The practice of "standardized" testing has been embedded in United States federal education policy since at least the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The roots of standardized testing in American education, grounded in Kantian "Modern Thought," can be traced to the U.S. Military Academy at Westpoint in the early 1800s and the rise of scientific management in the early 1900s. First and foremost, for a test to be "standardized" the knowledge tested must be assumed to be "true"--universally accepted as being outside the bounds of values. Consistent with both the views of the Founders and contemporary U.S. Supreme Court decisions that public education is necessary for successful governance, this enquiry recognizes that the primary purpose of American public education has been to prepare students for the fundamental political office of "citizen." Citizens must ideally be able to make informed political judgements utilizing the full spectrum of "thought"--knowledge in its broadest sense including knowledge unbounded by values. Fundamental to U.S. Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech is freedom of "thought." Given the nexus between public education and governance, logic would necessitate a critical examination of whether the practice of standardized testing is consistent with preparing students for citizenship. "Critical Enquiry" challenges Modern Thought and other modes of thought with the general methodology following the spirit of Jacques Derrida's notion of "deconstruction." The specific analytical framework for this enquiry is Jean-Francois Lyotard's notion of "rewriting." Necessarily, this enquiry begins with a history of freedom of thought beginning in Ancient Greece and culminating with the U.S. Supreme Court's "Bradenburg" (1969) decision. This is followed by a history of political judgement beginning with Protagoras and ending with John Rawls. This enquiry reveals that the practice of using government mandated standardized achievement tests of knowledge in American public schools is antithetical to the type of education necessary to prepare students to exercise their right to freedom of thought in order to make informed political judgements. Unbounded political judgement and freedom of thought necessitate that students utilize a wide variety of what Lyotard, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, refers to as "language games" and requires access to multiple viewpoints. Standardized testing, on the other hand, allows for only what Lyotard notes as the denotative (true/false) cognitive language game and privileges the views of certain individuals and groups. Standardized testing constitutes what Lyotard calls a "differend," is totalitarian in nature, and represents a politics of the intellectual. The practice advocates a particular "Truth" sanctioned by the government and effectively silences teachers, students, and local school districts through terror. The government, through standardized testing, operates as the "majority" language game. In order to redress the "differend," future enquiry ought to consider policy and practice that would enable American public education to be consistent with the American democratic ideals. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]