The Inadequacy of Standardized Testing

A Dialog with My Brain

It seems it's that time of the year again where students are taking their first semester's final exams. The tension is enough to erupt a volcano, and admidst the havoc of cramming, an idea came to me. It was an idea that has often haunted me, particularly during test time, but this time it's back with valid points. The conversation between my brain and I go as follows:

• Brain: "Arrghh, why are we doing this?"
• Steven: "huh?"
• Brain: "Why are you spending endless hours looking at papers and computer screens in the hopes of absorbing some information that you might not need for an exam given by another person?"
• Steven: "I kinda need to do this, I might not remember something for the test and --"
• Brain: "You don't get it! Why do you have to take a test at all? You're given a piece of paper, everyone in the class is, and you're expected to answer the questions on the sheet. The results are supposed to reflect how well you know the information--"
• Steven: "Yea, that's kinda how it works. It's always been that way."
• Brain: "Just because it always has been, means it's correct. You're tested on by a standard. Obviously this is fundamentally incorrect. Look around you - is any one person here the same as you physically? Emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually? No. Even if you were to have a twin, they would not be the same as you. Everyone is different, simply because of the massive amounts of variables that exist during the fetal developement process...my point? If everyone was all the same, then I would understand that a standardized test--one that is the same for everyone--would be necessary to test to see if one is operating a sub-"standard" level. Yet, because everyone is different, there is no strict standard."
• Steven: "yea, yea, but one can argue that there is a general standard margin of excellence where one should be if they are studying and keeping a good work ethic."
• B: "Steven, this far deeper than that. Yes, one can be tested on this general system that sets a margins of excellence based on how many points are recieved on a test, but it's not good enough! Do you know why test are standardized, at least on at the classroom level?"
• S: "No."
• B: "Remember, the goal is to measure one's knowlege and excellence, compared to that of a set margin. In other words, get all the answers right, you get a 100. Get some right, but not all, your grade is lowered accordingly. Test are standardized in a weak attempt to keep them fair and just. But what is fair is not always just."
• S: "I don't follow..."
• B: "Let me give you an example...soon, you'll be taking that mathematics final exam--"
• S: "uhhgg, don't remind me."
• B: "Anyways, yes, you've been studying like crazy but math isn't really your favorite topic. You understand the basic principles, but when you try to put into practice the more complex concepts, you utterly do not understand -- it shows on your previous quizes."
• S: "Your point?!"
• B: "Do you believe you are a disadvantage compared to, let's say, the economics major that sits next to you? Or to any individual that loves computing interest rates? I believe you are. For them, the work is more of a pleasure, and their natural aptitude for the subject allows them to perform at a much better rate than you. You would have to put in much more time and work (both of which you cannot afford) in order to receive a high grade-- a grade that will still be humbled by theirs'. By the same token, if you were to take an exam that tested your level of historical comprehension of the imperialism of the 1700s, you have a much greater advantage over many, due to the fact you simply understand history easily and find it fascinating."
• S: "So what you're saying is that standardized test...huh?"
• B: "oh for goodness sake, Steven! STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE UNJUST because they are skewed in favor of those who are more naturally fitted for the subject. By becoming 'fair', they essentially cripple those who have no taste for the subject of the test, who find it (the subject) unbearably difficult, and who cannot seem to understand (at least to an adequate level). I won't even touch even more pressing issues, such as one of your favorites, the phenomenon known as 'test anxiety'...."
• S: "Okay, so I get that it's not just. But life isn't just -- but it is fair. We all walk on the same gravity, breathe generally the same air, live under the same sky, etc. We're all expected to be tested against an ideal standard. What are any alternatives?"
• B: "Sure, that's all fine and dandy, but is scoring everyone by one standard scale and having their scores compared to one another truly the best course of action? Aren't we all beyond this whole 'survival of the fittest' bit? Besides, standardized test give too broad of a result. Joey got a 95 on a science test. Sarah got a 69. Does that mean that Sarah is truly ignorant of the subject? Perhaps, but there are too many variables. What if she did study with all her heart and soul, yet she simply couldn't understand? What if her home environment doesn't allow for fruitful studying? What if her mind, on a biological scale, isn't suited for understanding science? And if she got a 85, does this still mean she is ignorant of the subject? (after all, she is away from a 100 by 15 whole points! POINTS!! What is a point? Can one possibly measure how efficient one is able to use their acquired knowledge?? but i digress...) Must she be compared to the ideal standard of a 100% grade, or to Joey's 95, or to any other?  If the aim is to truly measure one's comprehension of the subject matter, then people must be tested on an individual basis. No grade scale. No comparison from one person to another. No more injustice. Personalized test should be implemented, one fit to make up for the variable's of one's life. In this way, more difficult questions will be provided to geniuses, while less difficult questions would be provided to those less suited. The basketball brute would no longer be at a disadvantage, compared to the math geek, in class."
• S: "But test serve a social purpose -- they give an idea of how everyone is performing compared to others. You simply can abolish this concept, it's part of the human's competitive nature!"
• B: "Honestly, I wish it weren't. Regardless, people can still be given this measure by comparing their status proportionally to others. For an example, no longer would Sarah have to worry about be considered lesser than any other, for the test she'll take will be made to suit her individual needs. What she makes on that test can then be proportionally compared to the 'scores' of others, who also took individualized test."
• S: "Well...It seems you have a proper argument forming there (albiet slightly fantastical and abstract), brain, but it's in futility. I still have to study for my finals -- but hey, what you said is good food for thought."
• B: *sigh* "Fine. My hope is some one on your blog will respond interestingly to my thoughts...yours have been..."
• S: " Yea? Have been what?"
• B: "Let's just say you'd make good friends with a neanderthal."
• S: "Sweet! I've always wanted to be pals with someone from the Netherlands!"
• B: "You twit! The citizens of the Netherlands aren't called neanderthals, they're called -- ah, forget it."

