Standardized Kids

In the simplest sense, my future hangs on whether I go to college. Now obviously, the crack-dealer career path is always open (hell, I don’t even need a G.E.D. for that one! Just a few dollars, a gat, an angry dog, and a home with barred windows near Prospect.), but something about wearing over-sized trench coats, worker boots, and baggy jeans for the rest of my life doesn’t excite me quite like it used to. There are, of course, millions of things that will determine which colleges accept me (my last name?), but grades and standardized test scores are the Bonnie behind my Clyde, the manpower behind my application. Yes, to answer that thought in the back of your head, I could coast through the rest of high school and submit my SAT score right now and be accepted by Kansas and Missouri faster than you can say humongous letdown. Yet if I, for some INCREDIBLY bizarre reason, wanted to escape the Midwest (you’re shitting me if you don’t want to yourself), ungodly grades and a superhuman SAT are the master key. Why?

You can trace the roots of the SAT back to the times of Leif Erikson, who most famously proclaimed,

“Tribe! I have received an 800 on the verbal section! I’m Princeton-bound!”
- Leif Erikson (date unknown)

Shockingly, I had always expected he would be stronger in Math. Nevertheless, standardized tests have been around for a long time and still fail at accomplishing anything positive. My first experience with standardized tests came with the IOWA Basic Skills test (IBS for those cool folks out there. Does a three-word combo of three short words really warrant abbreviating?). There were posters across school, teachers were testgasming all over the place (testgasm: v. to get overly excited about a testing scenario, especially one that will be dull and require multiple hours of time.), and I, along with my fellow students, wanted to go play basketball outside. What did I learn from the IOWA Basic Skills Test? Nothing other than discovering my hatred for standardized tests at a young age. Even at eight, when I arguably had nothing else to be doing, I still felt like I was wasting my time. Standardized tests are the same for everyone who takes them. That means that the entire four years of history, literature, math, and chemistry you worked hard at during high school get relegated to a corner of your brain where they have thumb wars and mutter “Fiddlesticks” under their breath while you re-learn the Algebra you forgot from 8th grade. A test meant to separate average from excellence, does the opposite. It blurs the dividing line. Based on these two stereotypes, who does the SAT say is smarter? The one who just took algebra as a senior, or one who finished all of the math courses in their high school by junior year? The SAT doesn’t know (or care really.), because they could very well both get the same score. You could be studying history at a college level, the SAT doesn’t give two shits. It laughs in your face while it takes your sister out to the movies. This focus on “standard” knowledge deemphasizes in-depth learning. “Who gives a crap about ________? It isn’t on the SAT,” could become a refrain all too often encountered by teachers.

This system is creating generations of standardized kids. Letters on paper with stern headings determine who we are, and the numbers one through eight-hundred determine what we can be. This focus on standardizing knowledge dampens creativity. What is the point of thinking about something new when the SAT hasn’t changed recently? (Just like those math books with pictures of 80’s kids learning about this new technology called a calculator. Give me a break. You could reinvent the calculator right in front of my eyes and I would probably smack you for wasting my time.)

“OH MY GAWD! THIS LITTLE BOX RIGHT HER CAN ADD THEM NUMBERS TOGETHER!”
*Pants-shitting*
“Can it multiply?”
“Eventually!”
*more pants shitting*

Unless the requirements for holding important governmental and leadership positions change in the next hundred years into “fastest person to be able to fill in eighty small fucking holes with a shitty #2 pencil (not mechanical, I don’t care what the bookstore tells you, #2 mechanicals are not the same!), that breaks on every third question, without going outside the lines and leaving smudgy eraser marks everywhere” we will be useless. Now to an extent, we’re already similar: we already dress and act alike. But with standardized tests, the knowledge we accumulate and the independent studies we engage in no longer set us apart from our contemporaries. They become unnecessary distractions. Oh we won’t be stupid, certainly, but where will the drive to innovate and get ahead be?

Sure, I don’t have to let my scores determine who I am, but I don’t have much say in the matter. In fact, I haven’t had such a little amount of say in anything involving myself since being forced to watch Rent (If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If not, this might give you an idea of the pain involved: Imagine being forced to watch a conversation between a deaf person and a television news anchor suavely trying to discuss matters of foreign affairs with said deaf person, without knowing that said deaf person is deaf. All of this while simultaneously being punched in the kidneys by a midget wearing your favorite clothes.). It’s depressing to say the least. What’s worse? Colleges don’t use the SAT for much more than speeding up the admissions process.

“Here’s another low scorer.”
“Throw him into the tard pile please, Steven. Can you please check the Zodiac for this year?”
“Year of the Monkey.”
“Exactly as I expected. Predictions from a while back said this would be a particularly tardy year.”

Perhaps the fine people at college admissions offices nationwide don’t say “tardy,” but the point still stands. When these tests that don’t test much of anything are used as an “easy way out” for school acceptance, something is very wrong. The alternative? Reject standardized testing. It would force colleges to examine more specifically your high school history, your activities, and the challenge of your classes themselves. This, in turn, would save you from those wasted Saturdays of testing, would save teachers from wasting their Saturdays watching you test, and puts the giant conglomerate that is the College Board out of a substantial sum of money (TAKE THAT MEGA CORPORATION!) Now obviously you can’t really reject standardized testing, but like socks for Christmas, it’s more in the thought that counts. Take a stand (and all of that good stuff). It was late when I wrote this, that might explain the lack of any direction.

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