IQ Tests

VI.      IQ Tests

During the Vietnam War, men were drafted if they scored poorly on the placement exam. In the mid-1960s, General Lewis B. Hersey, Director of the Selective Service, reinstated the Selective Service Qualification Test.[1] In 1963, only 2,145 men sat for the test.[2] By 1966, students after deferments sat for the test throughout the country. In total, 767,935 men took the exam in that year.[3]

In August 1966, Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, initiated Project 100,000. The goal was to divert hundreds of thousands of young men with low scores on the aptitude test to the armed services. The idea was that these men would have a better chance of financial and career success if they found careers in the military.[4] In early years of the war, these men, painfully referred to by many as the “moron corps,” would not have been deemed mentally qualified to serve. However, as the war intensified, so did the draft. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, members of Project 100,000 members were sent to Southeast Asia to serve their country.

Men who were able to obtain deferments and exemptions from service were often wealthy and educated. Many young men didn’t have the money to hire attorneys and not everyone was able to attend college to avoid service.[5] Most men who were called to serve and who couldn’t avoid it were from poor, less educated families who didn’t have access to attorneys and doctors who could obtain exemptions for their sons.[6]

In the last few months of 1965, between 35,000 and 45,000 men across the nation were drafted into the armed services each month.[7] In 1962 and 1963, an average of 6,300 to 9,400 men were drafted every month.[8] As the draft intensified, so did the public criticism of the draft and the conflict in Vietnam. In 1964, the phrase “We Won’t Go” was shouted in streets and printed in papers.[9] In the first quarter of 1970, the Selective Service System, for the first time in its history, could not meet its quota.[10]

[1] Gettleman, Marvin E, Jane Franklin, Marilyn Blatt Young, and H. Bruce Franklin. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. 2nd Ed., Rev. and Enl ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995, 39

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Curry, G. David. 1985. Sunshine Patriots: Punishment and the Vietnam Offender. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 15

[5] Baskir, Lawrence M. and William A. Strauss. 1977. Reconciliation after Vietnam: A Program for Relief for Vietnam Era Draft and Military Offenders. A Report of the Vietnam Offender Study. Center for Civil Rights. University of Notre Dame. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Pg. 14

[6] Ibid

[7] Gettleman, Marvin E, Jane Franklin, Marilyn Blatt Young, and H. Bruce Franklin. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. 2nd Ed., Rev. and Enl ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995, 35

[8] Ibid

[9] Zinn, Howard. 2001. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Collins. Pg. 485

[10] Ibid, 486