Subject:
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Re: Rush: "Lego is a Tool for 4 year olds"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 3 Feb 2000 18:42:35 GMT
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Viewed:
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927 times
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"Scott E. Sanburn" wrote:
> Why is that? Should the tests be designed to determine who has a good
> > chance of succeeding at college? I think so. What if research
> > indicates that testing 'white' people with the ACT is valid and testing
> > 'black' people with a teamwork LEGO-based spatial test is valid? What
> > if?
>
> Because it sets up different standards, which segregate black and
> whites, and other groups.
Making it so they all go to college together segregates them?
> There is something about not discriminating
> because of race, sex, etc. Isn't there? Or should we? If we want a fair
> society, race and sex and everything else should NOT be a factor.
Should not? What do you mean should? What if it does? Does matter,
whether or not you like it? What if (and I'm not saying this is so) one
'color' or 'race' of people tend to think differently than others? What
if they can all compete in college, but the standard methods of
assessment are not equally valid for both kinds of brains? How is it fair?
> Just
> because someone is black, we should not say, oh, since the rest of your
> race doesn't do well, we will give you the LEGO portion instead of the
> ACT, etc. That just blows my mind. If people can't qualify, too bad.
Let's imagine that black and white people have an equal chance of
success in college. If that's so, but the testing discriminates, and so
fewer black people are admitted, that's what you think is fair...simply
because they all took the same test, no matter how flawed that test is?
That appears to be what you are saying. I suppose that a chunk of your
stance is the assumption that the tests are not fatally flawed, but I
think that any serious analysis of them shows that they are.
When I was a kid, I first heard about these tests being supposedly
discriminatory. My reply was that they discriminated against people who
didn't know the answer. I even still believe that, but if you look at
why they don't know the answer - or more importantly, if knowing that
answer matters at all, you find that the test just are not fair across
the gulf between members of the low and high SES.
> > My M.Ed. is in education - primarily testing.
>
> That's great.
No, mostly it's useless, I'm just pointing out that in this case my
opinion is based on more than radical political philosophy. I have
genuinely spent serious time thinking and reading about these issues.
> > What if I told you that
> > the best correlation of success in college is different for males and
> > females. It is! With the data that I had to analyze, the ACT (not the
> > SAT) was best for the ~10000 men that I looked at and high school GPA
> > was best for the ~10000 women. So, now that we know that one assessment
> > is more valid for men and another is more valid for women, is it _fair_
> > or _right_ to force the same test on both groups?
>
> This is just more dividing and segregating, and should be struck down,
> if it ever makes it to the court.
What should be struck down? The statistics?
> > Affirmative action is a poor model for increasing minority education.
> > This may not be. Frankly, it is in all of our best interest for the
> > level of education between cultural and SES groups to normalize. We
> > don't want unbreakable chains of poverty and ignorance. At least I
> > don't. Maybe since you seem to believe that they don't exist, you can't
> > get to the point where you don't want them to continue.
>
> I want to keep people i poverty and ignorance, huh? Where did you get
> that from?
No, that's not what I said. I was suggesting that maybe the reason we
disagree is because you don't hold one of my premises valid. I contend
that some people are trapped through no fault of their own in poverty
and ignorance. You think that's not true...or at least you seem to when
you state
"This is America, and anyone can succeed, if they try."
What about people who have failure so deeply ingrained that they don't
know that success is possible? They don't know how to try. (Jeez, it's
only you that can make me (of all people!) sound liberal) What about a
child born homeless, never attending school, never learning to read?
What if that kid is very gifted, but disadvantaged? Imagine that she
goes to school for the first time at age 12 and begins remedial courses
in all subjects and get to the eighth grade level by the time she's
eighteen. She's done pretty well. She can't stay in high school
because that's not how they're set up. Should she go flip burgers, or
should she be tested differently and admitted to a college where she can
get extra help and maybe eventually go on to cure cancer? Or maybe even
just provide a role model of success through scholarship?
> > > Most colleges *don't* prepare most people for the real world. I have
> > > seen this many times, my classes with professors that have never had a
> > > real job in the profession they are teaching, etc. The closest I came to
> > > the real world was the technical courses I took. All the other classes
> > > were not.
> >
> > It is unclear whether you are saying that this is a good or bad thing.
> > Maybe you're just saying that since you got screwed out of adequate
> > preparation, everyone else should be too. I'm really not sure.
>
> Chris, since you seem to be taking this totally on a tangent, I think I
> am through trying to discuss this. I hope your test for every minority
> and sex and orientation and class status do really well, or have society
> collapse on itself.
I can see that you're frustrated with this, but I don't understand. I'm
serious when I don't follow whether you think it's a good thing that
colleges don't prepare students for the work world. I can see arguments
for both sides of this issue.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Rush: "Lego is a Tool for 4 year olds"
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| Heartlessly snipped, as usual (...) I guess I'm mostly with Chris on this one. Scott, you raise some valid points about flaws in the current system. But short of scrapping the whole notion of regulating how colleges admit people, which is my (...) (25 years ago, 3-Feb-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Rush: "Lego is a Tool for 4 year olds"
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| Chris, (...) Because it sets up different standards, which segregate black and whites, and other groups. There is something about not discriminating because of race, sex, etc. Isn't there? Or should we? If we want a fair society, race and sex and (...) (25 years ago, 3-Feb-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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