Life's not always fair

I write for my school newspaper, the New Trier News, and this week I am writing an article on the debate about online grading. I’ve often found myself having very passionate mental rants about the topic of online grading and standardized testing, something I am not very good at. With the ACT and SAT prep steadily underway for me I have thought about what would happen to me if I did not have a tutor.

This raises the issue of the “unstandardize-ness” of standardize testing. The ACT and SAT both already statistically favor students with higher socioeconomic classes, which I learned from FairTest, an organizations that sets out to make standardize testing equal.  Most children with higher socioeconomic classes have the ability to pay for tutors and test prep specialists, which helps them score higher on standardized tests. Still there are no rules, or regulations in place to prevent this glitch in the standardize testing system. There have been several studies done about this glitch and still no action is being taken to try and create equality.

Perhaps no action has been taken because such action to limit tutors would be too difficult to control. Or because it would put so many people out of jobs, test prep specialist and tutors. But nevertheless no need of parents or students to strive to find ways to take advantage of the standardize testing system addresses the American theme of division.

Americans promote equality through politics and schools but do we really believe that? Being fair and equal is the mantra we repeat time and time again to children. But as they get older, as they prepare for the real world, that slips away. “Life’s not fair” is repeated more often and children are trained to hold their own in competition, to fight for themselves as they strive to become better. Americans don’t want to be equal they want to push and push to become dominant over others.

This theme can be applied to any society but it is most unique to Americans, evident by the communist hysteria. Communism is a society where everyone is equal and the society works together to sustain itself. In this society, government, currency, separate nations, and class structure would cease to exist. Americans were so afraid of communist ideals and launched war because of this fear. The Cold War and the Vietnam conflict are just a few examples. Americans strive for division and that is why they fear communism, they want to create a difference amongst one another in order to separate themselves and create a superior and unique identity for themselves.

Why do Americans do this? Because they do not want to submit to conformity, they want to set themselves apart, or “make a name for themselves” as some put it. Basically we as Americans always try and find ways to do things, better because we want to be different and don’t want to be like everyone else. We disagree with equality because we were raised to strive to be the best and to learn that “life’s not always fair”. Interestingly this has a subliminal message that we can’t always be fair either. We can’t try and help everyone be the best because we need to compete against them and be the best. We can’t sit back and be equal or like everyone else because then, we still aren’t the best. We, as Americans, have it hardwired in us that we need to fight to be the best and sometimes that means we can’t “be fair” or equal.