What are your brains telling you?

I fear for the future of music...

Warning before we get started.

I don't claim to properly know the guy of the topic, Justin Bieber, nor do I have a proper clue of his biography aside from the swift rundown I did. Simply put - I will be brutal. Readers, you might not like that. Get over it.

I have a duty to respond in a blog (I emphasize "respond", i.e. an emotional response). When I try to look at music in general, I dive into the worlds Rock, Electronica, Classical, Jazz, and some Rap. I explore and enjoy their sub-genres and hybrids. But when it comes to Bieber's work (Pop?) stuff, I can't help but to cringe. No hate to the person themselves, but FOR ME, their stuff is trash...so's country music, but that's a different story...

Now then, if I hate his life's work, shouldn't I hate him?

Not necessarily. Bieber's work may seem terrible to me, but his story isn't one to abhor or anything. The kid has talent, obviously. But because I am emotionally too outraged to continue writing coherently -- simply because I despise his music -- I will show a list of why I do not hate the person. (You'll see, even though my previous statement really does hinder my goal, you'll see why I don't hate the guy).

Reasons why I don't hate him, per se.

1. He's made over 200 wishes come true for dying people through the Make A Wish foundation. He plays a part in the Charity: Water stuff, giving clean water people around the world who don't have it. He has power, and so far, he uses it for the right things. There are plenty of more charity examples.
2. The guy has worked hard to make it. Talent + work = success.
3. I'm an artist, I inherently support other artist - it's my thing.
4. For more reasons of why I don't hate him, check out this random guy's blog (I think number 5 is pretty funny). He pretty much summarizes the reasons, in a jerk-ish, funny kinda way.

No hate for Bieber, but I don't care for him (I'm neutral).... and so, if my hate is not for Bieber, but I support his endeavor to succeed, to whom should I direct my burning hatred?? Well, I personally blame sappy pubescent girls, I mean, young teens for making a market for his TERRIBLE MUSIC (x_x)... 

Kill the that music...KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

ThE lOtIoN iS a LiE!

