Archive [March 2000]

“Quality education is a fundamental Democratic principle,” claims Bill Bradley, “and it is one of the crucial issues at stake in this election.” He and Algore are in a hot competition to see who wants to spend the most federal money on (and exert the most federal control over) American schools.

Well, if quality education is so precious to Democrats, who have controlled the teachers’ unions and the schools for decades, why is Bradley proposing “help for distressed public schools” And why is he arguing that the status quo amounts to “educational malpractice”?

Educational malpractice by whom, Mr. Bradley?

Still, the libs believe that they “own” the education issue. Well, they should also be made to own the results of decades of their educational practices. Or rather — thank you, Mr. Bradley, for your candor — malpractices.

A case in point: The Lego test. Apparently, some graduates of American high schools are so ill-equipped to handle college entrance exams that some institutions of “higher learning” are admitting students based on their ability to play with Legos.

I am not making this up. According to an Associated Press report titled, “LEGOS COULD REPLACE PENCIL AND PAPER COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMS,” the performance of certain students is so poor that nine American colleges and universities have devised a substitute “test”. The alternative exam includes building a robot out of Legos.

The excuse for this travesty goes like this: traditional tests like the SAT or ACT — which actually, according to every objective study, measure students ability to succeed in college — aren’t sophisticated enough. They don’t reveal important talents like “initiative, teamwork and leadership.’ Obviously, we need a more sophisticated method. Plastic blocks.

Yes, and so now some teenagers get to take a new kind of exam — billed as “an experiment aimed at recruiting diverse students who otherwise might not win admission,” according to AP. Translation: their grades and test scores aren’t good enough.

As Terry Swenson, admissions dean for Colorado College puts it, the new approach “puts more emphasis on hard-to-measure characteristics and less on the standardized tests that frankly have been a stumbling block for disadvantaged and minority students.” Other colleges participating are Beloit, Carlton, Grinnell and Macalester and four state universities — Penn State, Rutgers, Delaware and Michigan.

This is how it works. Disadvantaged and minority students are selected to participate in a bunch of “workshop activities.” In the Lego section, groups of eight to ten of these kids are given a box of Legos and a mission: in 10 minutes, build a robot like one sitting on a table in an adjacent room.

Each student is allowed to look at the robot, one at a time. But the challenge is formidable. They aren’t allowed to take notes! They must memorize the robot. “Evaluators then grade members of the group as they snap together their version of the robot.”

Yes, that’s right. High school seniors are graded on building a robot out of Legos. (Although I wager that, too, will eventually be modified. Grades are so unfair, you know.)

Colorado’s Terry Swenson insists that “this is not selecting students by their ability to use Lego blocks” — although that’s precisely what it is. He claims that “the Legos are a mechanism to force students to interact and see which ones emerge as leaders.”

Oh. Although one might be forgiven for asking, “Leaders of what?”

Other “workshop activities” include public speaking, conflict-resolution drills and personal interviews.

What, pray tell, is a “conflict-resolution drill”?

And does it involve Tinker Toys?

According to AP, the pilot program will admit a total of 100 students, chosen from a group of 700 New York public high school seniors. “Most in the pool were African-Americans and Hispanics who had modest grades and standardized test scores but personal qualities that counselors believed would let them succeed at selective colleges.”

One minor detail. The only “personal qualities” that “let” students succeed in college are the ability to study for and perform on college exams — which do not include Legos.

My friends, this is an outrage. It is a declaration of surrender. How dare we expect so little of these kids? Where are the parents protesting? Where are the teachers’ representatives, demanding an apology for this insult to their ability to prepare students for college? Where is Jesse Jackson — so quick to march in defense of rioting high school thugs? Why is he not taking to the airwaves, why is he not demonstrating on behalf of the academic ability of these kids?

This is nothing less than, as Gov. George W. Bush accurately puts it, “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.”

And why is it, that the liberals’ first impulse — in addition to their middle impulse and their last impulse and all impulses in between — is always and ever to lower standards? Hmm?

I have a better idea. Instead of assuming they can’t, why not teach these kids to succeed?