BOOK REVIEW: The Rape of Alma Mater

A novel by Wells Earl Draughon. Review by "Ken"

Wells Draughon (I assume that the middle name is a patronymic) has recorded an important first-hand history in this fictionalised account of the "dumbing down" and "lefting" of the American collegiate system.

Draughon personifies the "Left" and "Right" viewpoint of campus politics in his fictional colleagues, while leaving his main character, Ray, to balance precariously on the left edge of the political tightrope while juggling his own academic aspirations with his conscience.

Ray is sympathetic to the left but is quietly disapproving of its methodology. He is, however, afraid of losing his tenure in the overcrowded field of English Literature and thereby hangs the classical conflict.

The story starts during the Vietnam War, when many students enrolled in tertiary education in order to avoid the draft. These borderline academics leant towards the "soft" subjects like the arts and literature, where right and wrong are less well defined than in the sciences. Draughon's contention is that these subjects slowly lost definition as logical deconstruction was replaced with jargon, political correctness and sexist/racist sensitivities that were applied backwards to classical literature in order to discredit it and its authors.

When logic and objective analysis were labelled "male thinking" and were therefore sexist, the whole idea of structured learning became untenable and the inevitable collapse of classical education was underway.

Draughon leads us through each decade up to the modern day, documenting the not-so-subtle methodology of a sub-culture determined to neutralise a decidedly polarised society.

Ray's insouciance allows him to believe that the left's dominance over American universities is a product of correct-thinking having led to a quagmire of unforseen outcomes. "Most of them, their hearts are in the right place.." He is heard to say in the dying sentences of the novel

Although it is cleverly constructed and intelligently unfolded, the novel fails as a piece of fiction because the characterisation is subservient to the plot. The story cries out to be character driven but, despite an obvious effort to round out the personalities, they remain shallow, two-dimensional and stereotypical. The book also fails as a piece of history because of the fictional setting. The reader is never sure whether the critical moments are actual events or merely devices to move the plot forward. The attempts to get us to empathise with the characters by introducing irrelevant domestic scenes only succeed in distracting us from the salient point of the story because they are inconsistent and seem to have been slotted in as an afterthought.

This is not an easy novel to read; the sentence construction is often confusing and unintentionally complex because of the author's propensity for expressing more than one idea in a sentence and often mixing tenses and inadvertently referring to the wrong subject. This may simply be poor editing but it constantly detracts from the text and forces the re-reading of paragraphs and sometimes whole pages.

I would like to see a more academic rendering of this important subject (which I am sure the author could provide). His insights are both valid and frightening in their overview of the last forty years of American academia and are well worth listening to.





Top British schools discard dumbed-down government exam system

Some of Britain's most academically successful schools will sink to the bottom of this year's official league tables because they have abandoned "too easy" GCSEs. The schools, including Harrow, Rugby and Manchester grammar, now put their pupils through the international GCSE (IGCSE), which is considered more academically stretching, in subjects such as maths, science and English.

Many experts believe that rather than damage the reputation of the schools, the move will call into question the credibility of the league table system by placing some of the country's best-performing schools near the bottom. The government will this year for the first time publish a national ranking based on the proportion of 16-year-olds gaining five GCSEs at grade C or above that include maths and English.

IGCSEs are not counted as part of the official results because they are not approved by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the government's exam regulator. Many independent schools are dropping the state-approved GCSEs in favour of the international versions because the latter are viewed as more challenging and as a better preparation for A-levels. The exams have mainly been developed for schools overseas and are closer to the former O-levels, scrapped in 1987, rather than to ordinary GCSEs.

Schools offering the IGCSE in maths and English will see steep drops in the number of their pupils getting ordinary GCSEs in these core subjects, pushing them down the rankings. The Department for Education and Skills has no intention of overhauling the league tables to take IGCSEs into account.

Concerns over the academic usefulness of the rankings will be compounded by the high marks given to GNVQs - vocational qualifications. Many state schools have boosted their rankings by encouraging pupils to take GNVQs - vocational qualifications which are rated by the government as equivalent to good GCSE passes.

Ministers have refused to allow IGCSEs to be included in results because the exams do not have official approval. State schools, even the highest achieving, cannot switch to the IGCSE because the government will fund only officially approved courses. The IGCSE is growing in popularity among private schools. Cambridge International Examinations, one of two boards that sets the IGCSE, said that 100 schools offered at least one exam this year.

Independent school heads believe that the decision not to include the IGCSE will make a nonsense of the national school league table. Tim Hands, headmaster of Portsmouth grammar and chairman of the universities committee of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), said: "It is extraordinary that schools like mine will be listed as getting 0% for maths GCSE, yet (the IGCSE) is an exam that is highly rated by universities." The highest take-up of IGCSEs is in maths. It is preferred to the state GCSE because it includes calculus and does not include course work.

More here





EVEN BRITISH EXAMINERS ARE DUMMIES

Teachers have told a bright GCSE student she would have to dumb down in order to pass her exams, prompting concerns that examiners are unqualified to mark some papers. Katie Merchant, 16, was marked down for giving a sophisticated answer in her mock Latin exam. She achieved an A* - the highest mark possible - but lost marks on one question because her answer was too sophisticated. Teachers warned the girl she would be similarly penalised in the real exam, prompting her to express her disappointment in a letter to her Brighton college headteacher, Richard Cairns.

Speaking today, Mr Cairns said examiners often marked papers in subjects they knew little about and that he warned his pupils they would often know more about the subject than the marker. He said: "The very brightest are definitely constrained by the exam marking schemes." He said exam boards awarded the highest marks for prescriptive answers containing key words, meaning a pupil who displayed originality was penalised. Mr Cairns said the problem affected all exam boards. He said markers rewarded children for thinking "mechanistically" rather than "outside of the box". "We're getting very good at teaching children to pass exams but less and less good at teaching them to think laterally," he said.

After consultation with Oxford and Cambridge universities, Brighton college is reducing the maximum number of GCSEs students can take from 10 to nine and making time in the curriculum for critical thinking. Mr Cairns said: "Through league tables, teachers [have] become accountable to their pupils. As a result, [they] want more and more information about how to achieve an A*, which has encouraged exam boards to be more prescriptive and killed off independent thought."

He went on: "I tell my students, 'You must expect the examiner to know less than you. He or she will be working to a rigid marking scheme and they need to look out for key things whether or not they're actually relevant." The independent college was the first school in England to introduce the mandatory study of Mandarin for all Year 9 pupils earlier this year.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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