Is the US National Teachers Exam Racist?

Written by Tom Woods on July 28, 2023. Posted in Current News

In my last email I mentioned the National Teachers Exam, which was recently found to be discriminatory and in violation of the civil-rights laws because too many whites and Asians passed it, and too many blacks and Hispanics failed

Since then Richard Hanania, whom I’ve featured as a guest on the Tom Woods Show, has tracked down a sample test and shared problems from it.

To put it politely, if you cannot answer these questions, you should not be a teacher.

You may think I’m being unkind in what follows below. If anything, I’m being astonishingly restrained.

It is an outrage that hundreds of blacks are being paid over $1 million each in reparations for this test, simply because they failed it. It encourages mediocrity (actually, worse), victimhood, the destruction of standards, racial tension, and on and on.

You’ll recall from yesterday’s email that one of the questions required only a comprehension of what two-thirds is. All you needed to know is that two-thirds falls between zero and one, and not between two and three.

So let’s see what else was so unreasonable to expect prospective teachers to be able to answer.

(1) The intellectual movement which encouraged the use of reason and science and anticipated human progress was called the

(A) American System
(B) mercantilism
(C) Enlightenment
(D) age of belief

It’s racist to expect someone to know the difference between mercantilism and the Enlightenment.

(2) In American government, “checks and balances” were developed to

(A) regulate the amount of control each branch of government would have
(B) make each branch of government independent of one another
(C) give the president control
(D) give the Supreme Court control

Can’t decide whether checks and balances were intended to regulate the amount of control each branch of government would have, or whether they were intended to give all power to the president? That’s okay. Only a racist would know that answer.

(3) How many ten thousands are there in one million?

(A) 100
(B) 10
(C) 1,000
(D) 10,000

(4) The needle on the dial points most closely to which reading?

(A) 108
(B) 128
(C) 114
(D) 117

So, can you read a needle on a dial? You’re probably a racist.

(5) Which letter represents the Philippines?

(A) K
(B) D
(C) I
(D) M

Is the Philippines in the Caribbean, maybe, or possibly in Africa? We surely can’t expect a would-be teacher to possess such arcane knowledge.

According to the Wall Street Journal, one woman who failed the test ten times — yes, the test for which these study questions were intended — “remembers falling to her knees and crying when she learned about the class-action lawsuit, relieved to learn the test itself was part of the problem.”

Is that the message we want to send to someone failing such an elementary test — a test intended to see if she is qualified to teach children?

This is 2023 America.

The key doctrine that needs to be buried forever is “disparate impact.” This test is automatically assumed to be “racist” because it generates radically disparate results.

Step one is to be armed with knowledge, because 99 percent of America has no idea how we got here.

And if we don’t know how we got here, it’s hard to change course.

See more here mailchi.mp

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