LETTERS
Editors: In "How Critical Is Our Condition?" (Dissent, Fall 1981), Dennis Wrong inaccurately equates opposition to the Vietnam War with isolationism when he writes that McGovern's 1972 candidacy...
...There is, however, no such thing as mind...
...development assistance programs...
...They certainly don't include the education of presidents, nor the arrogance of forgiving or not forgiving sympathies they may have held in the past...
...lower tariff barriers on imports of manufactured goods and raw materials from the poorer countries...
...Obviously, tests should not be used to supersede the assessments of teachers who know the children in much greater depth...
...And this commitment to Israel cannot be impugned...
...There have been occasional articles in the journal supporting NATO and American resistance to Soviet pressures, but there have been many, many more denying, questioning, and even justifying the Soviet military buildup...
...The sad fact is that after decades of norm-referenced tests of both the widely discredited IQ variety and their suspiciously similar though renamed counterparts, the reading tests, no light has been shed on the abovementioned: Gradually, even slyly, our own minds become infected with...
...We need to guard against inappropriate use of tests without interfering with the dialectical process that they make possible...
...In the same section of his essay, Wrong accuses the Nation of "denying the reality of increasing Soviet military power and . . . automatically denouncing any American efforts to contain it...
...Why, then, should the former be exempt from criticism...
...campaign sldgan and all the talk at the time about the need to "reorder our priorities...
...This is not just frivolous...
...Meier could be avoided by instituting superior quality control...
...Yet may I point out that a substantial number of other, not famous, Argentinian prisoners were released on condition that they depart for Israel, because they were Jews...
...On the other hand, new tests may be viewed as presenting a stimulus to critical thinking, as providing intellectual ferment in an area where progress has been stymied...
...Wieseltier's tour de force does not make me a part of an alleged neoconservative conspiracy against 248 Timerman...
...He is said to have made this repulsive remark in conversation...
...I play no part in American politics...
...In '72 he supported greatly expanded and improved U.S...
...It bestows upon all those who have decision-making power over the testees' lives a fixed and preordained way of judging them and often a large role in determining their future...
...Does Mr...
...A test is a standard stimulus situation that purports to measure the magnitude (usually relative, not absolute) of a defined trait...
...The passion of quantification in the social sciences afflicts workers in the field of cognitive psychology where it is, perhaps, even more misguided than elsewhere...
...This is not to say that Marxism has not contributed valuable tools to our critique of capitalism, but that is a far cry from using it as a "scientific" dogma...
...256...
...My reference to the Nation was to an advertisement, presumably a better reflection of editorial opinion than any randomly picked article, suggesting that Reagan's doubting whether the "cold war" had ended was fraught with menace to the nation and the world...
...This citation from Joseph Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason is, I think, a pertinent response to Mr...
...Among them are some leaders of Argentina's Jewry whom Timerman cavalierly has dubbed Judenrat...
...One of the most productive ways to think about the meaning of a construct is to set about measuring it...
...Yes, Timerman wrote in 1979 a moving essay on "Coming Home" to Israel...
...See my article in Midstream, August-September 1981...
...In this area, it has had two supremely unfortunate results...
...More recently he compared Israel to Argentina and claimed that Israel is going to totalitarianism...
...There is much to learn or relearn from R. H. Tawney...
...It was this heartless and arrogant slander that gave me the first impulse to set the Timerman record straight...
...He then corrects me by saying Timerman was freed because he was a "famous" Jew...
...the fallacy of misplaced concreteness...
...Varon has no doubts about Israel in Brookline, Mass...
...The second misfortune is the wasted time and talent of so many researchers...
...Nevertheless, they constitute a valuable tool...
...they provide another voice, an external framework, and a more objective (but not necessarily more valid) index of what is being learned...
...that scoundrel...
...Cooper really think that those who took this line had in mind only ending the Vietnam War...
...Cooper takes exception...
...Let us say it is a draw...
...They "construct" instruments and gather interminable and trivial data that fail to clarify the truly important and interesting things we want to understand: (1) how children learn to read...
...A few of them have actually been written by elderly Communists, e.g., Victor Perlo...
...to my knowledge all that he has said in print is that there are tendencies in Israeli politics that produce in him a fear of fascism...
...The very existence of a test gives the false impression that a terrain has been fully mapped when considerable ambiguity regarding its definition still remains...
