78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



peccancy: iniquity, sin, immorality
2007-06-02   11:15 a.m.

Base: in, im
Meaning: in, on, upon, into, toward
Origin: Latin

I've been thinking in clumps of phrases and word parts lately (see above). One would suppose, when one is a teacher of English, a hoarder of words and an avid reader, that one has developed a more than extensive vocabulary. Until, of course, one takes some GRE practice tests and finds that according to it's evaluative methods and scale, one does NOT fall under such a category. Well.

I'll save you the extensive rant I've been launching into against ETS, the "non-profit" company that has a monopoly on the industry and engages in notoriously poor practices when crafting, implementing, and administering standardized tests at all levels. Their website says that a "commitment to advance quality and equity in education for all people worldwide" is their primary concern. Oh, worldwide! ETS: helping solve the disparity in education for the poor, one scantron sheet at a time.

Ok, I won't spare you the rant. I'll rant by example. ETS runs the Praxis exam, which a student I'd been advising for the last three years recently took. Said student spent most of her time as an English and Women's Studies major focusing on the literature of the African Diaspora: contemporary writing on immigration, classical literature of slave narratives, African-American woman writers who address such themes like Alice Walker, Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, etc. She even moved this examination into a cross-cultural context, exploring the same themes - immigration and Diaspora, among South-Asian and some European poets. Fascinating, intellectually innovative, and basically what one does in grad school and what I would LOVE to hear high school English teachers doing in public schools.

But when said student took the Praxis exam, she couldn't remember which title was one of Jack London's and which Hemingway character went to which story. Therefore, the exam told her that she is a failure within the study of English, and unfit to be a high school teacher. I guess IT has decided that dead white male authors are the only ones worth knowing - excuse, me - memorizing, and if one is well versed in Salman Rushdie's work or Bessie Head's, well - they've totally wasted their time at University learning unimportant things, and shouldn't be granted a teaching license.

If you think I'm being dramatic, I'm not. She said there were three or four "token" questions on "minority" authors. (Well, thanks for the shout-out!) This classic issue of "who decides greatness" in literature is by no means the fault of the ETS, and by no means new. It reflects a cultural bias or a Eurocentric focus and system of value in curriculum knowledge and instruction. BUT - why is a test like this, that perpetuates the problem and continues what we know are bad patterns, still in existence? Is this reflective of the outfit's attention to "global equity in education", or whatever other crap they sell?

And here's the most disturbing issue: I had the same problem my student did when I took the praxis exam - EIGHT YEARS AGO. You're telling me that in eight years, with the windfall of cash that's been pumped into the ETS (especially since the cost of the test has increased dramatically and test score "expiration" shrank from 5 years to 2 in most universities, prompting a HUGE increase in people having to re-take the test), they couldn't resolve some of these issues or work to construct a different method of evaluation that isn't just about trivia and memorizing plots that, let's be honest, don't "speak" to most of us? (Oh, woe is the Hemingway character whose entire world is wrapped up in hyper-masculinity, preying on wicked women, and finding excessive wealth problematic. Yeah that totally makes me reflect on my own life and addresses universal issues we all face.)

So where I enter this world again is another GRE exam for my Political Science PhD. Because as we all well know, it's very important that I demonstrate my knowledge of Geometry for this degree. I can't even begin to imagine how important the Pythagorean Theorem will be to the papers I'll write on social justice movements for women in third world countries. Knowing how to calculate the area of a rhombus or the radius of a circle will also certainly come in handy when I'm taking a class on global governance & transnational policy. And surely the word "quixotic" and my ability to say that "Pugilist:Bellicose as Scholar:Erudite" will be VERY important in my dissertation research on how policy is constructed to empower or disempower women in the micro loan and small business initiative process in developing nations.

And please, spare me the line that these kinds of exam questions test one's ability to problem solve or see patterns or apply logic in a way that is reflective of real-world or student/scholar skills. I don't buy it when the ETS sells it as justification or explanation for their one-size-fits-all, very pricey exam, and I don't buy it when institutions or individuals launch into such points as a defense of the test. Just because one forgets what the word "salubrious" means and therefore decreases their verbal score dramatically does NOT mean that one has a crappy vocabulary and is doomed for failure in writing for graduate school. And really, it's that random with most of the exam. It does not measure what it purports to measure, as what it purports to measure cannot be extracted on a computer terminal or piece of paper in two hours.

Recently someone said there is a need for standardization when considering entry into academic institutions - especially post-grad - since there are so many mediocre schools granting degrees purportedly comparable and equal to other, more comprehensive schools. "What do you do with a degree from some random, hippie private school that doesn't really assign grades and lets students major in tangential weirdo stuff that doesn't really prepare them for a grad program?". Really good point - as is the one that many undergraduate programs have been watered down, taking students they normally wouldn't and lowering standards to increase their profit and deal with looming or immediate budget crises.

But should we blame the "unprepared student" for that? When they've extensively paid a school which promises to prepare them in a way that they've been licensed to do by certain accrediting institutions? If this system fails them, why do we punish them further, monetarily and psychologically, with these tests that lay the blame squarely with them when they fail (not with the test, not with the system)?

Seems like a big honkin capitalist scam to me. But then, isn't everything?

I have to go re-teach myself some algebra.

xoxo