheating; others embraced the hope that such tests rewarded not only knowledge but also merit.

Written with humour, Making a Grade looks at how standardized testing practices quietly appeared, and then spread worldwide. This book situates mass exams, marks, and credentials in an emerging paper-based meritocracy, arguing that such exams often first appeared as "cameras" to neutrally record achievement, and then became "engines" to change education as people tailored their behaviour to fit these tests. Taking the perspectives of both examiners and examinees, Making a Grade claims that our own culture’s desire for accountability through objective testing has a long history.

James Elwick is Associate Professor at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, for which he is also Chair. He has written on the history of the life sciences and scientists including John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and T.H. Huxley, and is currently writing a history of academic integrity, viewed through the lens of students who cheat on their tests and other school assessments.

Jacob Ward is a historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written in the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education