大学英语高级写作教程Unit 8 Summary Writing.ppt

Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, wants his university to drop the SAT, partly to improve the student body’s racial and ethnic diversity. However, in any society, be it Periclean Athens or Elizabethan England or modern America, the question is not whether elites shall prevail, but which elites shall prevail. So something must perform the predictive function assigned to the SAT. The modern, democratic ideal was pithily expressed by the modern but undemocratic Napoleon — “careers open to talents.” In the 1950s that ideal led two unlikely subversives, Harvard’s President James B. Conant and a Harvard administrator, Henry Chauncy, to seek an aptitude test of verbal and quantitative reasoning to shatter the grip that an elite of inherited wealth had on elite institutions. In 1946 there were 2.4 million students on four-year campuses. That number grew slowly through 1960, when there were 3.2 million. Then came the explosion: by 1970 there were 7.5 million. Today there are 9.3 million. The problem of sorting through such numbers, and connecting colleges with suitable talents, is complicated because America does not have, and probably should not have, a uniform national achievement test for high school seniors. That would require something else America does not have, and probably should not have, a national curriculum. ??? The vast majority of America’s 2,300 four-year post-secondary schools have, in effect, open admissions: If you have a pulse and a high school diploma, you can attend. So the SAT controversy is primarily important only to the minority of high-school high achievers seeking admission to the small minority of highly selective institutions. The problem around which educators tip-toe is that the SAT, which became a mass experience during the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, quickly made affirmative action in college admissions simultaneously “necessary” and embarrassing. By purporting to measure