Standardized Suffering

Foreword

        Sometimes when I read my classmates' blogs, I see them just complain and vent about their own lives instead of y'know, actual doing the assignment related to English work. Now, I don't really care that much because it's not my grade that will be affected, but I always thought it was kinda cheap. Like, you're seriously complaining on your obscure English blog read by like 30 people max?

        But considering my current situation, I'm starting to get it. So after nearly an entire year of telling myself I wouldn't stoop to this level, I'm going to break my own rule and be the one complaining today. Sorry in advance, Ms. Valentino, but now I shall vent, and you shall listen. 

How It's Going

        Modern society is ruled by rules and standards. Legal code, traffic lights, chivalry, self-made millionaire, voting rules, and so many more ideals run this world of ours. Whether they be written laws, voiced rules, societal beliefs, or cultural traditions, there are so many rules that contribute to how society is run. I have been personally dealing with an overabundance of these rules and standards in the last 2 weeks that has driven me so mad that I must now rant about it.

        This Tuesday, I will have to take the SAT at school. This will be preceded by the ACT WorkKeys I took on Thursday, the M-STEP that I also took on Thursday, and the ACT that I took on Saturday. In case you can't tell, my last week has been filled with standardized tests. But that's not all! In addition to having to take these standardized tests, there is also the necessary studying for these tests so as not to fail them. And the best way to study for exams like the ACT or SAT is by practice, which means doing practice standardized tests. This means I've been taking supplemental substitutes for standardized tests in addition to the actual standardized tests.

        Obviously, this creates a lot of standardized stress, and systematical sleep deprivation. The toll that all of these exams has taken on me has been agonizing. If I'm being honest, I can hardly handle one test in a week in a single subject, let alone several multi-hour tests in the same week across all kinds of subjects. As such, I've been struggling and suffering while trying to deal with and overcome all these tests. Trying to manage all of these tests' schedules, scores, structures, and studying for all of them, on top of having to manage normal schoolwork has been quite a challenge, to put it lightly. And this is all only made worse by how I seem to 'deprove' at these practice tests' scores over time, probably because I've been so busy and stressed with all the other tests that I'm also 'deproving' at because of the other tests that I'm busy with, and so on and so forth. It's essentially just a never-ending cycle where by trying to do well on practice tests, I only do worse. 

Why It's Going

              However, it's not like the only victim of this. These standardized tests are standardized for a reason, meaning nearly everyone in America has the universal experience of dealing with these burdens. Which begs the question, why do we as a society use these standardized tests when almost everyone who takes them dislikes them?

        The first reason my mind is that "they're convenient methods of effective mass testing", but are they really? People need to drive all the way to a testing center, they take up massive amounts of a day with how long they are, and the test booklets themselves use up a lot of paper that takes resources to make. Obviously, some of these issues have been rectified in recent years, such as the Digital SAT being, well, digital. Thus, causing less paper to be used, saving resources. The Digital SAT also is shorter, meaning it takes up less time. Still, it's not exactly like these tests are "convenient" as there have to be exceptions made for all types of students; home-schooled, international, neurodivergent, etc. that all make the tests more complicated and less convenient.

        The tests themselves also aren't exactly great methods of testing people's intelligence. Not only does the test only... test logical intelligence, ignoring other types of intelligence like emotional and spiritual intelligence, but it also only tests certain areas of logical intelligence. The exams completely ignore entire fields of study, like history, economics, psychology, or astrology, and only really test what's taught in the high school curriculum, cutting out massive sections of intelligence for really just grammar, math, vocab, data, analysis, and graphs. Not exactly a winning combination of intelligence factors. 

        So, clearly, these exams are neither convenient nor effective methods of intelligence, so why do we use them?

        Could it be that the organizations who run these exams have so much power and control that they force the tests to be taken and are impossible to be taken down? While this would be a good explanation that gives me an easy target to take all the blame for the suffering I've been experiencing recently, I don't think it's really true. As an angry and lashing out teenager, it would make sense to blame the higher-ups who make take these tests, but the actual systems don't work out that way. The government has more than enough control and power to challenge and take down organizations like College Board and ACT Corporation, and it's not like these companies are taking efforts to pay senators or lobby to not have laws passed that reduce their control, at least, not big enough ones to be caught. 

        So, if it's not the exams themselves or the people behind the exams, why do we take these tests if we hate them so much? 

        As much as I hate to say it, I think the blame actually falls down onto the test takers themselves. If we're the ones who hate these tests so much, why have we not taken efforts to change or remove them? As the test takers, we're the ones suffering from these standardized exams, yet I've never heard of even one student protesting against the SAT or ACT.

                I do realize that I have to take some of the blame for this, as I'm complaining about students not trying to change standardized tests without doing anything myself, making me a hypocrite. But in my defense, if I did do anything, I wouldn't be able to take the test anymore and would jeopardize my future. And therein lies the crux of the issue of standardized testing; people won't fight against it because they don't want to risk it. Everyone would much rather just take the exams and do well and have a future while someone else risks their own future by protesting the SAT or ACT. It's a lot easier for us as students to keep our head down and hope someone else does something.

 

Stand Up

        The ACT and SAT are only used as tests because they're implemented into the rules and career path of society, making them systemically unchallenged. The world is ruled by rules, and the SAT and ACT are just another standard or rule that people keep around. The only difference is that unlike many of these rules which may help society run, standardized testing hurts society and is a deeply flawed standard by overstressing kids and not adequately testing intelligence. But, because it's part of the rules, it remains unchallenged.

        The same way no one makes petition to change traffic codes because it might risk them getting into a car crash, no one makes a petition to change standardized testing because it might result in them losing their future. Standardized testing is only flawed because we as test takers, as well as citizens of society, have let it remain flawed and fester in its own mistakes. Turns out the standard in the term "standardized testing" had nothing to do with holding all students to the same standard. The real standard of standardized testing had nothing to do with the students, and all to do with the test itself.