Dumbing Down Watch
The New York Fire Department has announced the results of a new entrance exam. The passmark of 70 was reached by 95.72% of applicants. Previous tests had been thrown out because insufficient numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics were able to pass.
The new exam appears to be extremely easy and seems to assume that firefighting is a job that requires minimal intelligence. Effectively, the new policy for the New York Fire Department is to select at random from those able to get themselves to a testing center and answer questions that should pose no challenge to the average junior high school student.
The change was in response to the directives of Judge Nichols Garaufis, a graduate of Columbia Law School, which would seem to be as lacking in diversity as the NYFD. One suspects that the judge's disdain for the skills and knowledge, not to mention physical courage, of the firefighters is rooted in blatant class prejudice.
When is someone going to file a disparate impact suit against the top law schools?
Unfortunately I no longer remember where I originally read about the dispute (was it here?) but the impression I came away with was that the existing test favoured those who had inside knowledge of fire-fighting, e.g. from friends and family who already worked for NYFD. The allegation was that minority candidates fared poorly because they didn't have those connections and hence access to that knowledge. Since this test comes before any kind of training, I would have thought a pretty basic level was appropriate. But I can't provide a reference, so may be completely wrong about the whole story.
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