...Argentina, if Varon is to be believed, is rather an admirable place...
...4) how to develop the love and taste for reading that will make them inveterate readers...
...2) useful ways to judge how well or ill they do in fact read...
...Professionals in the field resent tests that 249 are not constructed on solid definitional ground, not only because their measurement will be invalid, but also because such tests obscure the lack of resolution of a given problem area...
...Anyway, I was assessing foreign policy as an election issue, not handing out ideological demerits to liberal journals...
...foreign policy...
...The first is the ranking and sorting of people, most especially, in latter days, children...
...This, in turn, creates the unfortunate by-product of convincing the victims to see themselves as their judges see them, often contributing a selffulfilling prophecy...
...Moral philosophy is a neglected area among socialists...
...Timerman's commitment to Israel cannot be impugned...
...I was not referring to McGovern's voting record in the Senate but to his 1972 "America, Come Home...
...And what is so terrible about comparing Israel to Argentina...
...We come to believe that these theoretibal terms (mind, intelligence) are ultimately interpretable as observations, that in the "visible future" we will have the ingenious instruments capable of measuring the "object" to which these terms refer...
...This tradition, in the words of Tawney, "appeals to principles...
...The construction of a test presupposes that (1) an adequate definition of the trait that is to be measured exists, i.e., the trait is well understood and its meaning is widely accepted, and (2) the trait is capable of being translated into item content for the purposes of quantitative assessment...
...It's inferior to any Western country...
...The truth is that I am in this campaign, if one can speak of such, precisely and exclusively because I am a Jew...
...Timerman has some doubts about Israel in Tel Aviv...
...Cooper on no stronger evidence is quite ready to charge the New Republic with "neoconservatism" despite its frequent editorials and articles critical of that tendency (such as Michael Walzer's, reprinted in the very same issue of Dissent that contains my article to which Mr...
...When tests are used to deal with the problem of accountability by providing a periodic external measure of achievement, their deficiencies and limitations need to be borne in mind...
...We have overplayed the importance of Marxist "science" and its historical determinism...
...Editors: Deborah Meier (Fall 1981), one of our most thoughtful and articulate educational leaders, argues the case against reading tests with a fury that is understandable in light of the undue influence these imperfect instruments have had and the devastating effects of their misuse...
...In summer 1982 he made some other statements in Israeli newspapers: "I like Israel...
...After all, they have no book to promote...
...If we are not satisfied with the way tests work, we need to learn to make them better...
...3) how to help them learn to read well...
...But in most cases, the deficiencies of the test-maker's definition are intrinsic to the problem...
...Editors: Leon Wieseltier read a memoir of mine about my days as Israeli ambassador in Paraguay and tried to deduce from it my "political character...
...If, indeed, the construction and use of tests constitute a vehicle for clarifying major issues, then we cannot afford to stifle such explorations...
...Wieseltier mentions that I have "many friends in Latin America...
...and closer consultation with NATO members on all aspects of U.S...
...He also is in favor of a Palestinian state...
...Wieseltier is decent enough to call this comparison "really cruel...
...William Norris is one who, although considered even by himself a Marxist, was expressing a vision based on socialist morals...
...In these respects McGovern was more of an internationalist than Nixon...
...Editors: I was much heartened to see the inclusion of some of R. H. Tawney's writings in your journal (Fall 1981), not to mention the essay by Irving Howe "On the Moral Basis of Socialism...
...What is Israel's claim to fame in the U.S...
...He quotes [in his article "The Many Trials of Jacobo Timerman," Dissent, Fall 1981] my five-line thumbnail sketch of President Stroessner, who once admired Hitler and now is solidly in the American camp, and concludes: "Varon apparently can forgive a lot...
...see for example his moving essay "Coming Home...
...Let us for a moment review what testing is about...
...It is not arrogant not to forgive a man for having thrown in with Hitler...
...I can live with this correction...
...But advances in testing will not be forthcoming unless the flow of test data continues...
...Timerman's "repulsive remark" was quoted by several columnists and never challenged by their author...
...No non-Jewish desaparecido had similar luck...
...Though based on a set of a priori assumptions about a single "correct" response to a given question (stimulus...
...I also feel it's a bit one-sided to criticize the Nation on this score without mentioning the slide into cold warriorism of the New Republic, which has recently published the likes of Arnaud de Borchgrave, Constantine Menges, and Michael Ledeen, not to mention Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...they reflect the fact that the trait is not yet well understood...
