Runner : Marathon

 

The assault against intellectualism continues with the ongoing dumbing down of the SAT’s, those notorious college admissions tests that were the challenge of every ambitious high schooler intending to advance. Back in the old days, those tests meant something, as in where you might receive a college education. You took them twice, and it was hoped that you would at least show improvement if the first marks were low.

A classmate of mine got 800's, perfect marks, on both the verbal and the math tests when he was just a sophomore. He and four others from our graduating class started at Harvard, as juniors. I brought up my verbal from 575 to 644, which showed promise, and was quite content with a 735 math score. If anything, coming from the school I did, these scores were not exemplary.

They got more exemplary -- or less, depending on how you look at it -- when a number of years ago, in response to people complaining that the tests discriminated, the scoring was readjusted to haul the middle of the bell to a higher stratum. That was because scores had declined; too many people were doing badly on the test. It was that danged cultural bias thang again, they said.

Horse-hockey, it was the ineptitude of the teachers to elucidate and illuminate the way they did in the old days. Their failure was collusional with the parents who had ceded their educational responsibilities to the television.

Now the SAT people, at the behest of the California regents, are removing the fearsome analogy section of the test. This was where you were given a pair of words, and told to select another pair out of a choice of five that was analogous. For instance, given runner : marathon pick the best matching pair out of

A)  envoy : embassy
B)  martyr : massacre
C)  oarsman : regatta
D)  referee : tournament
E)  horse : stable

When you think about it, the answer is C. I always struggled with these, and all too often argued myself into a blather; that’s probably where I lost a lot of points. But they sure helped make me think. The head of the testing service admitted that the analogies helped assess reasoning skills, and therein enabled them to see promising students.

But critics, like the director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, complained. For instance about the sample analogy, "That's incredibly culturally centered. You don't see a regatta in center-city L.A., you don't see it in Appalachia, you don't see it in New Mexico."

But sir, the test isn’t about where you live. Life is bigger than that. That’s why we value education. Sigh, you idiot.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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