Word: processing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Regrettably, many people may read the recruitment article as a plea for minority favoritism. It struck me, however, that the authors were asking for equity, and for a far more rigorous admissions process--not favoritism. They want an accurate assessment of the meaning, or lack of meaning, of standardized test scores, so that other criteria can be assessed in importance and utilized effectively...
Equally important to a reassessment of standardized scores is an examination of Harvard's use of non-standardized, "subjective" criteria. Harvard has already institutionalized this sort of subjective criteria--participation in athletic, theatrical, or debating programs, for example--into the admissions process...
...environment, or the ability to adapt to ambiguous cultural situations might be considered important in taking stock of the minority applicant--as well as developing accurate means of academic evaluation. Even-handed admissions criteria would apply these criteria across the boards and stiffen up the admissions process for the majority student as well...
...authors of the article state, "This recognition (the admission of Third World students) must be a dynamic process, not merely as compensation for past oppression, but as acknowledgement of the fact that Third World people comprise a large and growing proportion of this nation's population--a proportion of the population that will no longer accept being denied the wealth and opportunity they helped create." I have two objections to that: It can sometimes be a dangerous thing to demand things for the future as reparation for wrongs done in the past. This often compelling argument has been used...
Certainly the framers of the Constitution did not intend, or even believe, that the press should be objective. They saw the health, the honesty, even the justice of society in the process of the system, in the diverse, opinionated contention of viewpoints--radical, reactionary, moderate--not in some fictive principle of objectivity. But the corporate spirit runs counter to broad freedom of thought and individual creativity; in its organization and marketing, its urge is to standardize, to cheapen, to impersonalize. And to the extent the principles of big business enter the press, this commercial spirit will prevail...