Word: america
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...movie. It's more like a composite of different experiences that I heard and that intrigued me. For example, there's one scene, you might remember, where there's these two Iraqi hairdressers. And they say, "You know, we don't care if we do it in America or Iraq. We just want to cut hair." I met those people, they were refugee immigrants, and they auditioned for the movie. Unfortunately they were terrible actors, but I added the line...
Quirky and unusually personal, The Big Test begins as a history of standardized testing and the SAT, but necessarily, it becomes a history of America's philosophy of education, exposing the direct and divisive conflict between our country's sacred values of opportunity and justice for all. A complex, interconnected web of personalities, Lemann's book follows the lives and accomplishments of a series of figures ranging from the early proponents of standardized testing to a few of the first women and minorities accepted into the educational elite on the basis of their performance on the exams...
...Test is an adept criticism of America's current educational philosophy--a cultural obsession with "making it," symbolized by the intensely scrutinized SAT. But the SAT is only a portion of "the big test" of Lemann's title. In his book, Lemann argues convincingly that the academic elitism of the American meritocracy, structured by its system of higher education, never lived up to its morally defensible Jeffersonian ideal of educating an intellectual few who would serve and advance the national community. Rather, the current system of selection for higher education based on the related criteria of academic performance, scholastic aptitude...
...less extreme statement of the principle that performance should be valued over potential is sound, but Lemann's statement that this principle is blatantly violated in today's America is not entirely convincing. Certainly, higher education is strongly linked to money and power and an impressive college credential carries weight. But Americans rarely work at the same job their entire lives these days. Our entire lives are tests, and to whatever end, the college-educated workforce is a driven population...
...goals, he advocates a system at once even more divisive based on educational background and even less adept at providing young Americans with the opportunity to work hard and reach their potential later in life. In any case, The Big Test is an interesting contribution to a discussion about America's educational philosophy that probably deserves more of our active thought and attention...