Standardized? Or standard for the affluent?

Why did I wake up yesterday, on saturday morning, at 6:50am? The dreaded ACT, that's why.

However, I came out of that test thinking, wow that was terrible, but it's ok because I can just take it again. But, I was talking to my parents after taking the test and was shocked to find out that they took the test only once and with no tutoring, that was it. Flashback to the very first practice test I took with my ACT tutor and how poorly I thought I had scored. I made huge strides of improvement just by practicing and taking the test many different times with a tutor, but does everyone have that luxury?

In reality, many students in the US today are not capable of taking the ACT more than once and would never even be able to consider the use of ACT prep tools, at least not to the extent that I see used in my neighborhood. 

In an article in Education Week, Kohn states on the subject of test prep, "Affluent families, schools, and districts are better able to afford such products... exacerbating the inequity of such testing...Poorer schools manage to scrape together the money." 

More affluent school districts have a major advantage with this extra test prep available to them, while the poorer school districts can barely "scrape together the money," or gather it laboriously and with much difficulty. This simply "exacerbates" or severely increases the "inequity" or inequality of the tests because the rich have a huge advantage.

The result of this sad phenomenon is that these scores on the ACT and other standardized tests ultimately have a big effect on the college you will be able to attend. The more affluent students will be able to attend a more prestigious university with generally more career opportunities available to them simply because of one standardized evaluation, while the poorer communities will either not get to attend college or not be admitted to the college of their choice. The college or no college they decide to attend then limits the opportunities that they have available to them as a career. This one number, 19,23,36 can end up defining their career and ultimately their life.

I believe that these standardized tests should not carry so much weight on the fate of someone's future if they create such unequal opportunity. They should be part of a college's consideration but maybe not such a large part because they does not show exactly how much potential a student truly has. Just because one student received more ACT tutoring than the other does not mean that that student is smarter or a better candidate for a certain university. 

What are some other possible solutions to reduce the inequality of "standardized" testing? 

Feel free to comment! ;)

A Real Scandal

I finished the television show Friday Night Lights this summer so in recent weeks my new craze has been Scandal. If your not familiar with this show, first of all, turn on your TV and familiarize yourself with it, but for now here's the lowdown. It is a show about a woman named Olivia Pope who worked on the campaign to get the current president elected, but there is a bit of a scandal going on because she is having an affair with the current president and has been since the campaign. But it's not at all one of those sappy drama love stories, Mrs. Pope quit her job at the white house and now has her own investigation firm where she helps politicians or anyone who needs help solving murders or undercover things that cannot be directly handled by the actual law enforcement for whatever reason. 

However, everything in the show revolves around the government and politics in D.C., and although I realize that this is a fictional show, some of the things that go on in the politics of the show are so controversial yet realistic that they really make me consider how controversial our politics is in today's day and age and what is really going on behind closed doors in our great nation's capital. 

 

In our constitution you can't miss the 100 point font, "WE THE PEOPLE," yet in the show Scandal I seriously question how much power WE, as in your average non-government official US citizen, has, and sometimes I feel like it should really say "Them the people," as in the government officials in office. In the show, Olivia Pope actually rigged the election to get her candidate elected president. Even in office, the president does many controversial things, like abuses his power to get certain things or moving obstacles in his way most often by tarnishing their reputation or murder. And most of all everything you see in the media in this fantasy America is almost entirely different than what you would see behind the doors in the oval office. 

Even though I realize this is all made-up, it makes me question, could something even remotely similar actually be happening in D.C with elected officials in the real word America? Especially because right now we are in the middle of one of the most controversial events in our nations history- the government shutdown. You can learn more about it here, but 4 days ago our government was completely shut down except for essential functions for 16 days straight. 

This is certainly not something I would have voted for, and apparently the majority of the American people agree with me, "According to the survey, 63 percent of those questioned said they were angry at Republicans, with 57 percent also angry at Democrats, and 53 percent unhappy with President Obama. Nearly half of those surveyed said the shutdown has caused major problems." (Source). 

Why weren't "We the People," included in a decision that affects 313 million other Americans who say that this "would cause major problems," so they obviously were not in support of it. One of the biggest decisions in our nation's history was made soley by "them the people," how does this reflect upon how our nation is run? 

 

Feel free to comment!

Statistics, Fabricated or Fact?

The ACT. It should stand for Actually Controls my Total life, because lately, as junior in High School, the main thing it seems everyone wants me to think about lately has been the ACT. I know it may seem a little early, but nowadays everyone's trying to get a jump start on things, and my mom is no exception. I am taking my second ACT next weekend and this weekend she has been all up in my grill about doing my practice. But in reality, it is all down to one number. Your a 26, 27, 30... and all it translates to is a statistic. If you score a 30, perhaps you are in the 90th percentile, meaning you did better than 90 percent of the other students who took the test on that date with you. But what does that number even mean? It is all relative. For example, you could have happened to take the test on one date where all the dumbest students in the country took it at the same time as you so you scored a 36 or the 99th percentile, where if you took it maybe 3 weeks earlier you scored a 25 because you took it with all the Harvard wannabes.

Statistics turn an entire population into one number. You could be that hated but desired 1% of America, but why does that have to define you? 

Statistics can also be an unfair or misleading representation of a population. For example, of all the enslaved persons that crossed the horrible middle passage during the era of slavery it is said that around 10-15% of those enslaved persons died during their many week long journey. Some may look at that number and think that compared to 100%, those are decently good odds, but when you actually calculate out of the 6 million enslaved persons who crossed the middle passage yearly (Source), 900,000 of them would perish. 

There's a joke that "75% of statistics are a lie," get it? That's a statistic...

