Standard Label

In honor of the ending of school, a guest post I wrote for a friend of mine who blogs at Peanut Gallery Speaks:

So, to be sure, every college graduate has one. Or at least they should. And if they don’t, I’d like to know how they did it—making it out unbranded, and all. For better or (most likely) for worse, it’s something like a scarlet letter. And, sinner or saint, it seems to follows us for the rest of our lives.

If you’re lost somewhere on a cattle ranch with Nathaniel Hawthorne, let me be explicit: I’m talking about college entrance exam scores. The bane of every would-be scholar or professional’s young adult existence. Pick your acronym—LSAT, GMAT, MCAT (or what have you)—and that magic combination of numbers that comes at the end of your often painstaking journey will either unlock or clamp shut your foreseeable future.

I’d like to think I’m preaching to the choir here, but perhaps not. Perhaps all of you have smugly found yourselves in the 90th percentile. But, for those of us who pad the middle of the bell curve, the anxiety surrounding this experience can be acute.

The essence of any happiness we hope to achieve in this life seems to be enveloped in those digits.

But is it really?

So, for all intents and purposes, you must know that I’m in graduate school. And in class yesterday we discussed the political economy of the Progressive Era, and how that affected the opposing philosophical outlooks of scholars John Dewey and Charles Eliot on education’s role in society. (Stay with me here…) In short, Mr. Dewey maintained that the purpose of education was to provide a means whereby an individual could learn how to contribute to society in her own unique way (think Montessori schools). Mr. Elliot maintained that education was the effective response and solution to social problems. He felt that education worked best when used to sort people into their “proper” place in society, ensuring that the intellectually elite made it to the top (think Phillips Academy). And the most reliable way to sort was through quantitative measures. Enter standardized testing.

The professor of my class went on with quite a lengthy monologue of his personal opinions on the matter. He, himself an accomplished college professor, entered a top public university with an ACT score of 19. (The fact that he actually admitted that to the class may have just sealed his place as my favorite professor yet.) Mr. Elliot may have easily shuffled this man to the bottom of the proverbial pile. But, (as inferred by the professor) that score didn’t turn out to be a very good indicator of his success.

The professor opined: “When dynamite was created, it was done so to be a useful tool in furthering the progress of physically building society (think bridges and tunnels). The problem came when people started throwing it at each other. And so it is with standardized tests: Tools, when used correctly, but potentially destructive when not.”

I’m not advocating the abolition of standardized testing, here. But, as I came to terms with my own scarlet digits during his lecture, I was glad to note that an intellectually elite acknowledges that those scores aren’t everything. And that they certainly don’t expressly spell success or failure in every instance.

Besides, once school’s over, there are more gate-keeping hoops to jump through anyway.

(Think job interview.)