Man, my router and I constantly have a never ending war...if I ever win a battle, I get a few days of speedy internet. If not, I have an eternity of brutal hours, suffer from internet withdraws... jk. Okay, let's get to the meat of this meal! ---->

SCANDAL in the J&J family pharmaceutical company!

 I've never trust big companies. MacDonald's, Coca-Cola, Funimation, The CONGRESS; I all subscribe to their products, but I'm always suspicious of what their pushin'. I'm particularly suspicious of pharmaceutical companies, a fear probably rooted from my experience with Capcom's Resident Evil game series and with my in my ignorance of how medicine works.

It seems a big company Johnson & Johnson is shelling out more than 2.2 Billion big-ones in order to settle criminal and civil accusations of improperly promoting the using of a certain anti-psychotic drug, Resperdal, to the elderly (with dementia) and to children (with disorders) -- regardless of the fact that the drug may have adverse affects for anyone other than the F.D.A approve schizophrenia patients. Adverse affect, you say? Yes, they include an increased chance for stroke in the elderly, and breast growth in young boys. Weird, right?

Our US Legislature may seem pretty weak with recent events (remember that Government Shutdown?)...

but at least our judicial system is making headway. J&J isn't the only major business being cracked down for their questionable promotion of possibly harmful drugs. Among that number are Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Abbott, just to name a few. It's about time some regulation is put into practice on pharmaceutical companies that hold so much...BIOLOGICAL control. I mean, all we have to determine of a vitamin pill will be good for us, is what they shove on to the label. I'm a skeptic, there, I wrote it.

“As a group, [we've]...sent a message to the pharmaceutical industry that this kind of widespread fraud and disregard for F.D.A. regulations isn’t going to be tolerated." Well said, Mr. David Stone, a winning lawyer from the suit.

So remember

When you're eating a multi-vitamin, taking cold medicine, an antidepressant, give another thought as to where that medicine came from. It might serve you well to be a skeptic, who knows...

when you grab that bottle of J&J lotion, remember, ThE lOtIoN iS a LiE! 

Smoke-Screen!

"The proposal provoked some protest among people who pointed out that New Yorkers under 21 can drive, vote and fight in wars, and should be considered mature enough to decide whether to buy cigarettes" - this happens to be the response from the people in NY city after a reform to raise the smoking age in the city came through.

they fell Hook, Line, and Sinker!

When I contemplate this reform, I knew exactly what the implications were. I wasn't around to witness it, but when the drinking age rose to 21, a phenomena occurred -- people began to purposely drink under age because it was fun to be rebellious! What is the difference here? Nothing. Kids already smoke from a very early age. New Yorker kids have a something to poke fun at now, and will purposely smoke just to spite the new reform. This has nothing to do with "maturity", being able to "vote and fight in wars" at eighteen, etc...although, that does make a valid point.

Who has to gain from this?

I'm far from a conspiracy theorist, but the only entity I feel can really gain from this is the tobacco industry itself. Tobacco will sell, there's no doubt about it. But now, more money will be pouring in from rebellious youths (from whichever way they'll indirectly get their cigs) to line the pockets of tobacco corporations. Sure, from a distance, this reform looks like an affront to the industry, but with all the cash they have, this is nothing to them. Tobacco, like anything else addictive like beer, aspirin (yes, think about it), and gasoline, will continue to make big C.E.Os prosper and an event like this could only boost their short-term (and most likely, their long term) gains.

You want reform, NY?

Stop enforcing age-restraining laws and whatnot, and get to the root of the problem -- lack of education. If you really feel it's necessary to make it harder for a product to be bought, on your concern for your people's health, educate the people about the risk of smoking. Make anti-smoking propaganda: tv commercials, online ads, posters, the works. Tobacco companies did the same to forward their agenda, and in a free economy, you're free to fight back on their turf.

Making laws to stop people from doing something? *sigh* please... that only works when everyone's already not doing it haha

A Sea Sick Reality

Sorry for the late post, but the eye doctor really zapped all of my time. Turns out my left eye's astigmatism has gotten worse. The extremist in me says I should just put it out, buy an eye patch, and begin my life as a ...

