The world at large is built on mass amounts of diversity. I know, “duh Doria, tell me something I didn’t know.” Since the years of the early Mesopotamians, the human race has established a divided community, with each person assigned to a set of skills, a purpose different from their neighbors, working hand-in-hand towards societal progression. No two minds work in quite the same way, much as no two people look exactly alike (yes, even twins have their distinctions). Be it hair color or height, creativity of spacial reasoning, the world is seen through a plethora of lens colors, some rosier than others, and some more mechanical.
My brother has wanted to be an engineer since he was seven, and in kindergarten he constructed a catapult made entirely out of school supplies. I write articles about art, and I recently painted a portrait of Danny DeVito to hang on our apartment wall. We are two completely different people, and one day when my brother is a successful something, and I too am a (relatively) high-functioning whatever, our differences won’t mean much in the way of our dreams and aspirations. However, when both handed a standardized test, one weighted heavily in areas where I am weak and he is strong, or vice versa, one that says, upon putting pencil to paper, “So here’s a set of problems. Complete these in 40 minutes if you want to, gee, I don’t know, go to college,” our differences can mean much more for our future.
I was very unprepared to take my SATs-- utterly under-studied, under-slept, and excessively nervous. I have always had a very wishy-washy attitude about academics; I believe them to be incredibly important in some respects, but also not absolutely critical in the big picture book of life. I like to use the old adage that, “If you work hard in life, that B+ won’t matter. Look at Thomas Edison, he didn’t even go to high school, nonetheless college, and he invented the light bulb!” But in contrast, I also firmly believe that we-- I’m using “we” as a means of, what marketing describes as, a call-to-action. Join me, in the educational revolution (or is it, ‘Join we?!'). We need to raise a small army of incredibly well-informed and morally upstanding humans, like 'Republican Motherhood,' only solely reliant on members of the teacher’s union.
My SATs, however, left me feeling even more wishy-washy and irresolute about the validity of the education system, and even more reluctant to pay mind to this sort of thing (SATs, class rank, all those classic college qualifiers). This is because as I walked into my SAT room, #2 pencil in hand and head held discernibly low, I realized that everyone around me, every 16 to 18-year-old donned in sweatpants, visible stress, and bagged-eyes, was taking the exact same test as me. And while certainly every single one of these children had a purpose, a soon-to-be-found niche, this test would tell some, “Congratulations, you’ve done it!” and others, “Well bud, I can see stay-at-home parenting, or maybe plumbing in your future? Better luck next time!” Also education, or so I’ve been taught to believe, is supposed to bring out the potential in people, not oppress it. That may sound excessively humanist, but schools-- public schools especially-- were built on the humanist grounds that everyone, mechanic and poet alike, had the right to a rewarding education, and that the doors to a bright future should be held wide open to all. The SATs, in contrast, cram everyone through one singular door, and those who can’t quite fit get left behind, forced to stress and wonder if any college would even take a glance at their resume.
The SAT test recently narrowed its categories to reading (critical reading, and then analysis for grammar and structure, etc.) and mathematics, removing the essay portion entirely. As someone who flourishes in the writing section, I was furious to see that every college I applied to completely disregarded my performance in that section (which was the best bit, the frosting on my standardized cake), and that later in the year it no longer existed. I am a writing major, and so I wonder how my writing did not, in any way, matter to colleges. I often consider that, had it been weighed, perhaps my scholarships would have been higher, or there would have been a long line of honors colleges waiting at my door (not to say that my 40-minute timed essay about the “power of honesty” was going to have Princeton University kissing my feet).
I also began to consider some more questionable aspects of the SATs, like why someone in mathematics is taking a test to prove their poetry analysis skills, or why an art major is being judged on their ability to debunk the ever-elusive polynomial? Why is anyone being rejected or accepted into college, told they’re a more potential candidate for any educational program, based on the results of a test that holds no real-life meaning?
Life is not about test taking, the real world (though, sometimes it does test my patience) is about common sense and morality and work ethic, and about finding where you can best serve your divine purpose. The SAT board doesn’t grade based on determination or passion, they grade based on bubbled-in letters. There’s no amount of math problems that can distinguish a good writer from a bad one (unless of course the challenge is to write a narrative from the perspective of a person gone mad by means of logarithms), and no biophysicist that will be judged on their work on the basis of a misplaced semicolon. No student should be tested on unfamiliar material, with the basis that its results will ultimately cause a chain reaction of acceptances and rejections, ultimately resulted in a successful or unsuccessful higher-level education and eventually future. There’s no scientific way to measure strong work ethic or determination, and if there was, it certainly wouldn’t be a four-hour-long, multiple choice exam.
