I grew up in a country where testing was everything. Ranking starts in 1st grade. Students tested into middle school, then into high school, and the general consensus was if by the time you tested into college and still have your mental health intact, you’ll have a Good Life.

We set our lives this way. Students started pulling all-nighters at age 13. Parents praying to whichever deities for good test results. Special “good luck” food on test days. “Top of the class” meant you were a Good Person.

It also led to a type of learning that creates dictionaries in your mind but no context for anything, no stories. I showered every night while reciting dynasties. I don’t remember them now, or what distinguishes them other than rank order.

We synchronized our self-esteem to our test scores. When you score well, you get in the newspaper, your family pins it up on the fridge and your father gets to boast about you to their friends. You are introduced this way. “This is my daughter, she got into so-and-so school.”

My mother saw through it all. She was a brilliant test taker, but mediocre student. She wanted to be an actress, and had a talent for the theatrical. But her test scores didn’t say “entertainment,” they said “judge” or “physician.”

It creates a weird social dynamic in the classroom. My mom didn’t need to study to test well, so her teachers thought she must be cheating. They made her stand out in the field, in the sun and rain, wearing a sign that said “I AM A BAD STUDENT.” But she did well in tests.

So when she had a daughter who liked to write and watch movies and who was crumbling because she always tested 2nd place and that must mean Something Is Wrong, my mother said “No fucking way” and we moved to Michigan.

10 years later, sitting in a grad student affairs class, we were discussing should higher education be available to everyone, or only those that “merit” it via standardized testing? College is low-cost in Taiwan, but to get there you had to spend 8 years filling in scantrons.

The heart of the message is wrong. Recruiting students through attractive “Be Yourself Here” campaigns and offering them financial aid only to slam them into the gate of test scores is like making my mother stand out in the rain with the Bad Student sign.

We’re telling them they should be here, that they have what it takes, that the world is waiting for them to change it for the better, but the threshold is 1200 or above. No wonder students are conflicted and melt is bad.

And so a momentous thing has happened. I hope students will get to tell stories, not scores. https://twitter.com/jonboeckenstedt/status/1263703222515949570