Need help remembering a book's title and author.... [Examination Day by Henry Slesar]

As you guys are all avid readers, I'm sure there's someone amongst you who can help me remember the name of a book.

When I was in high school about 20 years, the teacher once read an excerpt from it.

In the story, some Government officals visited the house of a family with a young child (seem to think the child was around 10 or 11 but could be wrong). He/she was made to perform various apititude tests.

When the officials calculated the results, they apologised to the child's parents. The kid had done too well and would be terminated.

It was a futuristic, distopean world where the Govt only wanted its people to be of low intelligence to avoid an uprising or some such thing and so anyone remotely clever was identified at a young age and killed.

There's every chance that this is a really famous and well known book and I'm just being an ignorant arse but I'd love to know what the book is and track it down.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you for your time you lovely people.

Cyia said:

Are you sure it was a novel, and not a short story? Maybe Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut?

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Great suggestion. It could be. I honestly don't know if it was a full length novel or a short story as we didn't study it in detail.

I seem to recall that we were only read a portion of it (it was 20 years ago) and then had to discuss the implications.

Looking back, it was probably around the same time we were studying Animal Farm.

I've just looked Harrison Bergeron up on Wikipedia and it sounds excellent so I'm definitely going to buy it but I didn't want to read the whole synopsis because of spoilers.

I guess I won't know for certain until I've read it and you may well have hit the nail on the head but, if not, then thank you for introducing me to what sounds like an exciting short story.

Kitty Pryde said:

It's not Harrison Bergeron. It's Examination Day, by Henry Slesar. http://www.thebostonbachelor.com/2008/examination-day-by-henry-seslar/ disclaimer: Harrison Bergeron is a waaaaaay better story though. Also the movie is good, starring Sean Astin.

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Thanks Kitty Pryde. I've just read the story on the link and that's definitely the one. All those years of wondering is finally over! I put Harrison Bergeron on my Kindle yesterda although haven't got round to reading that yet but I'll definitely make sure I check out the movie too. Thanks again you star.