PIRATE!

...seriously though, they've been in the news, and they're not like you'd expect. Isn't the stereotypical pirate that nearly every American envisions is the Capt. Jack Sparrow or Blackbeard figure: powerful, cunning, charismatic leaders, and ruthless with a hint of honor? Well, forget the Pirates of the Caribbean, and start thinking "pirates of Nigeria". They're everything you'd expect from a pirate, except there's a harsh reality in the business. There are no swords. There is no honor code. There is no charm. There is only the money, the guns, and everything else that's in the way of getting it. It's a very bloody mess.

In Recent News...

Nigerian pirates have assaulted an American oil tanker, taking hostage both captain and chief engineer -- both American. No doubt they'll get what they came for, with plenty of booty and more. Regardless of a rescue op or not, there will probably be blood spilt, and those nightmarish devils will recede back into the darkness of the mist-covered ocean...

Personal Input

I am a romanticist. That's the bottom line. To see such a gruesome reality in one of my most treasured professions (if you can call it that), is just so...terribly sad for me. The pirate is everything I, everything WE cannot be -- truly free. He works outside of the system. He takes what he wants, when he wants to, and how he wants to do it. No God (i.e. no enforced moral code), no glory, no king -- only women, wine, and pleasurable wealth. And even though he always plays by his own rules, he never lets his own liberty burden others. If he pillages a village, only hostiles are captured/killed. If he boards a ship, no gun is fired unless fired upon first. The legendary figure I have in my head is a living paradox, called the Gentleman Pirate -- and he's a figure that probably never existed, except in the form of the privateer.

THE KING MADE THE PIRATE WHAT HE IS.

The privateer was quite an opportunist. When the king needed men to work outside the bureaucracy of his regular army, the privateer was ready for the gold. The English monarchy needed men, unmarked personnel, devoid of any national or political affiliation, to attack Spanish ships without the Spanish being able to trace it back to the English. As I know it, any loot they found was theirs to keep, just as long as they attacked the Spanish. Think of them a private contractors, PMCs, or whatever... working outside of the law, for God, Gold, and Glory.

Then, economic decision to hire on "naval thugs" was thought as morally wrong by the king's subjects and so it was outlawed. The approval was gone, but not the privateers. Haven been abandoned by their county and king, they became pirates, ones willing to plunder anything for anything. Legends were made, and the rest is history...

These pirates,

the ones we see in the news, are related to the historical ones, in that they are naval gangs. Either they are contracted to do the plunder, or the profit is in the plunder itself. Regardless, it's a sick sick reality.

On a side note, I will be dressing as Jack Sparrow for Halloween... heheh

THE Shutdown

So the Fed shutdown for a bit, now what?

The aftermath seems simple:

• Who came out on top = democrats
• Who came out disorganized, and split = republicans
• There seems to be a substantial amount of debt (more than there already was)
• There's an elephant in the room.

The Chaos

During, and in the aftermath of the Federal crisis, one thing was apparent: the parties were showing their true character. That is, the Democratic party was holding strong together on their own values while the GOP seemed to be split in their ideals; it shows in their voting. While the Democrats were united in Obama's legislation, "of the Republicans, 18 Senate and 144 in the House opposed the legislation, while 27 in the Senate and 87 in the House supported it." (Roberts, Lewis, Pilkington) The Tea Party, needless to say, was split.

The Debt

Wasn't the skyrocketing debt the reason why the Fed made a "debt ceiling"? And guess what, the debt NOR the ceiling is gone. Along with the $24 billion debt built up by the crisis, our precious U.S.A. still has $60 trillion, more or less, to deal with (according to the US National Debt Clock: Real Time). Get this, this whole Federal nonsense, that has "no economic rationale", says Mr. VP JB, COULD REPEAT! Yup, resolution to the problem just another band-aid, raise the debt ceiling...again. The deal will fund the government until January 15th and raise the infamous ceiling until February 7th. There was alot of disorganization the first time around, let's hope something is properly done -- don't change the band-aid, we need some antibiotics and stitches! (I applaud anyone who can follow my lunacy)

That Elephant...

