Is *this* how SATs will turn out with an essay component?

ONE OF THE difficulties of taking A level exams is when you get your marks back, they do not come with the original papers. If you made a mistake, you do not know what it was. I was disappointed yesterday with my own results:

I had hoped to accept the place at Somerville College, Oxford I was offered last December, but I required at least AAB to do so, so now I will probably retake some of my A levels and reapply. What interests me, however, is looking at my fourth subject. We were all encouraged to take "General Studies", a Mickey Mouse subject that covers everything, and ends up teaching you nothing you do not know already (common knowledge for anyone intelligent). Specialising in "General" Studies is a concept so absurd it should have activated my Mickey Mouse alarm, but it did not, so I went on to take its three papers at A level. The first was on the "Scientific and Cultural Domains", in which I was asked to write about a scientist (I praised the socialist biologist Richard Dawkins), and examine the implications of a Guardian article (it is always The Guardian or Observer). The mark came back: 86/90 (A). Not bad at all.

But then I looked at my marks for the others. The Social Domain: 36/90 (E). Culture Science and Society 44/120 (Ungraded).

So what happened in the second and third papers? The second gave various options, but in one part, I chose the question allowing the student to make a case for or against private education, or more specifically, whether it should be made illegal. I naturally examined the case from both sides, before equally naturally concluding what seems reasonable enough: that private education allows more diversity and choice, and leaves more resources for state school pupils (like myself). I got an E.

In the third, the main essay was in examining an article in the Observer talking about population movements and whether it mattered that in 50 or 60 years whites in Britain would be a minority under current government figures. On the one side were quotes from Nick Griffin, Chairman of Neo-Nazi BNP, on the other by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a strong supporter of multi-culturalism. I made clear that the BNP were wrong to believe that multi-racial societies cannot work. I pointed to countries like America and Canada where this was disproved. But I noted too that multi-cultural societies - something quite different - were often divided and violent. I pointed to Kosovo, Northern Ireland and the Middle East as examples of that. I concluded that a society can survive in peace whatever the racial mix-up so long as it has the common culture that unites such places as the USA. Hardly a racist argument by any fair standards. The paper wasn't even graded.

Now I do not care about my General Studies marks. I got offers from five colleges in the last year, all of them excluding it from the list of subjects the grades in which they were interested. But it does seem awfully strange that I can get such different grades for filling in similar papers in the same way. If these tests are really vetting for political views, it is a disgrace, and I have to wonder what the markers of the second and third papers were thinking. Arguing for private education and against multi-culturalism will not appeal to the Guardianistas who dominate teaching and exam boards. But that isn't the point. Whatever views expressed, they should be marked fairly, on grounds of writing, knowledge and ability. This does not appear to have been what happened in this case.

[Edit: A number of American sites have been interested in this piece, worried that it represents what they will have to face if the SAT test includes an essay component, including the NRO Corner and a poster on Techsideline.com. Just to clarify the British 'A' level grading system, it offers five grades - A to E. If you gain more than 40%, you get one of those grades. If not, the paper is Ungraded. So in the second paper, I was given the bottom grade.]

Ideological grading of SATs or other entrance exam and application essays is good preparation for what the student will actually encounter once they are enrolled. In most colleges, the leftist professors and TAs will chew up and spit out anyone daring to voice a conservative opinion. They will have to learn to go down in flames, maybe scoring a few converts among their fellow students who witness their immolation, or spout the leftist line like they believe it.

For the record, I chose the former, and because I majored in a technical discipline, with limited opportunities for subjective grading, the damage probably accounted for two tenths of a point on my GPA. C'est la vie - Proximity to Fenway Park accounted for another tenth. Anyway, at least I could hold my head high.

Someone majoring in liberal arts or other soft discipline, however, is probably screwed, except in a few conservative schools.

This is VERY scary!!! Look how they try to force the students to take the "right" (re:wrong) side of the issue of multiculturalism. The person against multiculturalism is a Neo-Nazi!

If you had the Neo-Nazi argue that 2002's computers were better than 1992's computers, you would STILL have the vast majority of the kids write about how wrong he is!

Groupthink is the only thing public shools are successfully teaching kids today. This proves it.

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