There is something beautiful about standardized tests. Most high school seniors set to take the Ateneo College Entrance Exam, or the ACET, this weekend will probably disagree. Yet for all the weeping and moaning that comes with teenagers being forced to take an exam that will determine the course of their future careers, there is something to be said about putting tens of thousands of high schoolers on a level playing field for four hours of their lives. I can’t think of a fairer way to go about conducting college admissions.
The point of a standardized test, as the name suggests, is that it puts every applicant through the same process. Upon taking your seat in a crowded auditorium, you whip out that No. 2 pencil and spend four hours vigorously trying to shade the right circles in the right order. Everyone gets the same questions, the same answer sheet and the same time limit. And when the proctor says pencils down, you better put that pencil down.
For those four hours, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or what mode of transport you took to the testing center, whether tricycle or jeepney or sportscar. It doesn’t matter how much your parents make or who they are. You can be an Aquino, a Marcos or a Macapagal. The proctor might care, but the computer that scans your answer sheet won’t. For those four hours, the only thing that matters is what you put down on that page.
For a country rife with influence peddling and those living off a family name, standardized tests are a refreshing change. These tests represent everything that Philippine politics is not (which probably explains why most politicians do horribly at school). They bring us closer than we will probably ever get to a real meritocracy.
Yet you could argue that these tests, in all their fairness, don’t reflect the real world. Does that demean their value?
No, it uplifts it. Standardized tests embody an ideal that the rest of society cannot reach but strives towards, where all are equal and themost deserving are rewarded with success. If society were a meritocracy, everything would be decided by standardized tests. Politics would be no exception. Officials wouldn’t star in action movies or brandish their family legacy to prove their worth as public servants. They would ace standardized tests.
In some places, that was how it used to be. For two millennia, Imperial China replaced its system of nepotism and self-serving aristocrats with a standardized test for all government officials to take. Despite the rigors of memorizing entire Confucian texts and a passing rate of 1%, this served a social purpose. It rewarded the best and the brightest with positions in government. It empowered those who were born with little in life to rise through the ranks, just as China’s own college entrance exam does today.
The Gao Kao is Modern China’s answer to America’s SAT. Unlike any other entrance exam, however, the Gao Kao is one of truly Chinese proportions. China’s sole consideration in university admission, it lasts for three days every June for at least 10 million ambitious high school seniors to take. The brightest among them will get the chance to study in Tsinghua or Peking University, China’s so-called Ivy League and the training grounds for its future leaders. By shaping China’s approach to college admissions, it has shaped Chinese society as a whole. It has made China into a nation of efficient technocrats, not politicians, and a meritocracy that’s allowed its leaders, from Mao Zedong to the current president Hu Jin Tao, to rise up from humble beginnings.
Standardized testing has had its own impact elsewhere in the world. Professional fields like law, medicine and engineering, have turned to the same wisdom. They use standardized tests as a way to control the quality of those that represent us in court, perform surgery on our loved ones and design buildings that will stand the test of time. If we put our professionals through years of studying for board exams, why not our politicians?
In some ways, we used to. There is one thing that Presidents Quezon, Laurel, Osmeña, Roxas, Quirino, Garcia, Macapagal and Marcos have in common: they were all bar topnotchers. The masters of this country’s greatest standardized test. Despite anything that can be said about how these men fared as leaders, you can’t deny that they were clever, and that these tests reward intellectual merit.
That raises a good point though. A bar topnotcher is undoubtedly clever, but not necessarily a saint. Sure, the Bar measures intellect, but does it measure integrity? Initiative? Creativity? Or any of the other intangible qualities by which society defines its idea of “excellence”? When high school seniors take the ACET this weekend, they’ll be expected to solve trigonometric equations and explain Newton’s laws of motion. They’ll be taking a test that may well be testing for the wrong thing.
Critics of standardized tests often make this point. Yet the fact is that no fairer way to assess academic merit exists, and if one did, standardized test designers would be delighted to learn more about it. Especially considering how subjective a résumé of personal achievements or a letter of recommendation extolling why someone deserves to be admitted can be, that nice, solid score a resulting from a student taking a standardized test is as objective and fair as it gets.
It’s easy to dismiss standardized tests as long, boring and meaningless. Although long and boring they may be, I’d still like to think that this exercise in fairness means something more for society and the students taking it. It is four hours in a student’s life where those who aren’t born with much have the chance to compete on a level playing field, and those who are have the chance to prove that they can succeed on their own merits – that they are more than their parents’ shadow. The stakes are high, not just because this test of four hours decides your next four years, but because it gives you a glimpse of your own individual merit. For us Filipinos in particular who live in a country where individual merit only counts for so much, it gives us the only encounter with equal opportunity we will probably ever have.
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The author is a high school senior at the International School Manila. You’re welcomed to email levistel@gmail.com for any comments and suggestions.