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| Peppermint Patty - Test Taker Extraordinaire |
When Charlie Brown scored a perfect 100% on the Standardized Test and the entire school planned an assembly to celebrate him for his achievement I couldn't believe what I was watching. I groaned into my popcorn and shook my head in disgust. The entire school is assembling to celebrate a kid's score on a standardized test? Are you effing kidding me? A shout out to the testocracy's nonsense embedded in a Charlie Brown movie ? Say it aint so...
My 2 youngest boys ages 8 and 10 didn't seem to notice my horror or disgust which is good since I didn't want to burden their enjoyment of a fun Saturday night at The Palace with my miserable Dad the teacher narrative. They are also beneficiaries of the Test Refusal movement so maybe this test score hoopla simply didn't connect with them. I couldn't see how such a seeming pro- testing statement had any place in a Charlie Brown flick though. Yes we've already seen a few D-Grade Hollywood swipes at the teaching profession and its unions. "Won't Flush Down" was an unmitigated box office disaster funded by certain people who stand to benefit from busting teacher's unions. I knew about that and another earlier one and I was as pleased as anyone else when the thing died like Dangerfield on stage and disappeared from view in what seemed like about a weekend.
Imagine my relief and surprise when the whole school came together to worship a suddenly popular, quotable and celebrified Charlie Brown -- baby sister Sally selling Charlie Brown mugs and paraphernalia in the vestibule of the aud -- only to learn that the test paper in question wasn't his but Peppermint Patty's. When Charlie Brown was presented with his historic 100% answer sheet as a memento of his grit, excellence and rigor, he realized it wasn't his but that he must have somehow signed his name to the wrong sheet. How this might have occurred and how he knew the true identity of the perfect scorer we will have to leave ST Coleridge and the gods of suspended disbelief. The kid who scored the 100% did so by creating a huge smiley face across the entire scantron as I'm sure many a thoughtful child has surely done more than once or twice. As fortune and irony would have it, probably the most academically disinclined kid in the entire Peanuts umvelt, one Peppermint Patty, who's more famous for snoring in class than scoring 100% turns out to be the real genius.
Rather than taxing herself with reading and analyzing anything as moronic as New York's "Pineapple and the Hare" debacle, P.P. simply devoted herself instead to creating a giant smiley face using the bubbles on the sheet as a connect the dots template. It's probably one of the most brilliant responses to the tedium and stupidity of a Pearson Product to date. While I didn't much care for what I believed to be a terrible message of the entire school celebrating one kid's score on a standardized product I was duly impressed with the real message even if I imagined it myself which I don't think I did.
The true message is that even the least gifted of test takers can ace one of these ridiculous instruments using its own randomness and a go to hell spirit against it. The fact that non studious rough and tumble hockey star Peppermint Patty scored a perfect score by drawing pictures on her answer sheet says about what needs to be said for the merits of these time wasting exercises in mis-education whose scores are being used to fire quality teachers in far too many places. If the Peanuts gang has figured out the farce and fallacy of standardized testing can the rest of the country be far behind?
As empty-nesters, we were actually thinking this might be a move that the two of us would enjoy-you know being raised on Peanuts specials and all.Once I started to see the commentaries - it has been decided that we will NOT see this flick. As my dear hubby said, "Are you shitting me?? Tests are in a Peanuts movie? This is insane!"
ReplyDeleteI knew notheing about th emovie except that it was a Peanuts movie. As a kid I was the youngest of 4 and I grew up studying Peanuts Treasury hardcovers loving the subtle humor of them. Never in my worst nightmare did I expect to see standardized testing featured front and center then subtly bitchslapped for the sham that it is.
DeleteHaven't seen the movie, so I wonder if the "wah-wah-wah" teacher has to sit through a mind-numbing grade level meeting and analyze the test results. Drill down! Mine the data!
ReplyDeleteI cannot tell you how often I watch kids answer questions they cannot even read and then teachers are expected to learn something from this. What I have learned is that even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut. Last week, I watched a girl - "entering" ELL, take a 19 page DBA (last year was called CFA???) in ELA. She completed it in less than 90 seconds - click, click, click - and had more than 40% correct.
My students are scheduled to be WTF'd or CFT'd or whatever they are calling it this week. No sweat kids, you get what you get. Not wasting one calorie of teacher angst on this bullshit. Eff that. We need to seriously start refusing this shit all of it. These comments are annoying as I can't see my comments without logging out of google then back in again. Thus the semi literate gibbering above.
DeleteMy administrator is insisting on pre and post tests for my little ELLs. The unit tests are a tad too challenging for my munchkins so I read them the reading passage and all the multiple choice answer options. Guess what? They scored really poorly any way! What a classic waste of time!
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