Feeling lachrymose and wistful, I write today’s post about the forthcoming SAT revisions:
One big change is in the vocabulary questions, which will no longer include obscure words. Instead, the focus will be on what the College Board calls “high utility” words that appear in many contexts, in many disciplines — often with shifting meanings — and they will be tested in context.…the 211-page test specifications and supporting materials being shared publicly include “everything a student needs to know to walk into that test and not be surprised.”
I abhor this noxious abasement of our students’ abilities, bilking them, nay downright abrogating them, of the blithe life to which a broad vocabulary can inure them. This obdurate and pernicious habit of coddling young people’s intellect will make a generation of blunderbusses with the concomitant ignorance of the etymology of all our greatest vocables.
Too wan to continue, I sign off.
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