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Ah, Love, Let Us Be True, or at Least Be Accurate
The New York Times New York State education officials have promised to stop sanitizing and tampering with famous literary works excerpted on state exams, but for the third time in a row they have been caught. On the English Regents exam being administered this week statewide, high school students are asked to compare two passages using the idea of friendship. One passage is the last stanza from Matthew Arnold's classic poem "Dover Beach." The stanza begins: "Ah, love, let us be true." The state test version reads: "Ah, friend, let us be true." Several sharp English teachers caught the change, and complained, according to Tom Dunn, a state education spokesman. In June, after news accounts reported that Regents exams had sanitized many famous writers, including cutting out references to Jews and Gentiles in Isaac Bashevis Singer's work, officials promised to end the practice. But the August exam changed the words of several writers, including Franz Kafka. Mr. Dunn said the state had been adhering to new accuracy guidelines, but the change in the Arnold poem came about because officials used a 1969 anthology on friendship that misquoted the poem. His explanation did not impress Annie Thoms, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. "Don't they have anyone making up the exam who can recognize one of the most famous poems in the English language?" she asked. |
