The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicolas Lemann, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. 406pp.
The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicolas Lemann, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. 406pp. |
The dream of a nation led by persons who have won their rank by virtue of merit rather than wealth inspired the men whose lives were dedicated to the development, canonization and marketing of the Big Test, known to us all as the SAT, the arbiter of university entrance and subsequent life status. They dreamed that a meritocracy based on intellectual competence would lead to greater democratization of American society.
Nicolas Lemann tells the "secret history" of this movement through detailed narratives on the major players such as Henry Chauncey, whose passion for tests of all kinds evolved into his life's mission, the founding of the Educational Testing Service and the promotion of the SAT; James Bryant Conant, Harvard president, whose vision was that education should become "the repository of opportunity," replacing class privilege as the means to mobility and power; Clark Kerr, president of U.C. Berkeley, who envisioned a university attended by only the top eighth of high school graduates.
The author also relates the life trajectories of representative figures who found their way into the test-based meritocracy -- for example, he introduces us to some of the first women to enter Yale Law School and some of the first Asians, including Bill Lann Lee, whom he depicts as a somewhat reluctant organizer of Asian student unity. Later, in 1997, President Clinton would call Lee to the post of Assistant Attorney General.
While detailing the historic activities of major and minor figures in the history of testing, the author also discusses at length many issues related to the tests controversy -- such as the highly disputed policy of draft deferment for young men who scored high on the SAT, and the struggles between the proponents of affirmative action and the promoters of California's Proposition 209. The book is chock-full, spanning six decades of America's wrestling over how to separate the wheat from the chaff, to find and educate its most talented and deserving.
The weave of so much detail is sometimes intriguing, sometimes tedious. One feels at points that The Big Test might have been a nifty little book, for the moral of the stories is quite simply that the meritocracy movement, based on the use of exams which measured intelligence very narrowly and with culturally/racially biased items, succeeded only in creating a somewhat different kind of power elite, not in democratizing opportunity in American society.
What does the author recommend as an alternative for equalizing educational opportunity in the U.S.? Lemann proposes a national high school curriculum upon which all students would be examined. Those who master the curriculum and excel on the tests would be eligible for university. The author's idea rests on the assumption that every youngster would have access to quality instruction and systematic preparation for the examination. If facilities, teaching competence and learning resources were equal in our schools across the country, this might be the case; however, we know the inequities of our school system. So we have come full circle.
Perhaps what is missing here is the Big Picture. Equal educational opportunity --the freedom to move through society, discovering and fulfilling one's own potential -- would accompany a more equitable distribution of other essential goods: adequate employment, food, shelter, health care. Can we devise measures to equalize educational opportunity and subsequent quality of life without first striving to meet such basic human needs of all citizens? Tests exclude systematically the majority of children of color and the poor from opportunities to develop their abilities, and many feel hopeless about their future. They attend dilapidated schools with frustrated teachers, many of whom have long ago ceased striving for excellence in disorganized bureaucratic systems. The children are often hungry and hence less capable of focusing their attention. Few have parents or relatives who are available to coach them and encourage them to study. They do not speak or write the language of the dominant culture, and would have to make intense effort to master it under the guidance of someone who really cared. Into this terrain interject the concept of meritocracy and apply the Big Test. We cannot miss the obvious contradictions for a society that aspires to democracy.
Gloria House is The Witness' poetry editor and a longtime Detroit activist and educator.