Wednesday, September 2, 1998

How to up SAT scores

 I just read Elliot's Krieger's good news article reporting that

        SAT scores have in actually increased in Rhode Island - for the first

        time in three years and then only modestly ( 4-points ).

              I remember this advice for improving your SAT score in the mid-

        Sixties at Hope High School: You've got to read, read, READ !

                I still " read, read, READ " but with more adult motivations

        ( curiosity about the world, a desire to manipulate my enemies and

        con my friends , intellectual voyeurism , a certain unsaintly

        pleasure in the misery of OTHERS, strategies for REVENGE, learning

        how to live cheaper and CHEAPER ... a genuine interest in HORROR

        stories ... )

              One of my favorite Twilight Zone stories is " Time enough at

        last !  " ( The hero FINALLY got the time he needed to read, for him

        life's greatest pleasure . )

                 Now then since  my high school days I have peeked into

        those distinctly uninviting Scholastic Assessment Test ( SAT )

        practice books. It struck me way back that one CERTAIN way to

        improve SAT scores is to minimize their BOREDOM. I swear those

        tests are designed by very aberrant minds with a pathological

        need to bore themselves and everybody else to death.

             If the dead could talk, they would protest 99 out of 100

        tedious, pedantic paragraphs STILL found in this momentous

        test.

               It is a wonder that most high school students even stay

        awake for the four hours!

             Let them read paragraphs about SEX IN THE WHITEHOUSE

        ( up to the standards of TIME magazine ) or pop -analysis

        of Princess Diana ( up to NEW YORK TIMES standards ).

               We will discover that we have undreamed of academic

        talent not only in Rhode Island but everywhere else in this

        USA .

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Ron