In my July 3 blog, I suggested that the new GRE format, in which a two-part analytical writing assessment replaces the former multiple choice analytical reasoning component, will test applicants' politics as well as their writing abilities. The new writing assessment will compel test takers to write two essays, one in which they articulate their personal standpoint on a given "issue," and one in which they assess the logic of a given passage. It is the first of these essay formats that concerns me here.

When I first learned of the changes to the GRE, I was immediately struck by the litmus-test quality of the "Present Your Perspective on an Issue" part of the exam. The idea sounded ominous to me, reeking as it does of an invasive desire to probe private beliefs and to make the results of that probing part of an assessment of the test taker's preparedness for advanced graduate study. Such evaluative intrusions into matters of private conscience have, after all, become all-too usual in contemporary academic contexts. In an academic world where professors can require students to sign on to their politics as a condition of speaking in class, where composition instructors can advise conservative students not to register, where freshman orientation frequently doubles as indoctrination, where discipline frequently consists of sentencing students and faculty offenders to "sensitivity training" (a Newspeak term for thought reform), and where, as I observed in my last blog, a vastly disproportionate percentage of the faculty are politically liberal, the GRE's decision to assess students' writing abilities by requiring them to "present" their "perspective" on a selected "issue" reads just a little bit like a thinly disguised attempt to vet students' beliefs as well as their skills; indeed, it reads like an attempt to confound the two so thoroughly that a positive assessment of ability depends on a correct statement of opinion.

My fears were hardly allayed by my tour through GRE.org's on-line pool of "Issue topics". GRE.org assures prospective test takers that the essay topic they will be asked to write about on their GRE exam will come from the pool. This is alarming enough in itself--giving out the topics ahead of time cheapens the test, making it something that can be prepped for by rote and, significantly, taught for profit by self-styled test-taking experts. Even more alarming, though, are the topics themselves, which predictably cluster around the very issues that are nearest and dearest to academe's politically correct little heart.

There are the topics that seek to determine whether you are a proper collectivist:

"If a society is to thrive, it must put its own overall success before the well-being of its individual citizens."

"The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative."

"It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we define ourselves."

"People work more productively in teams than individually. Teamwork requires cooperation, which motivates people much more than individual competition does."

And there are topics to make sure you are properly anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist:

"Competition is ultimately more beneficial than detrimental to society."

"In most societies, competition generally has more of a negative than a positive effect."

"Although many people think that the luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life are entirely harmless, in fact, they actually prevent people from developing into truly strong and independent individuals."

There are topics to assess whether you are a proper social constructivist:

"People's attitudes are determined more by their immediate situation or surroundings than by any internal characteristic."

"When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."

And there are topics to make sure you are a proper moral relativist:

"Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions."

"Much of the information that people assume is 'factual' actually turns out to be inaccurate. Thus, any piece of information referred to as a 'fact' should be mistrusted since it may well be proven false in the future."

"There is no such thing as purely objective observation. All observation is subjective; it is always guided by the observer's expectations or desires."

There are topics to make sure you have the proper understanding of oppression, hegemony, and personal accountability:

"The concept of 'individual responsibility' is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people's behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making."

"The absence of choice is a circumstance that is very, very rare."

"Choice is an illusion. In reality, our lives are controlled by the society in which we live."

"One often hears about the need for individuals to take responsibility for their own lives. However, the conditions in which people find themselves have been largely established long before people become aware of them. Thus, the concept of personal responsibility is much more complicated and unrealistic than is often assumed."

And there are topics to make sure you are properly anti-American (in the wake of 9/11, academe has shown how important it believes a cold contempt for America is to intellectual work):

"Patriotic reverence for the history of a nation often does more to impede than to encourage progress."

These are just a few of the wonderfully evocative topics catalogued at GRE.org. There are also topics designed to assess whether you are properly green, properly multicultural, properly suspicious of technology, and properly sensitized to the importance of never giving offense. But I am guessing there is no need to list them here. I am guessing you get my point.

One might argue that there are no right and wrong responses to these topics, and one could cite GRE.org's own promise that evaluation of the essay will be viewpoint neutral. But that would be naive. In certain academic disciplines, there absolutely are right and wrong approaches to these issues. The GRE analytical assessment seems specially crafted to determine whether the test taker knows what the proper approaches are, to see if she can adequately reproduce the accepted tenets of the postmodern, multicultural academy, and to score her accordingly.

How am I so sure? I'll explain in part three.

To be continued....