Word: essay
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...waste time in courses beneath their ability simply to satisfy prerequisite requirements. The Committee's proposals call for the administration of placement tests in languages, English, mathematics, history, and science to determine the level at which a student should work. But no provision is made for the use of essay tests to supplement the objective techniques used at the present time. Such tests are necessary, for in addition to measuring writing ability, they could weigh a student's grasp of concepts, not facts alone...
...example of schooling without education as one can find ..." Pure Horror. "More recently, through teaching and lecturing, I came into contact with the Western undergraduate, who typically has entered college on a high-school certificate ... In a class of 30, at least 15 will dread what they call 'essay exams' ... A quiz of ten questions requiring answers averaging 50 words apiece is feared; a major examination question, calling for several pages of answer, is a pure horror. The reason for this is clear in their contorted faces as they put pen to paper . . . They are semiliterate...
There is a certain amount of duplicity in the little of the essay. For in the largest sense of the word, the "rebellion" is not a rebellion at all. It is made of milder stuff; it breathes an air of moderation and limit. Affirming restraint, the rebel denies his own name...
...Camus' is not the voice of despair. There is good reason for Herbert Read, in a forward to the essay, to speak of an age of hope and confidence in the future. The Revolution has, in a manner of speaking, "grown up." Older and wiser, it can reflect upon its principles and rediscover its beginnings. 'The revolutionary mind . . . must therefore return again to the source of rebellion and draw its inspiration from the only system of thought which is faithful to its origins; thought which recognizes limits...
...which Camus seems to yearn. It is essential that man be able to question society; it is no less essential that his questioning recognize limits so as not to destroy it. In Camus' lucid style the problem is restated, examined, and clarfied. But the literary excellence of the essay is incidental. As the serious intellectual effort of a deeply thinking man, The Rebel is a powerful and important book...