Re: The SAT: Public Spirited or Preserving Privilege?
Aleta You Mastny (mastny@rci.rutgers.edu)
Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:42:50 -0400
Julian Weissglass wrote:
>
> Dear folks,
>
> The pervasiveness of racism in the United States is clear to most people of
> color. Any white person who has listened to their stories gets a glimpse of
> the reality of racism. One of the key privileges for me as a white leader
> in "equity work"has been to learn about how racism affects people. It
> hasn't been pleasant learning about it, but I am better for knowing what
> the reality is.
>
> Racism operates behind a veil of pretense, denial, and occluded memories.
> White people forget how they bought into the system because it is so
> painful. Our schools, media, and corporations strengthen the veil by
> denying us accurate information about U.S. history or the lives of people
> of color, distracting us into consumption and addictions, entertaining us,
> and interfering with our natural processes of recovering from our hurts in
> this area.
>
> One area that has concerned me is how tests are used to maintain an
> educational systems that continues to deny equal educational opportunity to
> the young people. All testing and assessment practices are embedded in
> people's assumptions about human beings, learning and the nature of socity.
> As you know I've been trying to raise these issues in my work by talking
> about the racist and classist history of IQ and SAT testing. I have found
> that hardly anybody knows about it.
>
> In late February I read an article in Education Week ( a weekly education
> newspaper) by the president of the College Board saying "The development
> of the SAT was public-spirited. The intent was to increase access to
> first-rate higher education."
>
> To me this was a prime example of denial and pretense. So I was motivated
> to write a reply. It appears as a Commentary in their April 15th issue.
> The title is "The SAT: Public Spirited or Preserving Privilege?" You can
> look for it in the newspaper or on the Web
> (http://www.edweek.com/ew/current/31weiss.h17).
>
> I find it encouraging that Education Week will publish an article that
> contains a description of the racist history of the SAT and questions its
> use today. I hope you will fins it useful in your equity work.
>
> Julian Weissglass
> Director, Equity in Mathematics Education Leadership Institute
> CECIMS/MATH
> University of California, Santa Barbara, Ca 93106
>
> Phone: 805-893-7722
> Fax: 805-893-2190
> email: weissgla@math.ucsb.edu
>
> _____________________________________________________________________________
>
> Regional Alliance Equity Network
>
> This list is moderated by Joy Wallace <joy@garnet.col-ed.org>
>
> This list is a service of the Eisenhower Regional Alliance for
> Mathematics and Science Education Reform.
>
> To send a response, send mail to ra-equity@list.terc.edu
> (note: posting to this list is restricted to list members)
> To unsubscribe from the list, send mail to ra_manager@list.terc.edu
> In the body of the message: leave ra-equity
> ______________________________________________________________________________
Dear Julian:
Congratulations on a fine article. I have asked our technology
specialist to forward this information to our SSI List Serve Partners.
How would I get on the edequity@tristram.edc.org list serve? I am
already on the ra-equity list serve.
Thanks for forwarding this information to me.
Aleta Mastny
mastny@rci.rutgers.edu