From about the year I started teaching, 1999, until June of 2010 the English Regents exam, given to all juniors in New York State, included four essays and was taken over two days, students having up to 3 hours on two successive days to complete each half of the test. Recently the test has been shortened and now includes only one essay; however, the first three portions of the test are, in essence, the same as the old test, the students simply have to write paragraphs instead of entire essays. You might think that, as I hate standardized testing, I would welcome this change. However, the new test is only better in that it is a little bit more a sprint than a marathon, and it's easier to finish a sprint, even if you finish last.
Here is my chief objection to the test, both the old and new variety: the essay requirements force students to produce formulaic, boring, uncreative, thoughtless and terrible essays. I will try to explain using the essay assignment that is still on the test, called the "Critical Lens." Keeping in mind that the
only thing that changes from year to year is the actual quote, here is a sample of a Critical Lens question:
Your Task: Write a critical essay in which you discuss two works of literature you have read from the particular perspective of the statement that is provided for you in the Critical Lens. In your essay, provide a valid interpretation of the statement, agree or disagree with the statement as you have interpreted it, and support your opinion using specific references to appropriate literary elements from the two works.
Critical Lens:
“…men are at the mercy of events and cannot control them.”
— Herodotus:
The Histories of Herodotus, 1958
Let's leave aside the fact that most high schoolers have no idea who Herodotus was, (I don't), and the fact that the publishing date of 1958 is no help and may be a hindrance to them since he lived from 484 BC to 425 BC (Wikipedia), and did not see the 1950s in all their glory, as some students might assume. Let's also leave aside one of my favorite maxims, which I think I made up myself but certainly someone wiser may have said well before me, which is that there is nothing so insidious as a quote out of context.
Problem 1: No matter how interesting the quote itself may be, students are not supposed to discuss it as a statement or ponder its truth in any depth. Sure they have to agree or disagree, but they need provide no basis for their opinion, they need not discuss how they came to agree or disagree. The "Critical Lens" is nothing more than a tool in an exercise which the test pretends is "literary criticism." The above quote is certainly open to much interesting debate, which I can envision being very intellectually stimulating, but that debate is not part of this exercise.
Problem 2: Students are not permitted to have their own ideas about literature, or to have their own opinions about the meaning of a work, but must evaluate literature "from the perspective of the critical lens," even if that perspective is not theirs. Students don't pick a quote that they think encapsulates a particular piece that they have read. They sit down at a test and are given a quote they have never seen before and have to fit it to something they have read as they sit there in the gym. In other words, we don't care what you think, we care if you can apply the thinking of Herodotus to the thinking of two other authors. Don't think, just write.
Problem 3: They can pick any two pieces of literature they want, so there is a good chance that the teachers reading the essays will never have read the works they pick. If I have never read the book the student is writing about, and the student knows I probably never read it, how does this NOT encourage some world class B.S.? In fact, I can assure you that the B.S. flows freely in these compositions, and who can blame the students? One student once admitted to me after the test that he had invented a book that didn't exist to write about in his essay. Another student admitted to writing about a "book" which that student was writing herself. How am I supposed to evaluate the ideas presented if I haven't read the books? Answer: it's not about the ideas, it's a phony exercise which pretends to be academic.
Problem 4: Who decides what is and what isn't a "valid interpretation of the statement?" The test makers have not provided us with any guidelines in this area. And does it matter since the student only has to "agree or disagree" based on his own interpretation of it, no matter how outlandish his interpretation may be? A student who says that the above quote means that man can control his own destiny only fails if he doesn't support that interpretation with works of literature. In fact, you don't have to have the least idea what the Critical Lens
means in order to pass the essay (but you still can't ask your teacher with help in interpreting it.)
Problem 5: This is the biggest of all. According to the "rubric" we are given, any student who does not "support (his/her) opinion using specific references to appropriate literary elements from the two works" can get a score no higher than 3 out of 6. Students know that they have to write about literary elements (theme, characterization, symbol, etc.) Most of their body paragraphs become an attempt to prove that they remember what one of these terms means and that there are examples of it in the story or novel they are writing about. Their focus becomes explaining the characterization in a story rather than applying the quote to the story, which is the "task." This produces forced, unnatural, and shallow or even meaningless writing.
So, here is what we are forced to teach and what the students are forced to write: formulaic essays that will fit all the criteria of the assignment, and thus will score well on the rubric. Yet these essays are boring to read because they are all so similar, and they contain very little thought of any depth. Writing becomes just another exercise, and not a meaningful way to interact with others.
"We don't need no education..."
J
