0086: Thank God for Standardized Tests, They Help Us Know Our Place

Thursday, January 26, 2012

0086: Thank God for Standardized Tests, They Help Us Know Our Place

#revolution #fascism #satire #edchat

The best thing about standardized tests is they take the guess work out of teaching. I know exactly what to teach and to what extent. I don’t have to worry about teaching in wasteful creative ways, nor do I have to worry about inspiring my students. All I have to do is repeat facts over and over, and give them four choices. It’s brilliant. I can even make it fun. I can use games that get them to choose the right answer. But, even if I don’t make it fun they’ll still get it. I just have to be repetitive and forceful enough. Some kids try to resist, but I have an array of Pavlovian mechanisms to prevent this. I just use classical conditioning, I call them procedures, but once they’re conditioned all I have to do is deposit the information and they’ll spit it back out onto bubble sheets. Some students try to ask questions, but I just tell them we don’t have time. Eventually they quit asking them all together. Thank goodness. Learning not to ask questions is probably one of the best outcomes of testing. It makes for compliant citizens. Think how much better out world will be when there are no more questions. The politicians who are smarter can just do what’s best for us. Testing and standardization helps end the search for answers. Students learn, they’re really trained, but learn sounds more educational, to accept facts from teachers. I’m right because I’m in power. It’s all so amazing the way students learn these days. As a teacher, even I’m learning not to ask questions. They’ll only get me fired. Questions are not for anything but tests. Companies are put together, benevolently, to ask the questions. All we have to do is recall the already supplied answer.

The best part of it all is we learn that all our hard work is futile. I can teach and teach and teach, and my students can work and work and work, and we’re always going to fall just short of success. It helps us understand that the wealthy kids across town deserve success, and we deserve strife. Classes are meant to be solid. All is futile. Hooray for standardization— not just in school, but society too!

I fear without tests and training a pesky revolution might boil up among the proletariat (what’s that mean?).