Tuesday, November 29, 2011

This Isn't Tyranny.

It's at most an uncomfortable nuisance:
As education scandals go, the news that students at some of the best high schools on Long Island paid others to take their College Board tests seems mild. The Long Island scandal pales behind the sex scandal at Penn State.

Yet the fears driving the Long Island scandal come with much broader educational implications than those affecting Penn State. The cheating scandal reflects the tyranny that standardized testing has come to exercise over higher education in America.
Geez. There's no tyranny at all here. What rights are being trampled? If you want to get into a "good" school, learn a lot. Then you, too, can do well on the SAT and not have to cheat.

Why some people can't see that amazes me. The author of that piece is a professor; maybe we should talk about the "tyranny of essays" that causes students to plagiarize.

Again, geez.

1 comment:

David Foster said...

"The cheating scandal reflects the tyranny that standardized testing has come to exercise over higher education in America"...by similar logic, corporate accounting fraud reflects the tyranny that the FASB accounting standards have come to exercise over business.