Posted on 03/25/2002 4:46:13 PM PST by xsysmgr
So bizarre to consider Jews and Asians as "minorities". Despite past discrimination (not slavery of course) both groups have achieved tremendously in America, which makes them ineligible for the term "minorities" as defined by liberals. A "minority" is someone who cannot achieve in society. Period.
Certainly by numbers, Jews are a tiny minority--2% of the population vs. 16% Blacks. Yet 11% of the Senate are Jews, vs. 0% Blacks. Liberals need a new term, such as "underachievers", but that wouldn't confer on Blacks and Hispanics the "victim" status which is required to justify the rape of the American taxpayer to support the racial spoils system, from welfare to Jesse Jackal's shakedowns, from bilingual "education" to special preferences across the board.
You are very correct that it is well worth remembering that the US university system is considered the best in the world today. I assert further that if we wanted to we could re-build our #1 status in grades 1-12 if we were to choose to do so. If we do choose to do so, then we must get rid of the current regimes that rule public education all over the nation and replace them. Different management is required quite frankly. As a people are we just going to throw in the towel because a bunch of bureaucrats are in charge?
Long term, this will continue to damage our nation's competitiveness, as Euros and Asians, despite their politics, are not following this insane path to ignorance.
Teddy Roosevelt went to Harvard, so I can't quite agree (perhaps he was an exception). But generally my favorite Presidents were NOT Ivy Leaguers. Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton, and as U.S. President, he demonstrated the same pathetic naivete (eg. "14 Points", League of Nations "world peace" fantasies) that we have come to expect from "elites" today in Europe and the U.S...feckless appeasers and cowards all.
that was great. thanks.
True but irrelevent. Analogies show intelligence.
Let me put this in perspective. I happen to be a Jewish son of immigrants, neither of whom speak perfect English. I grew up in the Upper East Side of NY. At the end of my Junior year of High school, I was set up on a date with a WASP. We both went to private schools, although Jane probably had a better upbringing.
At any rate, during dinner, we were joking about college admissions and the subject of SAT scores care up. I asked her how she did, and she reponded 760. I aske "Great, in what subject?" She did not respond, but went to the bathroom.
As I soon figured out, Jane was not the brightest bulb in the chandelere, but she showed far more grace and than I did. I may have almost doubled her SAT score, but I can guarantee that she was far more cultured than I.
There are two points to this story.
1. Intelligence is the differentiating factor in SAT scores.
2. Given the opportunity, children of immigrants can easily compete with WASPs. In the past, public schools were sufficient (See chapter 2 of My Love Affair with America by Norman Podhoretz.) Unfortunately, the decline of Public education in NYC was bad enough, that I needed to go to elite private schools to be on an equal footing.
Unless and until the PARENTS and TEACHERS of the students that are scoring poorly on the SAT in groups are held accountable, I really have no problem with changing the test to measure objective indicators of intelligence (logic problems using plain english, and math, etc.)
I agree on accountability. However, a large vocabulary is a sign of education and or discipline, both of which are also useful for college.
I would like to make changes to the SATs. I hope that the math section become more difficult. When I took that SATs, I was bored silly by the problems. ( Actually I was woken from a bored stupor after racing through the math, when a young woman two seats down went into labor, but that is another story.)
I would argue that the SAT was not hard enough. I took an SAT practice test in 8th grade, and scored a 700. I took it in 11th grade and got a 710. I did improve in verbal, going from 500 to 720. I'm not telling you this to bragg (my academic career is quite lackluster), rather to make the point of the true defiencies of the SAT.
We do no favors to immigrants by dumbing down the SATs.
We need to hold students to higher standards, not lower ones.
The SAT is the single best predictor of freshman year success currently in use. The correlation is better than .8 (a phenomenal statistical correlation), which is almost as good as saying "...the better you SAT the better your first year grades." Libs and the education establishment have tried to bury this for years. The only reason they want to dump the SAT is to thin out the amount of whites at elite universities. There is no other reason.
My university is in California and was overwhelmingly white during the middle '80s (better than 90%). The administration was fit to be tied over their "lilly white" campus (their words, not mine). The average SAT for admitted students for the engineering programs was close to 1350 on the old scale. They changed the weighting of the SAT for admission during the 1990 admission cycle, and experienced a phenomenal change in the demographics of their freshmen. SATs of admittees went lower, while the scores of the first quartile of rejectees went sharply upward (actually higher than the admittees). Academic disqualifications skyrocketed, racial tension climbed, as did the crime rate. The general academic standard started to slide.