It's scary that in our day and age people allow statistics to carry an enormous amount of weight and truth. They let percentages define how they think of certain populations, but no one ever considers the possibility that the number, even though it may appear in print and be supported by research, may not be telling the whole story. 

Breaking the Gender Mold

With Junior year and the college process just beginning, I've been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up, and I decided that for myself as a 16 year old girl, my top two choices are fire fighter or professional football player. Just kidding.

Many people would think that absurd and probably laugh, but the real question is, why in our society today would that be a joke? Who decides that women are not allowed to be football players or fire fighters, that those are careers for a man. Our society today is one that is supposed to be so revolutionary, one that has made immense progress with women's rights and one in which you would not think of racial hatred as an every day thing. However, many people overlook the subtle gender roles inflicted on youths even today.

Just yesterday, my grandpa was visiting from out of town and when I walked in from a field hockey game looking all sweaty and disgusting he did not say anything but a simple hello.  However, when my brother strolled in behind me after his hockey game in the same condition my grandpa could not stop bombarding him with questions about the game, "How did you play!... Did you score?...Did you take anybody out?...Was it a close game?" Then twenty minutes later when my brother and I came downstairs after showering, changing, and getting ready for dinner, my grandpa's comment to me was, "Wow, your a changed woman, you look so beautiful," with no comment directed to my brother.  

It was very interesting to think that by his comments he was subtly making a statement that my brother looked great and that being in his sports gear was the mold he was meant to fill, while I was meant to be dressed to impress.  These are the types of comments that affect the younger generation and guide them to their "correct" gender role, even though in America today it would be frowned upon to tell a girl directly they cannot play sports. 

Even last night I was babysitting a family where the parents had taken their son to the Northwestern vs Ohio State football game and left the girls at home with me. Was that because they felt the young girls wouldn't be interested in something as "manly" as football? Even as I hung out with these young girls, their favorite activity was playing make believe, where the youngest daughter played the baby, I played the older sister, and the eldest daughter played the mother. The eldest daughter would direct us to act out scenes of her taking care of her children. Is this just what is engrained into our DNA, or is it something that our society inflicts on children in subtle cues that tell them what gender mold they are supposed to fill?



I believe America today still inflicts these subtle gender cues in many things that are generic items for children, like giving little girls dolls to play with and practice childcare, while we buy little boys balls or toy cars that they can build and practice creating things on their own.  

The cartoon above depicts a prehistoric couple demonstrating the most basic gender roles where the man does all the hard manual labor like hunting and the woman does the easy gathering. However, in this cartoon the woman is rebelling against her assigned gender role because she has hunted down and killed an animal and she is now getting reprimanded. The picture above represents the traditional gender roles that many people would choose to say simply do not exist still in our society. But that is the easy answer, in reality it is not true.

Although woman in America today have made great progress in society by having more rights and such, there are still subtle cues such as the one represented in the picture to the right.  It starts with the young children and takes place in modern day, and even on bathroom signs, there is a stereotype that girls must wear dresses, or at least look more ladylike. Very much like how my grandfather expected me to be more ladylike and look more presentable than be wearing my athletic shorts.

The picture on the right poses some questions to consider in today's America, because although we have made progress with gender roles, we need to keep progressing because there is still a mold that needs to be broken, "How do traditional gender roles limit you? How much should they limit you? What are you going to do about it?" 

Feel free to comment your thoughts! I'm curious to hear ;) 

The American Grizzly Man

A question that many of us don't ask ourselves nearly enough is, what does it mean to be an American? I know a man named Timmothy Treadwell, also known as The Grizzly Man.  He was legally American, born and raised, yet many people people would still question whether he truly upheld the American values.

Timmothy Treadwell grew up as your typical middle class American, with a college diving scholarship, and on the path to make his daddy proud. However, it all began to crash and burn when he hurt his back, lost his scholarship and fell faster and faster on a downward spiral into the world of alcohol and drugs. Feeling neglected and out of place in the human civilization, he ventured into the world of the most dangerous animal on our continent, the bears. He journeyed across Alaska with nothing but the company of his camera and tripod, and seemed to form a greater bond with the wild bears than with his own family and friends.
Learn more here.

Some would say that Treadwell had a bright future ahead of him and simply threw his life away, but I don't think Timmothy himself would have the same view on it. He was simply living his dream of protecting the bears and in his own way rising above his earlier substance abuse troubles and making himself more successful than he was to begin with.  He may have not lived the typical "American dream" of going to school, getting a job, then raising a family and doing better off than your parents before you, but he did live his own form or success.  He simply had his own version of an American dream.

What is the first thing that everyone learns about America as early as the 1st grade? I don't know about you, but for me it was the pioneers.  When we learned about the pioneers, we were taught to see them as heroes, paving their way across unknown territory and building the country we now know of today. Treadwell is his own form of a pioneer, he is exploring a new kind of society that no one has ever dared to dip their feet into.  The "Secret World of the Bears." Many people criticize Treadwell's sanity and faith in these dangerous creatures, even the director of the movie "Grizzly Man," himself, Werner Herzog,

"What haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.  To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. But for Timmothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior."

Many people in the movie, included Herzog, questioned the bond that Treadwell believed he had with the animals, but to Treadwell, even through the dead of being mauled by his so-called friend bear, he had faith in the animals to make him feel a part of their society since he felt that the human society wasn't enough for him. Timmothy did believe in the bears as a kind of "savior," from the pressures of the human society and the problems that were waiting for him there.  In the Bear Maze there was no need for money or material success, and most of all no temptation from harmful substances.

Timmothy Treadwell, in daring to venture into the unknown and the outskirts of what is considered the civil "norm" and doing what he believes will bring him success in his own eyes and rising above his earlier troubles, he is truly an American living his own American Dream.