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PAR.TISAN R.EVLEW
him that he'd already made many important contributions to the edu–
cational system, but that he could make another one by setting up a
portable pension system, so that professors could move from one institu–
tion to another. Carnegie turned it down, saying that he'd be perfectly
willing to do it for these fine institutions but didn't want to sit in judg–
ment on all the fly-by-night and phony colleges across the country. They
said, "Why don't you just provide this pension for those universities that
accept only students who've had four years of math and two years of
history and four years of English?"
He did, and that was the Carnegie unit. It would determine the
structure of high schools, and it was all put in there to develop a stan–
dard for the Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association. Once that was
established as the college entry standard, it became the structure of the
high schools. People kept asking, "What are these stupid Carnegie units
about? Why does everything in high school have to be structured in that
way?" But once colleges and universities gave up their admission stan–
dards - ninety-five percent of them today no longer select students, they
recruit them - there no longer were standards. Once upon a time there
were College Entrance Examination boards, there were New York State
Regents Examinations. They still exist but are no longer required.
Youngsters don't have to take them. Colleges don't require them, and
they have been very watered down. Essentially, once colleges announce
what they require teachers start saying, "Well then , we have to prepare
students for that." They ask, "In what grade do we prepare them? And
what are the elementary school teachers responsible for?" Textbooks
then have to reflect this. Once ninety-five percent of the institutions say,
"If you're alive and breathing at age eighteen we want you, as long as
you pay the tuition, or can get somebody to pay for you," the entire
curriculum then becomes very, very flexible. It really means the curricu–
lum is a matter of choice, not just for each district, but for each teacher.
It does something else, too. I was very surprised recently to ee the
results of a national assessment of mathematics achievement. I was sure
that the youngsters in private and parochial schools would do better be–
cause their parents are more educated, they come from wealthier homes,
and seventy-five percent of private and parochial schools require an en–
trance exam, and all of them can kick out kids. The assessment found
that at the end of high school these youngsters do just as poorly as
public school youngsters. Those who conducted the study started asking
themselves, "Why do youngsters who do more homework, take more
math, are going to schools where they don't have all the violence and
disturbances we have in many of our public schools, end up with the
same results?" Terrible results by the way. I've looked and looked, and
the only answer I've found is that when youngsters get to high school,
