The big test
the secret history of the American meritocracy
1st rev. pbk. ed.
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Author
Publication
2000 - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, New York (State)
Language
English
Word Count
101,500 words, Guess
Page Count
406 pages
Identifiers
- Internet Archivebigtestsecrethis00lema_0
- ISBN-100374527512
- ISBN-139780374527518
- Goodreads49202
- LibraryThing44655
and 4 more
- Library of Congress Control Number2001268120
- OCLC Control Number45538660
- Better World Books9780374527518
- Open LibraryOL3963732M
Classifications
- LCCLB3051 .L44 2000
- LCCLB3051.L44 2000
- DDC371.26/0973
Description
"This book shows us for the first time the ideas, the people, and the politics behind the fifty-year-old system that determines the course of Americans' lives." "It began as a utopian experiment - launched by James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard University, and Henry Chauncey, head of the brand-new Educational Testing Service (ETS) - to use the then-young science of intelligence testing to assess and sort American students fairly and dispassionately in order to create a new democratic elite that would lead postwar America to progress, strength, and prosperity. No writer before Nicholas Lemann has gained access to the archives of the all-powerful ETS, and none has understood the significance of this extraordinary drama." "Lemann describes the consequences, for individual lives and for society as a whole, of this effort to create a new meritocracy." "For the utopian experiment didn't turn out as planned. It created a new elite but also generated conflict and tension, particularly over the issue of race, and America is now a society whose best-educated, most privileged, and most powerful people seem to be leaders without followers - prosperous, resented figures who don't hold the country together around their ideas yet who are trying, like the old elite, to perpetuate themselves down through the generations. Lemann shows that this American meritocracy is neither natural nor inevitable, and it does not apportion opportunity equally or fairly."--BOOK JACKET.
Description
Chronicles the history of the Educational Testing Service and discusses how it was created, why researchers believed it would help create a new class of intelligent Americans, how the plan backfired, and how it affected American history.
Subjects
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Times
Other Editions
- The big test: the secret history of the American meritocracy
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