Testing, 1-2-3

     I know that posting twice in one day is weird, but I have had these written since last month, but wasn't allowed on the interwebs, as Aunt Lina jokingly calls it.  Also, I've been BUSY!  Sorry.

    

     This public school life I’ve been forced into really rots.  I have become a nervous wreck.  I spend all day running around an ancient building ill-suited for the modern idea of how to educate the masses, keeping up with the nonsense-work that some teachers give us to do at home, trying to at the very least stay out of the radar of the mean kids, the upper classmen, and the teachers that love to “make an example” out of kids they don’t understand (or who make them look bad – I have a story about that….).  Real learning is minimal, at best.  Thank God that most of the stuff we’re “learning” is stuff I’ve already dealt with when I was homeschooled in PA.  My public school lessons have mostly been about acquiring survival skills.  Not the kind you’d learn in the forest or jungle.  The suburban classroom is a more dangerous (if subtle) environment.  I’ve come to understand why these kids look up to people on reality TV – there’s no challenge to becoming a “Snooki,” most of the girls are ¾ of the way there already!  And while Kevin Smith is a cool-geek who loves comics and movies, he actually had to WORK to make his good fortune happen.  And most of the kids I go to school with have never had to work a day in their life.  Mommy and Daddy have given them everything they’ve ever desired (or the allowance to buy it), and have told their precious by-products of a night’s lovemaking that they are too good and too special to ever flip a burger, ring-up an order, mow a lawn, or hammer a nail.  So these kids idea of a work-ethic is “I got my paper in on time, man.  Whaddaya mean, that’s not good enough?”  Anything different, anything not within the realm of what’s been done before, or what somebody on TV or in a magazine or on the web says is cool, is suspect.  You either laugh at it, or pick on it.

     Part of me knows I could best these idiots at their own game (especially if it involved physical prowess – no one in DSW Middle School could beat this cougar!),  but that’s not the game I want to play.  Aunt Lina brought me up to keep things in check, fly below the radar, hunt and don’t be hunted, and most important, stay unnoticed.  And I do all of this, while attending classes, eating lunches, exercising & playing stupid games in phys-ed, and taking their stupid standardized tests.

     Which brings me to today’s little essay.  I recently took my first in-school standardized test, and it was such an outrageous experience that I really have to tell about indignity.  You see, they are not testing me for any meaningful reason except this: by testing me and my classmates, they hope to determine how well the teachers are teaching the material that the federal government deems worthy of being taught to middle schoolers like me.  Let me explain.

     According to politicians, not enough money is being spent to educate the average kid.  According to two politicians in particular, reform was needed.  The politicians in question were then-President George W. Bush, and the then-senior Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy.  But somehow, everyone forgot that this new education plan, “No Child Left Behind,” was a bi-partisan effort, mostly the brain-child of a (now) dead Kennedy.  Mostly everyone blames President (GW) Bush for the stupid plan that because he signed the bill in order to look good.  Too bad he didn’t actually read into what he was signing us kids on for.  Good in theory, but not in practice.

     Because there is no practice, there’s just tests, to test how good the teachers are doing.

     First of all, it’s stupid because you can use a calculator, so basically they don’t care if you know how to actually add, subtract, multiply or divide.  I’ve learned that there are kids in the 6^th grade in White Cedars NJ who don’t know what 6 x 8 is, without a calculator. They never memorized basic math tables, because according to the government, that’s not the way to teach kids.  They’ll “absorb” it by just doing it. Kinda like throwing a person off a diving board in order to teach them how to swim.  How many people d you know who learned how to swim that way?  But the government says it will work, and the government knows best, right? Now why do we trust a body that we know can’t get a simple war right to tell us how to educate children?

     But that’s neither here nor there – I have to take the test, because, IT’S THE LAW.  So I walk into school with the calculator I don’t need and a piece of contraband that I do need – a copy of This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart.  Since we were expected to sit quietly and not talk if we finished a section of the test early (and according to Dor I’d probably be done really quick). I thought that a frivolous piece of fiction that had nothing to do with the 6^th grade would be the perfect way to pass the time.

     This Rough Magic is a Gothic romance from the mid-twentieth century.  It takes place in Greece, and has nothing to do with the material we were being tested on.  I had taken timed tests before, with other home-schooled kids, when I lived in PA.  In that state, we’d finish test sections, turn in the test, and then we could read until the moderator called “time’s up”.  Then we’d get our booklets & scoring sheet back for the next section.  It was no big deal, as long as the book was deemed “not directly related to the testing material.”

     Well, at D. S. Whitstone, you can’t have a book during testing.  But you can bring an I-pod or Zune to listen to music or play games!  I was so furious.  That was so unfair!  Not only don’t I have an I-pod (not yet – I plan to get one when I save up enough money),  the teachers never bothered to check if anyone’s i-pod was playing a pod cast with test information.  Some kids even had I-phones (supposedly forbidden) and were texting!  But I couldn’t bury my nose in a book, and lose myself in Lucy Waring’s adventures on the island of Corfu.  Wow, what a rebel I was!

     The first test was so basic to me, that I finished way before everyone else.  Our group moderator, Miss Joilee was not one of my regular teachers, and she treated me as if I were lying when I told her I was done. Then she told me to go back and check my work!  I have never wanted to hit an adult before in my life, but this woman was so smug…first, when she took my book away from me, and then when she told me to check my work, she acted as if I were trying to get one over on her...Ugh.  So I asked her for some blank paper, so I could draw or write.  You’d think I’d asked her for some weed and a pipe, she was so scandalized!  She lectured me about how I couldn’t write anything; it was against the testing rules.

     Otherwise, I’d have written this in school, instead of at home.  This whole testing thing made me feel trapped and frustrated.  If I ever needed to get out and shift, I needed it that day.  Unfortunately, this testing took place on a Wednesday during Lent, and Aunt Lina & I were going to a special Lenten service called a Presanctified Liturgy. It’s a special Lenten service held every week, where the Communion was prepared during Sunday’s regular Liturgy (think Mass if you’re Catholic) and held for this service. Communicants are expected to fast from lunch onward.  Then there’s a meatless pot-luck dinner after the service, to break the fast.  It’s nice – we’re bringing macaroni and cheese with spinach. There’s usually soup, and this one family brings “tater tots”.  Unfortunately, going to church  meant we didn’t get home until way past eight – more like nine, and Aunt Lina was in no mood to let me go out…..The only thing that could help me relax was denied to me…and Thursday was going to be another day of testing!

     Thank God Carl talked to his mom.  She kept me sane—but more about that in my next post.

          Until then…

          Randi