[CoffeeSaint]

Quote by: Chancellor I would take the one with good form: it's a false assumption that because he has good form he cannot improve his time.

I was explaining the rationale behind affirmative action as I understood it; I was not saying what the correct choice would be. That was simply the argument.
I will say though, that if you do have a guy who runs just as fast or almost as fast with bad form, he's a much better athlete than the one with good form. I would think that teaching proper form would make a difference, and anything else you can teach the trained runner can also be taught to the untrained runner. You have made the wrong choice in that instance.
Now: does the analogy hold in every case when it comes to academics? Absolutely not. That's why I was not agreeing with affirmative action.

Quote by: Chancellor It doesn't matter what was "intended," the fact of the matter is that it communicates a wrong message to blacks: that you are inherently inferior and, therefore, need special help. It is also a false assumption that the person with the lower SAT scores is necessarily going to be the better choice. By the way, I was one of those kids who grew up in one of those poorer learning environments and I still managed to graduate in the top 10 percent of my high school class without really having to put much effort into it. Maybe some of these kids would have to work harder at it but they're just as capable of success. That you're raising the issue of poorer learning environment has nothing to do with skin color or ethnicity, it has to do with economic status and you cannot prove that merely being poor is going to so negatively impact a student's potential that he needs special help in the form of lower test scores or otherwise lower qualifications to succeed. You most certainly can't prove that so-called "minorities" are so negatively impacted by being a minority (meaning their inherent characteristics, not how the majority population has treated them) that they need special help in the form of lower test scores or otherwise lower qualifications to succeed.

Which is why affirmative action has not worked as it was intended. As I said, the admissions officers should be allowed to make their own decision about which student would make the best candidate for acceptance.

Quote by: Chancellor So-called "poor education environment" is an economic issue, not a racial one. But why should an admissions officer have to take that into account? If you have the grades, if you have the test scores, that should be sufficient. So what if a poorer school district didn't have the computers or the brand new textbooks that the wealthier school district might have. Students were able to learn quite adequately before there even were such things.

And now that the world is computerized, they cannot learn quite adequately without modern technology. And when you are speaking of knowledge that changes month to month, let alone year to year or decade to decade, new textbooks most certainly do make a difference -- in subjects such as biology, or physics, or history, trying to learn out of a 30-year-old book does much more harm than good.
And an admissions officer doesn't have to take learning environment into account, but if he's not a moron, he really should. It makes quite a large difference -- as you yourself are arguing when you speak of Catholic schools and their superiority to us indoctrinators. Or are you making the argument that Catholics are smarter than other people?