LETTERS
LETTERS Buddy, spare a billion? Please advise if Gordon Ray field ["Strangling Debtor Democracies," April] is an officer of any particular bank, and if so, what is the name? A man so...
...Then there's the "cultural bias" issue...
...It checks carefully to be sure I use the funds for the purpose described, then requires a healthy hunk of security—just in case...
...A promise to democratize is hardly security—history being what it is...
...They sometimes did this in an attempt to paper over strong persona/ differences within the party, as Mondale did last year...
...Their caucusing, formal or informal, is a reaction to a failure of leadership, and rounding up the media's usual suspect isn't really the way to pillory those who deserve the blame for the Democrats' decline...
...But usually it was an attempt to avoid adopting what Gov...
...We can do so accurately with the sentence "Biff equivocated" as we can with the sentence "Senora Aguilar equivocated ." Neither item is a "fairer" test of verbal knowledge than the other...
...So what...
...Take the tired complaint that the tests reward predictable and humorless thinking...
...A man so generous is one I would like to know...
...The idea that any banker should use my deposits (the bankers don't own the money, you know) for bad loans, then take a noninterest bearing IOU from a bankrupt organization, is an idea that has little attraction...
...My bank, unfortunately, expects me to pay back my loans...
...Let Gordon remember it could be his money that an unwise banker has loaned to a non-paying country...
...If, on the contrary, he suppresses the witty impulse and selects the appropriate (dull, conventional) response, will his creativity be permanently crippled...
...I would indeed promise to be democratic with those spoiled children, but after all, a lot of merchants would surely suffer if the children were deprived of the level of life to which the first loan had caused them to become accustomed...
...The law of contracts is a pretty good thing...
...Most of the issues the caucus members and organizers have pushed in platform committee and floor fights are legitimate, and the fact that society hasn't resolved them, and the Democratic leadership can't even be made to stand behind their resolution, is much more the problem than an "image" brought on by the two-year-old caucus procedures...
...If he willfully marks "bring me a spoon" as the best response to a lapful of spilled soup (knowing that the task is to demonstrate comprehension of French, not the ability to amuse a dinner companion), he should expect to forfeit some points...
...His criticisms are not only stale but also largely unperceptive and trivial...
...L. S. PETERSON Hastings, Nebraska Blame the DNC, not caucuses One angle I think is missing from Paul Barrett's excellent "Caucus-Happy Democrats" article [April]: the tension between the interested, activist grassroots members, who in most cases are more ideologically informed and coherent, and the Democratic party's overall leaders...
...The "rewards conventional thinking" complaint is a frivolous one that assumes the test-taker doesn't know why he's taking the test or what he wants to prove by it...
...He thinks the nose-counting should be more meticulous...
...RONALD GRIMES Silver Spring, Maryland So you've decided to join the ETS bashers...
...For 30 minutes he's expected to act sober and serious and to refrain from making irrelevant wisecracks...
...Suppose we want to test someone's knowledge of the verb equivocate...
...He overlooks that these references are meaningless window dressing to assuage pressure groups or that they bear no relation to the test's fairness as a measurement device...
...Surely he would give me the loan...
...Owen is concerned that some bright student may give a "wrong" answer to a question as the result of being able to see more possibilities than were dreamt of by the wits of ETS...
...A young person who takes a test to prove his competence in a subject area is much like one who goes to a job interview...
...I plan to borrow from him at his bank—and deposit in mine...
...Well, why not...
...You borrow—you better repay...
...G. R. PATERSON Evanston, Illinois...
...From Gordon I would borrow, let my children live extravagantly, make risky investments, and on due date, I would simply advise him I was unable to pay, but would need another loan...
...Yet when Owen discusses ETS's ritual counting and balancing of female and minority references, his only complaint is that this is done cursorily...
...Babbitt terms "overreaching, unifying themes of the party in the national interest ." The leaders were afraid that these themes would be too radical, despite the endorsement of a majority of the people who actually did the party's work as activists...
...Regrettably, no...
...RICHARD S. PIEDMONTE Concord, California To the defense of ETS It's always amusing to read a new installment in the horrors of the Educational Testing Service ["How They Write the SAT," David Owen, April...
...It might be his bank that folds because the loan can't be paid...
...However, anyone who can discern (as does the author) valid reasons for more than one choice is certainly capable of also discerning, like Owen, that ETS invariably rewards the most pedestrian, conventional, humorless, and conformist response...
...Surely an old fashioned, if stable, operation...
...Come off it...
...Over the last ten years every other national magazine has done its ETS piece, and somebody has to bring up the rear...
...The test-taker's creed: Never be clever...
...The caucuses should go, but they could have been avoided in the first place...
...The latter, during the 16 years that produced the four presidential defeats Barrett refers to, certainly helped cut each other up during primary season, but tended at all times to start mouthing the sort of bland, shibboleths that lead to the impression America has a one-party system...
...He has simply missed the story...
...But does David Owen have any new insights into the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and their creators...
...Why shouldn't a gay or lesbian activist who knows damn well that social ideology is just as concrete an issue as defense spending, or an Hispanic' whose family contains members who work below minimum wage or are taunted with "green-card" jokes, get a little frenzied over the "Let's All Pull Together" policies and rhetoric of the Mondales, O'Briens, O'Neills, Nunns, and Peppers...
Vol. 17 • June 1985 • No. 5
