[lbo-talk] a test scorer's lament

[Carrol Cox]

In the early 1960s someone published a book with the title, "The Tyranny 
of Testing." And he was dealing with the practices of the 1950s before 
testing had become so universal. But Eric's point about the impact 
_essays_ have on students' lives is especially piercing if one realizes, 
what very few English teachers realize, that there is no necessary 
linkage between writing competence and intellectual power! There is 
abundant evidence for the non-existence of such a link for anyone who 
wants to search for it -- but it's hard for anyone who herself lives for 
reading and writing to look at such evidence. The belief that there is a 
linkage is grounded in the individualist ideology generated by market 
relations. The elements of this particular illusion go back further, 
perhaps with the replacement of the roll with the codex, but only in 
advanced capitalism does it really seize control of human thought. 
Perhaps Pope's Dunciad (particularly the prefatory matter  by Martinus 
Scriblernus) should be seen as a last-ditch defense of the speech or 
public rhetoric against its destruction by "literacy."

Carrol

On 5/27/2011 11:06 AM, Eric Beck wrote:


> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Doug Henwood<dhenwood at panix.com>  wrote:
>    
>> Depressing piece on what it's like to score all the standardized test American kids are forced to take:
>>
>> http://monthlyreview.org/2010/12/01/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-test-scorer
>>      
> Pearson has a scoring center in Austin, and though I've been able to
> avoid having to work as a scorer, most of my proofreader/copy editor
> friends have not. From things they've told me, if anything this
> article understates the awfulness of the work and how agonizing it is
> to know that your judgment on students' essays can have a huge impact
> on their lives.
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