They follow you everywhere. Slowly but surely, they creep onto your pages. Assuming an omnipresent reputation, they numb down your alertness to them as they find their way onto all of your school exams and standardized tests. All of a sudden, you become aware that they force you to make difficult choices, crucial choices that pave the path for your future. The answers to the multiple choice questions all seem valid; moreover, all have the potential to be the right answer. Nevertheless, only one choice is the right answer, which accordingly makes all the other answers wrong. Neglect your individual thoughts, it is not about what you think, it is about what The College Board© wants you to think. Eliminate, narrow down your answers, lastly, do not over think it; make “your” choice. Hold back for a second, did you miss a step from their instructions?
Before we become robots, we must reexamine ourselves: doesn’t this process of thought go against all the foundations of the modern liberal education? Doesn’t liberal education encourage students to follow their independent thoughts and seek out their own answers? From its inception and in practice, liberal education fosters the approach that encourages students to activate their nervous systems, develop their own perspective and be mindful of others’ manner of thinking. This approach is supposed to enable students to surpass the-conventional-and-limiting-one-answer-system and generate alternative manners of thinking. Moreover, liberal thinking is supposed to free the mind of its boundaries and allow new ideas to reach the surface. Currently, in our so-called “liberal education” system, many students come across “liberal” books such as 1984, which teach us about the immense power of language. In 1984, Orwell outlines a horrifying society in which the spoken and written word are limited, where words such as “doublethink” serve the purpose to limit thought. After reading this novel, the majority of students are left with an important lesson: language controls thought. Hence, in a similar manner, don’t the limitations imposed upon us by multiple-choice answers essentially limit our process of thought? The facts concur with this notion, since when preparing for multiple-choice tests such as the SAT and AP exams, our generation is often tempted—if not strongly encouraged to—purchase prep-books and fill the pockets of test prep institutions that make fortunes from students’ simple desire to attend solid academic institutions. The prep-books issued by such institutions claim to posses all the secrets to defeating the multiple choice. Unfortunately, instead of presenting us with knowledge, these books contain the secret methodology of circling that one right answer. These friendly manuals, which help us achieve our dreams, train us to eliminate answers and analyze texts mechanically. The more time we spend with our good-intentioned friends, the more they rid us of our creativity and individual ability to offer different interpretations on texts. Furthermore, the pragmatic and future paving tricks that these prep-books teach strip us of our analytical eye as they rob literature from its beauty by forcing it to become one-dimensional and limited. Suddenly, our interpretations, therefore our thought processes and schema become wrong. Students and teachers, wake up: a new era has arrived, where the multiple choice judges us and not vice versa.
Through the multiple-choice system, we are taught to disregard our independent manner of thinking, and mold our brains to the standardized process of generating answers. The tragedy of our generation is that we are forced to prepare for standardized tests not in order to gain knowledge and be tested on our knowledge, but rather, we are forced to prepare for how to defeat the test, thus, to prepare to defeat the multiple-choice system. However, will we ever defeat the multiple choice if we continue in this manner? Will we ever defeat the system if our admittance to academic institutions depends upon circling answers? It is up to us to circle the right choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment