Testy About College Test-Taking

The criticism of so many top-flight Asian universities is that they rely altogether too much on rote memorization and basic academic regurgitation of their professors’ mandates. Lacking, say many, is non-linear analysis and critical thinking… the willingness to challenge that which is with theories of what else there might be. Americans pride themselves on a system that encourages out-of-the-box thinking, but there is an underlying force for academic homogenization within the United States as well. Standardized testing. Perhaps we are accelerating the use of such standardized testing as a reaction to our falling comparisons with students in other nations as to skills in math, reading and science.

Perhaps, this form of testing is also a recognition that not all teachers are qualified to teach property without strict guidelines paired with an intense desire to have a quantative basis to evaluate our nation’s curriculae. Or perhaps it is a fear that, with approximately 13,000 public school districts dispensing primary and secondary education, for example, the pull towards Biblical priorities may trump more objective faculties promulgating the hard science that students really need to survive and thrive in a modern world.

But “standardized” has an equal number of drawbacks, particularly if you are trying to encourage non-linear problem solving or dealing with students who have not had the best exposure to the academic richness available in America’s most elite private schools. “Standardized” tends to reinforce incumbent values and existing power elites who have defined the system… not necessarily finding the best and the brightest, especially those with substantial and unrealized potential. Standardized also doesn’t find that special, unique thinker with the power to change the world unless they fit in everywhere else.

There is an increasing movement afoot to break down those standardized barriers to find students whose excellence would otherwise go unrecognized. “The National Association for College Admission Counseling has called on colleges to consider eliminating the SAT and the ACT from their admissions requirements (as Bard, among other colleges, has done [see below]), saying the exams underrepresent the abilities of some students, in particular minorities, while favoring those who can afford coaching…

“[In September,] a coalition of private nursery and grade schools in New York recommended that its member schools stop asking very young applicants to take a standardized admissions test, also because of concerns about coaching.” New York Times, September 28^th. The system is pretty much better for those who can afford coaching.

Indeed, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York-based Bard College, offers students a different path to admission. Allowing applying students an effect “open book” online access to all of the necessary underlying materials – making sure everyone has a level playing field, Bard allows that “[y]ou need not be president of the debate club or captain of the track team. No glowing teacher recommendations are required. You just need to be smart, curious and motivated, and prove it with words — 10,000 words, in the form of four, 2,500-word research papers.

“The research topics are formidable and include[,out of a 17 question menu for example,] the cardinal virtue of ren in Confucius’s ‘The Analects,’ ‘the origin of chirality (or handedness) in a prebiotic life,’ Ezra Pound’s view of ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ and how to design a research trial using microbes transplanted from the human biome. If professors deem the papers to be worthy of a B+ or better by the college’s standards, you are in…

“‘It’s kind of declaring war on the whole rigmarole of college admissions and the failure to foreground the curriculum and learning,’ Leon Botstein, Bard’s president of 38 years, said in an interview. Saying the prevailing system was ‘loaded with a lot of nonsense that has nothing to do with learning,’ he hailed the new approach as a ‘return to basics, to common sense’ and added, ‘You ask the young person: are they prepared to do university-level work?’…

“Dr. Botstein acknowledged that the workload might be impractical for some applicants. But he finds a virtue in it, too. ‘The great thing is, anyone who completes it is better for it. No one,’ he said, ‘is better for having taken the College Board.’” NY Times. Students have to certify that the work is their own, but after all, isn’t precisely this kind of thinking that college should be all about? What are your thoughts to the collect application process? What exactly was the college admission process before these standardized tests? Is this “old traditional” the “new better” approach? Or just for a few?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the ability to nurture “different” can make all the “difference” in the world.