The Washington Post (The SAT Grader Next Door) has a brief profile of a retired hi school teecher who now grades SAT essays online. The whole thing is fairly disturbing; the fact that an essay written in 25 minutes and graded in too has any emportance at all is not adrest by the Post, whose toan says: "Look, isn't it nifty that this guy does his work over the internet?" (Dan Verner, the teacher profile, grades the essays by logging into a site on the World Wide Web!!)

Luckily, Mr Verner is toald to overlook errors of spelling and grammer and focus on how well the essay gets its point acrost. Now, none of this new. What reely worries us over at Gelf is an aside in the story:

He estimates that he has read 4,000 essays, usually with the stereo playing classical music -- Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C is a favorite -- or Gordon Lightfoot for an energy boost.

Now, we're as tolerant of Canadian soft-rock as the next guy, but if you could read my mind love, my thoughts would tell you that kids need to learn to spell and to write. But reading comprehension is also important. Anyone says that Gordon Lightfoot has more energy than Mozart, is frankly, crazy. Sometimes, I think it's a shame.

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