Disabling Tests
After a four-year hiatus, to write The Substance of Style and weather the ad recession, I've returned as a semi-regular columnist in Forbes. My first column looks at how "reasonable accommodations" for learning disabilities become unreasonable in the context of professional school admissions:
Over the past decade students with learning disabilities have gotten used to having extra time on tests and, in some cases, separate rooms to reduce distraction. In many cases that makes sense. Giving a dyslexic third grader extra time on a standardized test makes it more likely that his answers will show what he knows rather than how fast he reads.
But a sensible accommodation for little kids can create a misleading double standard for adults. How much you know isn't the only thing that matters in school--especially when you're training for a demanding professional job. What patient wants a genius doctor who can't focus in a distracting environment, reads so slowly that she can't keep up with medical journals or tends to misspell drug names on prescriptions?
Yes, learning disabilities exist and, no, they don't affect how "smart" someone is. But they can definitely hurt one's ability to work effectively. If you missed Lisa Belkin's terrific NYT Magazine feature on the problems of adults with ADHD, be sure to read it here (no registration required). Her profiles evoke sympathy for adults whose racing minds make it extremely difficult for them to get their jobs done. But the rest of the workforce, and the customers it serves, also deserve sympathy. The relevant question is not why you can or cannot do a job but whether you can.
I'm constantly struck by the glib double standard we apply to these cases. If you're "smart" but can't concentrate, you deserve sympathy and accommodation. If you're "dumb" (or even average) and can concentrate, you don't. Yet intelligence is no more deserved than any other genetic quality. If you're smart, you're just lucky. But if you're smart and making policy, you tend to think that intelligence is a virtue that outweighs other factors.