Just as TIME reported that the College Board plans to drop the analogies section from the SAT, education blogger Joanne Jacobs recounts a story about a Kennewick, Washington high school teacher who, after a lesson on the Salem Witch Trials, asked his students to write a "Mass Hysteria Essay" in which they "expose injustices caused by mass hysteria" and "compare the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the McCarthy Hearings and the anti-terrorist fear since 9/11 which resulted in the establishment of Homeland security and the Patriot Act." Through this assignment, the teacher claimed, students would "see that mass hysteria is still very much alive more than 300 years after the Salem Witch Trials." Jacobs quips, "I can think of one difference between Salem and Homeland Security: There are no witches. There are terrorists."
"Hysterical," by Joanne Jacobs, October 20, 2003, www.joannejacobs.com (scroll to October 20 entry)