The fear of standardized tests is apparently so strong that references to testing bugaboos have crept out of news reports - and into the movies:
When Winter Garden novelist Edward Bloor set out to write a chiller for young adults, he decided to include a murderous poltergeist. Then he added a really scary touch. The poltergeist lives in a magnet school where the only thing that the students do, day after day, class after class, is take standardized tests.
It's the spookiest fictional school setting since Carrie made a mess out of the prom.
Hee hee hee. I think it makes for a nice surreal (and frightening) touch.
"I just thought it would be humorous to take things to the nth degree -- but then, I have an extreme sense of humor," [Bloor] says. Perhaps. But he's not alone. The hopes and fears of many students, from grade-schoolers on up, are so intertwined with standardized testing that references to it have crept out of headlines and PTA meetings and into the province of popular culture. Novels, movies and television shows are full of young characters grappling with issues related to test scores...
Not even the reigning prince of young-adult literature is exempt from testing-related tremors: The title character of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix gets the shivers over his upcoming exam, the O.W.L. -- Ordinary Wizarding Level.
Oh, rock on. That's too awesome. Not even the soon-to-be most powerful wizard in the world will be able to escape the horror of --- STANDARDIZED TESTS. Tee hee hee.
I have no problems with testing critics who have a sense of humor, and are willing to show us how absurd testing (like anything) can be when taken too far. Kudos to Bloor. But I bet you some humorless educrat will watch this movie and try to convince the public that some schools, and tests, really ARE this bad.
Posted by kswygert at August 5, 2004 09:36 AM