Write an Essay, With Examples, on Why You Wish You Were Doing Anything Else in the World Besides Taking This SAT Test
The news that the SAT tests are undergoing revision has given rise to a lot of comments or at least has given rise to these comments.
It is not hard to bring to mind the emotions current at the time for the test taker.
When an enterprising young scholar chewing on a #2 pencil looks at a complex chart that depicts a number of curves, lines, formulas, and equations all thrown onto one graph with the restraint of one of these modern painters who doesn't count it a day well-spent unless he hurls paintballs of every color against his canvas, and then is asked — I speak here of the test-taker, not the modern painter — in reference to it:
Suppose b is a real number and f (x) = 3x2 + bx + 12 defines a function on the real line, part of which is graphed above. Then f (5) =
(A) 15 (B) 27 (C) 67 (D) 72 (E) 87
….his first reaction is frank disbelief.
Not only is this question too hard to answer correctly, by the looks of it is too hard even to answer incorrectly.
And this is the first question on the test.
In other words there seems to be no option available for simply failing quickly and spectacularly at the front end as you can in high jump or spelling bee competitions, and then getting on with your busy day.
No, you must plow through another few thousand questions of a like manner, with never more than a 20% chance of getting each right.
The young scholar can be forgiven too for noting that there is a lot of mischief in that opening word: "Suppose b is a real number..." and so on.
Can't you just as easily suppose it is not, and sidestep the whole matter? Why set up all these suppositions and hypotheticals when they only complicate the situation?
This is enough to make a young person question if this is really the way that he wants to spend a Saturday morning.
Well, with questions like these you can see how and why these test scores have been suffering for some time for American youth, and this in an era of increased global competition. A cry is going up across the land: something must be done to raise them.
Since the law of supply and demand tells us that if you want more of something you make it easier to get, it is rugged American common sense to suggest that the time has come to make the questions easier.
And when I say easier, I mean way easier.
It seems highly unlikely that anyone would ever find out that we’re doing this. All these other people are way over there in countries on the other side of the world. As it is I imagine the whole process today is only a matter of each country mailing in their average national score to some central location. Who's going to check?
I’m not saying that we lie! I’m just saying let’s make these numbers easier to get.
I would say the first thing that is to be done is to insist that all trains move in the same direction and leave their stations at the same time.
We have had too many of these situations where one train is leaving from Denver heading west while traveling 62 miles per hour and which left at 4:07 p.m. on the dot.
Wait, I'm not done. This isn't enough for these question-preparers.
No, you see there is this other damned train leaving from Seattle heading east while traveling 49 miles per hour and which left at 2:10 p.m. on the dot.
Now, get this: for some reason known only to these question-writers it is wished to be known at which point these two trains would cross….well, for the love of Mike, this is hard!
These trains are going in opposite directions, don't they see that?
It seems a mere matter of bookkeeping to get these two trains to leave from the same station at the same time while heading in the same direction, even if at different speeds. In such a case you are well on your way towards knowing which one is ahead of the other.
Goodness, the complications people feel compelled to put in these questions.
Speaking of complications, have you ever noticed just how many geometric shapes there are?
We have squares, we have circles, we have rhomboids, we have rectangles, quadrangles, parallelograms, hectagons, octagons, pentagons, we have cones, we have ellipses, we have ovals, we have triangles, we have planes, cylinders, and spheroids, we have tetrahedrons, and nonconvex great rhombicosidodecahedrons.
Oh, that doesn’t even get us halfway there when it comes to these shapes.
This I would have to call too much of a good thing. Variety is well and good but this is getting out of hand.
One of the proposals I’m putting before the question-writing group is that we reduce the number of shapes in the world to two. Everything is either a circle or a square. Oh,OK then, three, let’s throw triangles in there too, they’ve never done me any direct harm.
By this new rule there are only three shapes that we now have to take account of and learn all those formulas about. This seems like simple good sense, and ought to be enough to get us all by.
In a like manner, there is always a certain amount of confusion regarding the metric system, with even some of our finest scholars remarking in learned journals, "Good God, are these Europeans simply out of their minds?" The solution? Let's just make a meter and a foot the exact same length. This seems a straightforward matter. I can't say why no one has thought of it before. Solves the whole problem. No more of this business of carrying in your head the fact that it takes 1.609 kilometers to equal one mile. Let's just call them even steven and get on with more important things.
I’d reduce the Periodic Table of the Elements to a maximum of five elements, preferably three if you want to know the truth; at the least let’s knock off these rare elements at the end. Do you think anyone is really going to notice?
Initial thoughts only! I expect once I really get rolling you’re going to see our scores shoot through the stratosphere. Or is it the ionosphere? Or one of those others spheres? No matter, we’re getting rid of those too. Anything to further the pursuit of knowledge.