Sooooooooo, Fed functions are back to normal, everything's s'well, right?...Right?....WRONG! Congress is absolutely scarred by this crisis. The impending stress of another Fed crisis is probably not off everyone's mind, allowing for high tensions. The Republican party has some splits to take care of, and the unified Democratic party easily has the power. With the wrong push, this bicameral system could easily be torn apart by a coup d'etat of sorts of one party over the other...but that's simply an extreme. A bigger problem is afoot -- the lack of bipartisanship! The idea behind our sort of political system was that the differences in the ideals of both parties would complement each other's to create a perfect result: legislature that embodies the best of both worlds for the best of the American people!

With this event, the Fed Shutdown (a.k.a the Elephant), clearly some scars and rifts were made in Congress, and a cooperative (or at the very least, a decisive and practical) future of legislature seems very...fantastical.

Side note: I found what the foreigner said at the end of the theguardian's article pretty funny and enlightening, being that the fall of one party happened in his native land's history -- when Mao Zedong took over.

My, my, that's a lot of debt -- about $60 trillion worth.
A little doodle.

Soto, Steven. "I.O.U." . 23 Oct 2013. Pen & graphite on 4.75" x 9" drawing paper.

Anarchy

So a man was brutally beaten...lets play the blame game.

I saw the video, as I'm sure many have, and what I witnessed was the abuse of the law on both parties -- Alexian Lien (the poor fool, stupid enough to disturb a wasps nest) and the Hollywood Stunz group (a.k.a the wasps' nest).

You just don't do that, Lien.

So yea, the biker group was aggressively blocking major roadways for their fun. They should have found a way to legally reserve some road somewhere, or at least find some other place to do their fun (i.e not a major public roadway that leads to a major metropolitan area). But a guy, with all logic/reason, just doesn't commit vehicular assault on a couple of bikers (with a family in the car) and expect everything to be hunky dory -- especially if every one of his biker buddies will wittiness it! Seriously, is it healthy to poke a bear? Is it reasonable to spit on a lion? Is it OK to kick a horse's hind leg while standing behind it? Then as to why poor Lien decided to piss-off an army of bikers is beyond me...I'm sure the meeting with the boss, or the lunch break, or a beer with the guys, or whatever it was could have waited. "But what if it was an emergency", many would ask. Well, one emergency certainly doesn't resolve another. As anyone who saw the whole video would agree, he would have gotten caught by the traffic either way. Way to go Lien...

Am I supporting the bikers?

Slightly. What they did was extreme and unlawful....but quite human. While I applaud their humanity and desire for justice (again Lien, I'm sure you didn't have to ram your car into them if you wanted to pass...) they didn't have to smash the guy's face in. If one man had the Land Rover's action on camera, I'm sure others did too. The evidence would have been more than enough to convict Road Rage Lien. The authorities should have handled this business.

hah, the law always feels better when the blues bash in the the brains of a road-rage-maniac than when the public takes the matter into their own hands.

Which brings me to my final point...

Where were the authorities? Being that they failed to prevent this havoc, they have the ultimate blame. There was a massive street hunt through town, just to catch and get vengeance on this one guy, AND no cops were around to stop it? I mean, if one kid brings a knife to school, every cop in a 20 mile radius flips (exaggeration), but if a swarm of bikers hunt one guy down in public, no authorities are around to bring the peace? It is this sort of weakness, shown by the local authorities, that gives way to the criminal groups that many fear: gangs, mafias, cartels, you name it. Lucky for us, this show of local force was done by a group of biker stunt artist -- not a gang or self-appointed militia.

Remember, anarchy happens when the will to empathizing ends, and apathy reigns. Lien, next time, don't run over a guy. Empathize with him...try to drive around -- or call the authorities (that should have been there.)