| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 25, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
'The Vision behind the American Meritocracy...Is Extremely Elitist' In a Q&A, author Nicholas Lemann tells why he wrote The Big Test Nicholas Lemann, a staff writer with The New Yorker, is the author of a new book, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Business Week Books Editor Hardy Green, who reviewed The Big Test in the Oct. 25 issue of Business Week, recently interviewed the author on his new work. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation: Q: The Big Test describes how, starting in the 1940s, a group of American educators employed intelligence testing and selective college admissions to create a new elite to run the country -- a group you call the ''meritocracy.'' How did you come up with the idea for the book? A: Most of us have grown up in this system, with testing and education determining one's place in society. Now, it seems natural -- just the way the world works. It's hard even to see that there is a system. But when I was working on my previous book [The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America], I was with these poor people who lived in a Chicago housing project. I thought to myself, ''These people aren't part of the system.'' I saw a need to define and tell the story of that system. I decided immediately to look at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the outfit behind the SAT college-entrance exams. I wrote them a letter, asking for access to their archives. They agreed. They had so much stuff that I thought that maybe I should write a book only on testing. But I didn't want the book just to be part of the testing debate. Instead, it became the story of a group of people who wanted to remake part of American society. The real story is that of an idea, who thought of it, and how it played out. The story of how it felt growing up in the system and what were its political consequences. Q: You yourself are an alumnus of Harvard College, an elite institution whose onetime president, James Bryant Conant, was a key figure in the creation of this ''meritocracy.'' How did your own experience influence your writing? A: That was hugely important to me. What we often don't see is how you get tracked into a fairly narrow number of things to do with your life. I struggled for a number of years to become a journalist. That's not really one of the approved things to do with a Harvard education: When I was there, most people felt they should go to law school or medical school. Other professions seemed risky and scary. I found myself personally struggling with the feeling that something was wrong with me. That feeling made me think about the system a lot. Q: The Big Test begins with a focus on elite East Coast institutions such as Harvard and Yale and ends on the West Coast, where you concentrate on the fight over the California ballot initiative Proposition 209, which intended to end affirmative action in that state. Why did the story take you in that direction? A: I wanted to avoid having it look like an East Coast book and to show how this is a national system. Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California during the 1960s, was very much a part of the same intellectual, social, and political tendency as the founders of ETS. He made the SAT a requirement for entrance into the University of California. Then, affirmative action became a way of making a small adjustment that would benefit minorities who might not do so well on standardized tests. And Proposition 209 was a direct consequence of those decisions. Q: Your book is particularly critical of President Clinton, who is shown as never taking a clear stand on affirmative action, never saying whether he was for or against Prop 209. A: It was a chance to watch him in action up close. As I worked on this, it was striking how uncannily good he was at defusing the issue. When Prop 209 came along, it looked to be extremely dangerous to Clinton. His adviser, George Stephanopoulous, thought they were dead. But Clinton skillfully dodged the bullet. He saved himself but didn't help the U.S. to solve the thorny problem. It's an amazing thing: He can look like he is being courageous, but on such occasions, when you go back and read what he has said, you realize that he didn't say what you thought at all. He has an eerie skill at that. So Clinton brilliantly figured out how to keep an issue from harming his own political fortunes. But in the end, there's little Clinton legacy on affirmative action. Things are almost exactly as they were before he became President: A total muddle. Things have been left up to the Supreme Court, which will face a major case on affirmative action in the middle of the next Presidential term. Q: The book ends with a hope that America can return to more democratic ways, with schools aiming not to sort people according to abilities, but to ''teach as many people as possible as well as possible'' -- expanding opportunity, not determining results. Is this a realistic wish? A: Yes. When you look at the vision behind the American meritocracy, you see that it is extremely elitist: To create a rank ordering by worth. The founders thought that choosing just the right elite would solve all social problems. But their idea has not had and never will have broad public support. It benefits those whom it benefits, and they will fight to keep it. But it ends up benefiting too few people -- the meritocratic system ignored the issue of school quality for the many. Over the next 50 years, we will see an emphasis placed on improving the overall quality of American schools. That's where the action will be. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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RELATED ITEMS How the SATs Changed America PHOTO: Cover, ``The Big Test'' ONLINE ORIGINAL: ``The Vision behind the American Meritocracy...Is Extremely Elitist'' INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online | |||
