and the ACTs and the SAT2s and the APs... . And yes, I've just dropped my lovely daughter off at the SAT.
Gannets breed on rocky islands and coastlines of the North Atlantic, but they migrate south in the winter -- often as far as St. Augustine, where we have vacationed for 20 years. When storms churn up the ocean, the gannets are seldom far behind. Built like torpedoes, they dive with elan and present themselves with far more elegance than do their comical counterparts, the brown pelicans. The adult plummage is extraordinarily beautiful: sleek white edged with black along the wings and trimmed with yellow on the head and shoulders.
I love gannets. I love to think of them soaring across vast expanses of ocean, and raising their families far north of where I see them. I love their speed and strength and acrobatic abilities.
I hate the SAT, because it does nothing whatever to promote a love for gannets, or pelicans either. My daughter knows a little more algebra today than she did a week ago, because she spent a bit of time this past week practicing problems that she's tried to block from her memory since 8th grade. And she does know what words like perfidious and truculent mean but, for heaven's sake, she knew those anyway.
She does not, however, love gannets. And so I have to ask: of what possible use have her years of college and test preparation been?
6 comments:
Awww. at her age did you have a love for Gannets? After all this preparation and then college she will need a hobby eventually and that is when the love of Gannets will come out.
Are the SATs harder than they used to be? I never studied for them...then again, I never studied for anything in my life. Got pretty good scores...high enough to be a National Merit Scholarship finalist. My view on tests was that they were to quantify what you had absorbed...NOT what you could cram into your brain for the period of time immediately preceding the test, and then promptly forget when no longer needed.
Gannets sound lovely. We don't have them here...but we do have those lines of plain brown pelicans that skim along above the waves. Lisa :-]
Gotta love those typos.
I don;t think they're any harder -- kids and parents just obsess over them in ways we neevr imagined. None of my kids studied for them either, other than the few practice run-throughs my daughter did this week, since we discovered that an extra 50 points could make some big differences in scholarship $$.
An aptly written allegory, and a sad truth. However, the SAT's are a pimple compared to carbuncle of No Child Left Behind Testing. Nothing elegant may ever be taught again.
I too like gannets, but I prefer boobies ;-)
Very funny.
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