Word: grading
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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John F. (for Francis) Kennedy came out of a Gillette Safety Razor stockroom last fall to be elected Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by nearly 200,000 votes. He did not have much education (seventh grade plus some night courses) or experience (he had graduated from the WPA to stockroom clerk), but his name on the ballot looked just like that of popular and able U.S. Senator John F. (for Fitzgerald) Kennedy...
This was not the situation in First Dynasty Egypt. Before about 3200 B.C., the valley of the Nile had a neolithic culture. It was fairly high-grade, but by no means civilized. Then came a change as sudden as if supernatural culture-bringers had landed in a flying saucer. Without transitional stages, so far as diggers can determine, the Egyptians were building great palaces of brick and stone. They had effective copper tools, including wood saws and the finest needles. They worked with fine artistry in wood, ivory, leather, textiles, metals, precious stones. They had a fully formed written language...
Only in the U.S., reported Flesch, is there any remedial-reading problem. In Britain, kindergarten children read Three Little Pigs; in Germany, second-grade pupils can read aloud (without necessarily understanding all the words) almost anything in print. By contrast, average U.S. third-graders have a reading mastery of only 1,800 words. Why is the U.S. so far behind? Says Flesch: "We have decided to forget that we write with letters, and [instead] learn to read English as if it were Chinese...
Next to newspapers, the best-read publications in the U.S. are comic books, the University of California's Bureau of Public Administration reported last week. Comic-book circulation exceeds a billion copies yearly, and the $100 million spent on them is 1) more than U.S. grade and high schools spend for books and 2) four times the book budgets of U.S. public libraries. Readers are not all children. Comic books are regularly read by 25% of high-school graduates, 16% of college graduates and 12% of U.S. teachers...
...operate on a limited scale (eleven students, three professors) until July, but Director Haines's plans call for an eventual enrollment of 50 U.S. and West European students (most of them on fellowships) and eight full-time professors, six of them European specialists. Standards will be high (passing grade: B), classes limited to ten or twelve students apiece, with heavy emphasis on original research into broad subjects, e.g., Governmental Structures for Conduct of Foreign Affairs, Administrative Law and Practice in Italy. Required for admission: a college degree, fluency in at least one European language, an outstanding academic record...