Congratulations.
If you made it this far, you’re in the top three percent. You are either very intelligent, very courageous, very humble, or you skipped ahead to the end. Whichever, be encouraged. Ninety-seven percent won’t make it this far. What is true of one class of high school students, today, is true of any group of thirty or more people, chosen at random. In statistics it’s called the central limit theorem. It’s where we get our idea of the bell curve.
Some smart one will undoubtedly argue that the exam is irrelevant, because the relevance of knowledge depends upon the era, or the location, or the culture. This is like arguing that the principles of algebra are irrelevant because I’ve got a calculator on my phone. Or that the principles of baking are irrelevant because I don’t eat bread. Tests are rarely tests of knowledge, they are most often tests of attention and reasoning. Exams test understanding; understanding is a measure of the ability to use and justify the use of information and experience. The use of information and experience is described by a particular word: wisdom. If you have enough wisdom, you can pass an exam without having studied for it. I used to tell my students, and this is especially true for multiple choice exams, “The answer is in the question.”
What strikes me most about the exam, though, is not its difficulty, but its audacity. The standard of expectation was galaxies beyond where we are now. We don’t even require students to justify their thinking anymore. The state tests are all multiple choice, with a short answer form thrown in somewhere. The students are gambling with the multiple choice and ignoring the written portions, hoping they’ll earn enough points to reach the 43 percent threshold covertly described as “Meets Expectations.” Research shows that students will rise to the expectations required of them by their teachers. Their teachers will require the minimum expectations that their administrators impose. Administrators will require the maximum expectations imposed by their legislators. The legislators require less than fifty percent accuracy on an exam, in any subject, whose title suggests it assesses “academic readiness.” But maybe that’s just Texas.
And yet, the questions on the exam are not overly difficult. Nor do they test the unnecessarily obscure or impractical. Certainly, the information being asked of thoughtful, disciplined and conscientious students, could be taught and learned over 170 eight-hour school days, no? Sure, we’d have to cut out much of the holiday coloring sheets, pep rallies, dress up days, photo ops, and guest assemblies, but wouldn’t it be worth it to know that my fifteen-year-old daughter would feel confident to send an email to her teacher without having a panic attack?
Most of this is about grammar and language usage. Considering the issues we have with miscommunication in this society, and our reliance on technology to communicate to and for us, everyone, without exception, could benefit from some study of the mechanics of written language. So, those who would look upon questions that they know they ought to be able to answer, but cannot, with contempt, make excuses for their ignorance and prove that they prefer it. It’s not that we can’t learn; it’s that we won’t. Pride prevents us from the responsibility of accountability, both to ourselves and to others. We don’t seek knowledge for our own sakes; we seek knowledge for the sake of others. Knowledge is only useful when it is used in the service of the whole. The Lord gave gifts to men to “profit withal.” I would not kill the whole world to save myself. But unfortunately, I’ve asked entire classrooms of teenagers whether or not they would, and they would. That is how they have been trained to choose, by their leaders, by their influencers, by their parents, by us. Truly, “the wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness . . .”
We have lived in an anti-intellectual society for a long time, now. Intelligent people are resented for being intelligent; they are assumed to be arrogant because they know better and make it clear in the way they communicate. Perhaps, you will think I’m being dramatic, or exaggerating, or that I am bitter. But, at this, I am neither angry nor afraid. I am sad. I am sad because, in being confronted with our own ignorance, we have too much pride to stir up even a desire to alleviate it. I am not trying to aggravate anyone for a lack of knowledge. The wise man knows that he knows nothing. I am trying to show us our true problem: pride. It is our pride that is leading us towards destruction, and our haughty spirit tempting us to fall. It is our society, where all embrace evil with abandon, that is ripe for implosion and perdition. It is pride that is the sin of satan and the calling card of his ministers. It is pride to believe that we, as a race, are moving forwards, when everything we observe is tending towards entropy. The world is not warming, it’s cooling.
However you feel about knowledge and understanding, or the acquisition of it, the definitive proof against evolution is our society’s tacit, haughty acceptance of its own retrogression. As Dave Chappelle has observed, truly, this is the Age of Spin.
We call it “progress” when, statistically, it measures regress.
We call it “food” when, on the plate, it never spoils.
We call it “labor-saving” when, mind and body, it kills the will.
The Holy Spirit says that in the last days, “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” This statement, made by Paul, is a continuation of the doctrine he set forth in Romans 1:18-32, proving the devolution of mankind since the Fall. We were created in a state of perfection, in the image of God, Himself. We did not evolve from single-celled phytoplankton into upright men and women now rounding the corner towards immortal transhumanism. We have devolved from a state of perfect soundness into obese and sedentary slaves to hedonism now rounding the corner towards chronic illness, misanthropy, depression and suicide. We have not progressed from simple life to complex life. We have regressed from perfect life to anti-life. The world is not created content, it is created conscious. It knows that it is alive, just as it knows it is dying and suffering the agony of its pangs. Remove the Meta scales from your eyes and look around you. Look within you. Is it not so?
And if it is so, what is the answer?
And if the answer is not what, then
Who?
theblackdostoyevsky 
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