One of the topics I gave my English Composition students for an opinion paper was, "Why do you think the SAT scores have been declining over the past 30 years?"  As I should have expected, one student wrote that the math covers stuff he "never had in high school," the reading section is "too long" and requires "too much reading," and the vocabulary consists of words that "only English teachers know."

Fair enough – the student is describing his own experience.  But then comes the leap in logic:  The obvious solution to the problem of lower test scores is to make the test easier.

The student's essay contained, by the way, many basic grammatical errors and enough sixth-grade-level spelling mistakes and misuses of common words to suggest that, like many of his classmates, he doesn't often keep company with words.  I'm not surprised that the verbal SAT strikes him as well beyond the average student – and he, no doubt, considers himself average.  (Unfortunately, that's closer to the truth than I want to admit.)

When I marked the paper, it was easy to comment on the mechanical errors and to refer the student to the appropriate pages in his handbook.  But what of the logic?  Somewhere, a little voice told me that this student will not understand what's wrong with his argument.  After all, making SATs easier would cause scores to go up, wouldn't it?

Maybe, I thought, I can tell this student that what he's saying is about the same as suggesting that the yardage necessary for a first down in football be decreased from ten yards to three.  This would enable almost everyone to make a first down with ease, but it would also render the achievement of a first down, and thus the entire game, relatively meaningless.

Or perhaps I could suggest that brain surgeons are relatively rare because the medical school tests for this specialty are really tough.  Would the student then propose that we lower the standards so that less-skilled people – anyone with a degree in biology, for example – could be licensed to conduct brain surgery?

I would probably be wasting my time with such cleverness.  People who make giant, illogical leaps without the least cognizance that they are doing so are generally unable to grasp the connections suggested by analogies.  Their logic is often so fuzzy that reducing it to absurdity doesn't work; they may perceive the absurdity, but they don't grasp the connection.

Nonetheless, those of us who try to teach writing have an obligation to point out defective thinking.  I'm not sure that thinking itself can be taught, but I do repeatedly remind my students that clear thinking and effective writing are inseparably linked.  I tell them that they need to think clearly to be able to write effectively and that they can also use writing as a way of discovering what they are thinking (an idea that seems new to most of them).

However, some people seem almost constitutionally incapable of understanding rational processes.  I have tried, for instance, to illustrate the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after that, therefore because of that) fallacy with examples such as this:  "Of course, my taxes are going up; there's a Democrat in the White House."  Many students see nothing wrong with the logic.  Therefore, I try a more obvious example:  "I washed my car this morning.  It rained this afternoon.  Therefore, my washing the car caused the rain."  Most students grasp the fallacy here, but they are still unable relate this faulty logic to the faulty logic in the "Democrats in the White House" argument.

The point here is that an inability to make connections and a tendency to make illogical leaps derive from the same defective thought process.  Both represent ignoring (or not being aware of) the relationships of ideas.

It is not surprising that, when the thoughts presented in a student essay are illogical, the writing itself is incoherent and often incorrect.  Because writing is the representation of a series of idea relationships (words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc.), people who have difficulty with logical connections usually have problems with writing.  Writing (unless it is a shopping list or something like that) is not just the transcription of random thoughts; it is the presentation of connected ideas that lead – logically, we hope – to some conclusion or point.

It is distressing, of course, that SAT scores continue to fall.  However, it's more distressing that anyone could seriously propose making the test easier as a solution.  More significantly, this is not an isolated example.  Look at the arguments for not requiring proficiency tests for teachers and the similar arguments (advanced by the NEA) for not requiring students to meet certain (testable) standards for graduation.

Like my student's argument regarding SATs, the NEA's arguments do nothing but find fault with the tests or, for reasons vaguely expressed, with the idea of testing.   They do nothing to address the question:  What are we to do about the schools' failure to educate?   The answer appears to be, "The problem doesn't exist," which is about on a par with "Make the SATs easier."  Or the logic is that the way to ensure that schools meet standards is to not measure, in any objective way, whether they are meeting standards.

When we see how the NEA's "logic" operates, we begin to understand why Johnny, who can't read and write very well, can't think either.