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"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.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
20th century, Ability, Educational Testing Service, Educational tests and measurements, Elite (Social sciences), History, Intelligence tests, Testing, United States, Tests, Élite (Sciences sociales), Intelligence, Histoire, Tests et mesures en éducation, Aptitude, Elites, Studieresultaten, Ability grouping in education, Education, united states, New York Times reviewedPeople
Henry Chauncey (1905-)Places
United StatesTimes
20th centuryShowing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
November 16, 2000, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
0374527512 9780374527518
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zzzz
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WorldCat
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2
The big test: the secret history of the American meritocracy
2000, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
- 1st rev. pbk. ed.
0374527512 9780374527518
|
eeee
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3
The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
October 1, 1999, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
0374299846 9780374299842
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
4
The big test: the secret history of the American meritocracy
1999, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
- 1st ed.
0374299846 9780374299842
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
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Includes index.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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