I will never forget when our campus newspaper ran with the lead story on Stanford's grade inflation, and how they reintroduced the "D" and "F." It made it very hard to compete with Stanford grads for graduate programs, when the lowest grade they could possibly achieve was a "C" and the campus average was closing in on 3.5, when Cal Poly had an average of 2.8. High School grades work in much the same way. My freshman room mate's school had almost a dozen grads with better than a 4.0 (large Mexican and black population), while my school had no one with a 4.0 (98% white).
There has to be some standard for comparison. My roomie had a 4.05 gpa with a 990 SAT, and I had a 3.7 gpa with a 1400 SAT (old scale). We both took the same exact test on the same exact day at the same exact time, but our grades were earned in entirely different circumstances. He was academically disqualified by the end of freshman year, and I graduated near the top of the heap.
None are dimmer than Barbara Boxer. She has in brains what Lott has in balls.
Priceless!!!
I thought this was stated in the instruction part of the SAT. That you should at least guess at an answer and not leave it blank. You just correctly followed the directions, that's all.
Paradox: having a lot of stupid people has made us the world's economic powerhouse. It's precisely because we have stupid people who will do what they're told that the managers of our centralized economy have done so well.
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
But they do (or did) tend to predict scholastic ability, which is what school is all about.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN [Oregon], Mr. President, these institutions [The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation] are like Providence. They "move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform." Now, I am going to call your attention to another activity along these same lines, to show you that they are moving with military precision all along the line, to get control of the education of the children of the land. I venture to say that if you put the educational system of this country in the hands of any particular class of individuals, in two generations they can practically change the form of our Government by educating the children along certain lines which the ideal of democracy would oppose, if the people throughly understood the situation.
Mr. POINDEXTER [Washington]. Mr. President--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Oregon yield to the Senator from Washington?
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN. I yield.
Mr. POINDEXTER. In that connection I should like to suggest that the framers of the Constitution apprehended some similar danger when they were so careful to legislate against any law establishing religion, and they followed it up by a statute most carefully excluding church control of the public schools of the country. The cult of Rockefeller, the cult of Carnegie, in the viewpoint which they represent in political economy and in government, is just as much to be guarded against in the educational system of the country as a particular religious sect.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN. I do not think there is any question about it. I do not think any particular set of individuals, whether it be in industrial life, whether it be in railroad life, or whether it be in religious life, ought to have exclusive control of the education of children.
Mr. President, I confess to some feeling about this thing. The Senator from Washington [Mr. POINDEXTER] and I graduated from the same institution. It has the historical names of Washington and Lee attached to it. There have been efforts by some individuals, I am informed, to get money for that institution from these sources, and I am entirely opposed to its acceptance. As a matter of fact, I would rather educate my boy in a log schoolhouse built by the taxes imposed upon the people than have him receive an education in a marble palace built and maintained by these people.
Mr. KENYON [Iowa]. Mr. President, I am glad the Senator from Oregon has taken up this subject. I have been informed on authority, which I will gladly produce on an investigation of the whole relationship of the Rockefeller Foundation to the Government, which ought to be made, that there are certain colleges in this country that have sought endowments, and the agent of the Rockefeller Foundation or the educational board had gone out and examined the curriculum of these colleges and compelled certain changes to be made in the studies and in the curriculum.
It seems to me that it is one of the most dangerous things that can go on in a Republic to have an institution of this power apparently trying to shape and mold the thought of the young people of the country. The same question arose in the Agricultural appropriation bill. The agricultural colleges then seemed in certain States to be coming under the influence of the organization, and professors who did not teach along the line that they might decree had in some instances been compelled to give up their positions.
Bush is president SOLELY because of his father and paternal grandfather ? What about the fact that his maternal great + granfather was also a president of the USA ? Perhaps it is because he is by nature and nurture predisposed to be an able, capable president .
How many millions of Ivy League grads have NOT been president ? Is that the failure of those schools ?
Reagan's father was a nasty , mean drunk and an abect failure. Bush's father was born into priviledge. All this means, is that America is a wonderful nation, where everyone has a chance to become anything ; still.
Your MARXIST class warfare has no place on FR !
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