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PARTISAN REVIEW
aspired to apply to the top colleges. For everyone else, there was no
longer any reason to study foreign languages, because most public and
private universities no longer required them for admission. The number
of students enrolled in foreign languages declined, and many high schools
stopped offering foreign languages. Similarly, the demand for advanced
courses in mathematics and science fell, since no one "needed" them for
college admission except for the few who planned to apply to institu–
tions like Stanford or Princeton or
MIT.
The withdrawal of support for
the high school curriculum by the colleges was a devastating blow for
those who believed in standards. After all, if the course wasn't needed
to
get into college, why take it and why offer it?
Since the primary college admission test - the SAT - is not directly
connected to what students study in high school, the curriculum was set
adrift by the abandonment of college entry requirements. The student
who takes the SAT needs to know mathematics, but nothing else
learned in high school counts on the test.
It
is a test of "ability" or
"aptitude," not achievement in high school. There was, then, no support
for science, history, literature, or foreign languages in the curriculum, no
incentive to study beyond the most basic courses, and no incentive to do
homework or excel. Students often ask, "Will it be on the test? Do I
need to know this?" The answer to almost everything in the traditional
curriculum was, "No. Take whatever you want."
The removal of incentives, rewards, or sanctions for academic per–
formance happened not by accident in the 1960s and early 1970s but be–
cause it expressed a purposeful, earnest desire to eliminate competition
and any barriers to college entry. Competition implied winners and
losers; that was bad, losing made people feel bad. Noone should ever
feel bad. The literature of the 1960s, eagerly consumed by aspiring teach–
ers, emphasized the oppressive nature of traditional schools. Books like
Summerhill
became bestsellers, and for a time it seemed that American
students could become educated like Rousseau's Emile, free from con–
straints and unwanted directives. The open-classroom movement briefly
(and expensively) swept the country; the walls went down, and students
went "into the community" to learn about real life.
In
1975,
The New York Times
noted that SAT scores had peaked in
1963-64 and had then fallen steadily and precipitously. The decline had
been greatest at the top of the ability distribution; fewer students were
receiving high scores. The College Board, which sponsors the SAT, con–
vened a study panel, which examined all the possible reasons for the score
decline. Some part of the decline resulted from the changing population
of test-takers. But even after the composition of the test-takers stabilized
in the early 1970s, the scores continued to fall. After looking at such
