Informant38

Education. SAT:that was the acronym for the tests that werenow given every schoolchoild in the country. To measure intelligence. To determine further "education," if any. Peter was still looking to publish the ultimate analysis of a test thta he was convinced had been devised by the mediocre to advance the mediocre through a common educational system designed to maintain in passive ignorance the general sub-population for which there was nothing much of interest to do and nothing at all of interest to think once they had learned what little they were expected to know to get through dull repetitive days; to float through like...From childhood, he recalled one of the aquarium tanks in the basement of the Commerce Building. Large flat brown fish floating in cloudy water. Electric eels slumbering on pebbles. He used to wait for hours for them to light up but they never did. Fish in tanks. Mayans crowded together......

Gore Vidal in The Golden Age
{wherein, toward the end of the book, he describes the main character's aphasic groping for the name of this guy, who'd passed unnoticed by me, until last night. and then today here he is again. from a blink-thru here, which came from one of the aboveleft.}