...Some test-makers deliberately choose simplistic definitions because they can be easily accommodated to the test format...
...Wieseltier is blissfully unaware of an ambassador's duties...
...Is the Nation so inextricably bound to the New Republic that a critical reference to one must be balanced by a similar reference to the other...
...Wieseltier says in a footnote: Timerman's critics like to cite his description of Israel as "fascist...
...While I am not in total agreement with the Nation's views on East-West relations, I think Wrong's charge is patently hyperbolic...
...That it is a "sister-democracy," "the only democracy in the Middle East...
...For the rest, I refer him back to my article and its fundamental argument with which he simply did not deal...
...However, although he was one of the most important socialist moralists, there are others that should be "rehabilitated...
...I suppose he expected me to interject into my listing of facts a comment as f.i...
...and the same kind of assumptions about what constitutes a meaningful question, the norm-referenced reading test tends to relegate people to their permanent "place" in society...
...As he wrote, An appeal to principles is the condition of any considerable reconstruction of society, because social institutions are the visible expression of the scale of moral values that rules the minds of individuals, and it is impossible to alter institutions without altering that moral valuation...
...quite the contrary, he was freed for it...
...I never will be an Israeli and I don't want to be one...
...Unfortunately, the simple summary statement of a test score is much easier to communicate and disseminate than other forms of pupil evaluation, and its quantitative form of expression tends to make such data seem more definitive than they really are...
...Surely the New Republic's neoconservative rhetoric on East-West relations is no less deplorable than what Wrong sees as the Nation's insufficient concern with the Soviet threat...
...It is also as an Israeli that I am against the canonization of Jacobo Timerman...
...Dissent, Fall 1981), Dennis Wrong inaccurately equates opposition to the Vietnam War with isolationism when he writes that McGovern's 1972 candidacy represented "an essentially isolationist rejection of American involvement in world politics...
...There are also Martin Buber, Erich Fromm, and others in the tradition of religious (Christian, Jewish, humanist) socialists...
...This is unfortunate because, I think, the cutting edge of socialism is its moral outrage at the injustices of capitalism...
...That is not my view either of the journals or of the great powers...
...Yet two paragraphs later he asserts that "Timerman never said he was detained because he was a Jew," which would seem to coincide with my statement...
...A crucial element in test construction is finding and using an adequate definition of the trait in question...
...However, before we outlaw tests or relegate them to the trash can, we need to examine more fully why tests fail and how they might be useful despite their fallibility...
...Zimiles's misguided reliance on the magic of numbers...
...Now, with the social meanness that permeates our (Continued on page 256) 250 LETTERS (continuea from page 250) political climate, it is time to reassess our socialist critique and vision...
...With regard to the latter premise, the task of adapting the substantive content of a complicated trait to fit a test format, not unlike that of representing a three-dimensional structure in two-dimensional space, is formidable but often can be achieved without excessive distortion...
...The process of constructing a test, the data that it ultimately generates, and the wave of criticism that it arouses are major occasions for reassessing and reformulating the trait in question...
...Rather, as some people (who write frequently for the Nation but much less often for the New Republic) think that any negative judgment of the Soviet Union requires an equating black mark for the United States, e.g., one mustn't deplore events in Poland without bringing up El Salvador...
...Can we afford not to heed such an appeal any longer...
...Remove this image, and you pull the rug from under Israel's postulate for special treatment by the U.S...
...He travels on an Israeli passport.] Life in Israel is unbearable...
...He credits me with having started the "campaign against Timerman" and finds it "disgraceful" that this campaign "was begun by Jews...
...It is probable that the shoddy examples of item construction cited by Ms...
...My friends are devoted and courageous men and if they can be reproached of something, it is that they are not hysterical...
...I was not so "hyperbolic" as to accuse the journal of a pro-Soviet bias, although Mr...
...Further, isolated instances of absurd or inappropriate test items are inconsequential unless it can be shown that all items of a given test, or a number sufficiently large to affect the outcome, suffer from such deficiencies...
...there are only individual minds, each belonging not to "man" but to individual human beings...
...I don't like the Israelis...
...Wieseltier takes exception to my assertion that "Timerman was not arrested for being Jewish...
...McGovern sensibly called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, but he was (and is) hardly an isolationist...
...It is a duty...
Vol. 29 • April 1982 • No. 2
