Volume 2 number 4, April 2000 Stop the Testing! The second week of March, sophomores around Alaska took their first High School Graduation Qualifying Exam, which should test their knowledge of, and skills in, math, reading and writing, and which they need to pass in order to receive a graduation diploma. This exam has generated debate about whether it can actually gauge knowledge and whether it doesn’t discriminate against some students, but nobody batted an eyelid at the idea that students should actually be knowledgeable and think clearly, something I find utterly preposterous. What does clear thinking and knowledge have to do with our society? Nothing. It’s the other things that go on in school, outside of classrooms, that really prepare students for life: forming cliques, trying to be liked for superficial reasons, judging others they don’t know, recriminating…. Oh yes, and trying to avoid getting shot. These are qualities kids need in our world, but knowing what they’re talking about? Being logical and thinking straight? Please! Aren’t we the nation of people who whoop and holler in delight when we drop billions of dollars worth of bombs on defenseless countries that most of us can’t even point to on a map, and then turn right around and complain that we don’t want to pay any taxes? Sorry, did I say "complain?" I meant "froth at the mouth like crazed Pavlovian dogs when we just hear the word ‘taxes’." We’re so clear-thinking that we’ll elect criminals to office if they promise us tax cuts, and we don’t even bother noting that the cuts primarily benefit large corporations (those same upstanding organizations that funnel profits into tax-free overseas holdings and recently managed to report $119 billion dollars more in profits to their shareholders than to the IRS). But God forbid we think rationally and critically about what goes on in the corporate realm, lest we be deprived of the freedom it provides us: the freedom of a world that is fat-free, cholesterol-free, and thought-free. Awareness, knowledge, understanding—that’s just not our way of life. Take a recent Nightline poll that found the majority of Americans believe John McCain is anti-gun and pro-abortion. Take the people in Tennessee who elected a sheriff who was in jail. Or those in California who elected a sheriff of theirs by an overwhelming majority despite the fact that he was dead. These are the people who believe that most Americans are better off than they were 20 years ago, these are the people who will elect our next president, and these are the people who will sit on your jury if you ever end up in court. These are not the kind of people who pass exams. Knowledgeable and critical! Can you imagine what our world would look like if we actually were aware, thinking beings? Our credit card companies would go broke, the advertising world would collapse, we’d stop bombing the hell out of other countries, politicians would actually work for their constituents, prime time newscasts would finally provide information, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh would be talking to themselves on street corners, and we would no longer laugh uproariously while reading the News Miner’s letters to the editor... I’ll stop here because you get the picture: it would not be pretty. And, of course, you know what follows knowledge and understanding: empathy. God forbid, and we should take that commandment to heart. If we started caring about others, we’d not be able to look into the eyes of people from Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, East Timor, the Balkans, Lebanon, Iraq, Angola… Come to think of it, we’d have to uncomfortably look down at our feet around most people on earth. We’d have to stop self-righteously bandying around the word "genocide" (particularly within earshot of Native Americans). And we might start questioning whether Jack Welch of GE really deserves $86 million for putting 128,000 of his employees out of work. Start feeling for others, and you’ll wake up one morning a socialist. As far as understanding and empathy are concerned, I’m with Tom Brokaw, who commented about the homeless one morning on the air: "You feel great sympathy for them. But you also envy the extra hour of sleep that they’re getting. I mean, you go by and say, ‘If I were them, I would still be sleeping.’" Just like the good old days when we were lulled by that great president who claimed homelessness was a choice, trees pollute more than cars, and Hitler’s Nazis suffered as much as the Jews. Alzheimer’s or not, he showed he knew what America was all about: "Where would this country be without this great land of ours?" But there is a reason we should avoid educating our children that goes well beyond our borders. Start developing intelligent people, and we would seriously damage the status humans have in the universe. We may be just a speck of dirt in the big picture, but I am certain that even in the farthest galaxies, we are seen as living parables and a huge source of entertainment. I’m sure there is a "Trivia Game from Planet Dirt" with questions like:
Of course we in Alaska do our share. Our permanent fund and state budget have got to be the best modern-day rendition of "Oliver," that great Broadway musical written by Charles Dickens: "Please sir, can I have some more?" "Sorry, Uliver," replies the legislature. "We actually have to cut back on your gruel portions. Now shoo away, Gulliver, you’re attracting flies to the banquet table. But don’t cry, hang in there, Gulliber, and you can get your once-a-year, scrumptious, Cordon Bleu veal cutlet in October again." So Gullible goes off and waits for that juicy veal cutlet that he wolfs down each year, forgetting it gives him terrible indigestion. Yes, they love us out there in space. In fact we are so irrational that we must fuel a huge betting business. I’m sure that right now, odds are that Exxon corporation will delay paying the $5 billion it owes the people whose lives it ruined by demanding a mistrial because one of the jurors allegedly had stress diarrhea during the original hearings. You see, we have much to lose. So, please don’t try to get our schoolchildren to think, and above all, don’t give them any high stakes testing. Why, some of them might get individual tutorials to prepare for the tests, and we do take a lot of pride in the fact that most of our children get no one-on-one attention until it’s from their court-appointed public defendant. So, preserve our way of life, protect the status we have fought hard for in the universe, and stop the testing!
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