The GENERAL CONTEXT of such use is:
sociodicy: (a) The justification of society; formed by analogy with theodicy. (b) In order for the examination (at any level of schooling) to fulfil to perfection its function of legitimating the cultural heritage and, through it, the established order, it would be sufficient for the Jacobin (Utopian) confidence, that so many academics have in national, anonymous competition, to be extended to measurement techniques which have in their favor all the outward signs of scientificity and neutrality. Nothing would better serve this function of sociodicy than formally irreproachable tests which could claim to measure, at a given point in time, the subjects' aptitude to occupy vocational positions, while forgetting that this aptitude, however early it is tested, is the product of a socially qualified teaching and learning, and that the most predictive measurements are precisely the least neutral ones socially. In fact, nothing less than the neo-Paretian Utopia of a society protected against the 'circulation of the elites' and the 'revolt of the masses' can be read between the lines of some descriptions which present tests as the privileged tool and guarantee of American democracy qua meritocracy:

One conceivable consequence of a greater reliance on tested ability as a criterion for the assignment of educational or occupational status is a more rigid class structure based on ability. The contribution of inheritance to ability and the extensive use of objective selection tests may accentuate the position of the individual born to parents of low ability. The fact that individuals tend to choose marriage partners from the same social stratum makes it likely that over time it will become more, rather than less, difficult for an individual to improve his social position over that of his parents.

And when these Utopists describe the 'demoralizing' effects such a system of selection would inevitably have on the members of the 'lower classes', who, like the 'Deltas' in Brave New World, would be obliged to acknowledge that they are the lowest of the low and happy to be so, perhaps the only reason why they over-estimate the capacity of tests to grasp natural abilities is that they under-estimate the ability of the School to accredit the natural character of abilities or inabilities.