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As my colleague Rebecca Onion explained last year, the tests were supposedly administered to all voters who “couldn’t prove a certain level of education” but in reality were an obvious attempt to disenfranchise black voters.
More: Louisiana 1964 Literacy Test: Harvard Students Take and Fail the Exam Badly (VIDEO).
11 comments
1 |
freetoken Nov 7, 2014 7:30:10pm |
Even though I think such literacy tests were quite wrong for a supposed democracy, that these Harvard students couldn’t deal with the questions is an indictment of them and their education.
2 |
KerFuFFler Nov 7, 2014 8:29:42pm |
re: #1 freetoken
Even though I think such literacy tests were quite wrong for a supposed democracy, that these Harvard students couldn’t deal with the questions is an indictment of them and their education.
It is altogether possible that the questions themselves were poorly conceived. It is a major problem in any kind of standardized testing that questions designed to ferret out basic comprehension are often ambiguous for students with sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the matter at hand. I don’t know that that was the case in this example, but unless I reviewed that actual questions used, I would have to remain skeptical about the implications regarding the reading comprehension of college students at an elite institution.
4 |
Islamo-Masonic Vourdalak Nov 8, 2014 1:26:32am |
Some questions are extremely badly formulated. To wit: “Spell backwards, forwards”. Should the word “backwards” be spelled (how does it work on paper?) forwards, i.e. written as it is? Or something…
| 5 |
Eigth Immortal Nov 8, 2014 6:30:23am |
Those literacy tests were designed to be unpassable. Hence the Grandfather Clauses to let poor whites vote.
6 |
Lumberhead Nov 8, 2014 7:00:21am |
re: #2 KerFuFFler
It is altogether possible that the questions themselves were poorly conceived. It is a major problem in any kind of standardized testing that questions designed to ferret out basic comprehension are often ambiguous for students with sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the matter at hand. I don’t know that that was the case in this example, but unless I reviewed that actual questions used, I would have to remain skeptical about the implications regarding the reading comprehension of college students at an elite institution.
I don’t believe the questions were poorly conceived. They were specifically designed to make as many people fail as possible. They were designed to be confusing. The goal was not to ferret out basic comprehension. The goal was to keep most blacks and poor whites from voting.
| 7 |
Lumberhead Nov 8, 2014 7:01:04am |
re: #3 Islamo-Masonic Vourdalak
Thank you for posting the actual test.
| 8 |
Lumberhead Nov 8, 2014 7:08:11am |
re: #4 Islamo-Masonic Vourdalak
Some questions are extremely badly formulated. To wit: “Spell backwards, forwards”. Should the word “backwards” be spelled (how does it work on paper?) forwards, i.e. written as it is? Or something…
A prospective voter had approximately 20 seconds per question. One wrong answer disqualified them from voting. It’s more than possible that the smartest person could get one wrong from misunderstanding the questions when time is so constrained.
| 9 |
Lumberhead Nov 8, 2014 7:10:49am |
re: #5 Eigth Immortal
Those literacy tests were designed to be unpassable. Hence the Grandfather Clauses to let poor whites vote.
I forgot about the use of grandfather clauses and allowed for the fig leaf that might not make it seem completely racial.
| 10 |
Lumberhead Nov 8, 2014 7:17:06am |
re: #1 freetoken
Even though I think such literacy tests were quite wrong for a supposed democracy, that these Harvard students couldn’t deal with the questions is an indictment of them and their education.
I understand the point you’re making but I think that it rests on an unfair view of the video. It wasn’t as if the students were part of an experiment and didn’t know where the questions were coming from. In a normal test setting they probably would have done just fine. Even if they didn’t get every question correct, a luxury the original takers didn’t have. I think the makers of the video were showing that some of the questions were purposefully so confusing so that even a Harvard student might fumble those questions.
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