Word: sats
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...last resort to be trotted out sometime after "How 'bout them Red Sox?" One imagines old men sitting on dusty porches in Texas, commenting for the 63rd consecutive day that they seem to be in the midst of a dry spell. Once, on a tour bus in France, I sat next to a very old Japanese man whose English was entirely limited to the discussion of pleasant weather. Periodically he pointed to the sky and said, earnestly, "It's fine." He was a nice man, but I have to admit it was an extremely boring conversation...
These problems, however, are purely external, and say nothing about the emotional trauma which this testing system puts students through. America's most famous standardized test, the SAT (presently named Scholastic Assessment Test, formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test), provides the best example of the potential emotional harm to students. According to a report in last month's Newsweek, the long-term effects of the SAT are not negligible. This takes into account the domino-effect theories linking SAT scores to success in life, and the wide range of fields (including unlikely areas such as real estate) that are indirectly influenced...
...dehumanizing teachers and demoralizing students, standardized testing unintentionally contributes to the state of decadence present in American education. Ridiculous as it sounds today, Harvard University originally championed the SAT (the first major standardized test) as a means to achieving a classless society. However, the system implemented has achieved other, unintended purposes. Instead of the mechanism leading society towards utopia, testing has become an absurd beast ravaging American academia...
...points for explorations of more general Biblical ideas. An excerpt from the book of Amos, for example, gives Kugel the opportunity to discuss the nature of the Biblical prophet, while the quotation itself receives only minor attention. And, while famous Psalm 137--"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept"--allows Kugel to comment on exile as well as to question the traditional dating and translation of the poem, he fails to address why this particular psalm has achieved so much literary fame...
...film, however, is not always successful in engaging its audience. When a character exclaims "I can't take it any more!" towards the middle of the film, several critics at the press screening hollered "Neither can we!" and promptly left the theater. Others, however, sat rapt with attention throughout the closing credits. The wildly mixed response to the film is likely because of its unconventionality. As the first American "Dogme 95" film, a Norwegian cinematic movement that calls for the "stripping down of film," donkey-boy was shot using hand-held cameras and without written dialogue or special lighting...