As a junior in high school, I took the AP class in American History. We did a lot of reading, a lot of discussing, a fair amount of writing . . . I’ll be honest, 20 years and a ton of books since then have made it hard for me to remember what I learned about history from that particular class.
What I do remember is my teacher telling us that on the multiple choice part of the AP exam, if we had to take a wild guess on a question, we should go with C, since supposedly that was the correct answer more often than other letters. (If I’m remembering this right, B came a close second.)
Now, I don’t blame my teacher for telling us this. We had a goal – get college credit and possibly save a lot of money or have the chance to take another course we liked – and we had a task to complete to achieve the goal – pass this test. He was providing us with information that would help us complete the task and achieve the goal. That wasn’t ALL he did by any means. He was a great teacher, a role model back then and even more so now. And in the system that we were in, he was looking out for us.
But every minute he spent telling us about picking option C was a moment that we weren’t discussing history or how to think about events.
Every moment that someone spent studying the patterns in multiple choice tests was a moment not spent researching or thinking about some other problem.
Every bit of mental energy that I have used storing and recalling that fact is a bit of energy I have not put into my family, or my work, or even remembering what I’m supposed to get at the grocery store.
Instead of the test being an observation of what occurred when you were learning whatever you were learning, the test becomes the subject in its own right. Instead of revealing, it distorts.
I just finished reading Christopher Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites, where he describes the entrance test that determines admission to one of the most hypercompetitive high schools in New York City. Sixth graders take this test. And there are New York parents who spend thousands of dollars on test prep programs to prepare their kids for this test.
Multiple this by schools high schools all over the country, raise it to the power of college and grad school admissions tests, and throw in AP, professional certification, and whatever other tests you want. Besides the massive inequality that this creates, think of where all that energy could have gone. Think of what it could have built, instead of creating a set of numbers on a test report.