Best of the BEST

So I just got back from taking the CBEST exam, the standardized test designed to determine whether or not I'm qualified to teach young children. I'm thinking that I passed, because the exam was for the most part spectacularly easy.

It's divided into three sections: Reading, Mathematics and Writing. You're given a staggering 4 hours to complete the test, which means that, even as I type this here from the comfort of my bedroom, there are people still in the testing room with an hour of spare time yet to go. Yowza.

The Reading section was the easiest. You're given a series of paragraphs and asked painfully obvious questions about them. It goes like this:

Please answer questions 1 through 3 based on the paragraph written below:

Lots of people drive cars. Some cars are bigger than others. It's a common stereotype that people who drive large, expensive cars are compensating for having a small penis, or in the case of female drivers, no penis at all. This stereotype is true.

1. Which of the following can you infer from this selection?
A. Big cars are safer than small cars
B. There are more big cars than small cars
C. More men than women drive big cars
D. The author lives in Los Angeles
E. Women don't have penises

2. What is the main idea of this paragraph?
A. Big cars are better than small cars
B. Small cars are better than big cars
C. Men drive better than women
D. Women drive better than men
E. Because everyone drives huge SUV's everywhere in Los Angeles, it's very difficult to see where you're going when driving a small car, so you will occasionally turn out of a parking lot and directly into a pedestrian, in which case you should probably speed up before the cops arrive

3. In this paragraph, the word stereotype could be replaced by which of the following?
A. archetype
B. phenotype
C. daguerrotype
D. genotype
E. appetite

It goes on and on like that. I don't really know how this determines whether or not you'd be a good teacher. It seems like it mainly tests your patience. Can you wade through these 20 really boring snippets taken out of textbooks and figure out what the hell they're talking about before passing out from boredom?

Then there was a math section. This is blatantly unfair, as I'm at a point in my life where it's been over a decade since I've had to do any of this math. It wasn't even the abstract concepts giving me trouble so much as it was doing the arithmatic in my head. You're not allowed to use a calculator on the CBEST, despite the fact that every math teacher I've ever had uses one. Why do they feel the need to prepare you to teach math without a calculator? In case you wind up with a teaching assignment in the distant past, say Ancient China, and they only have an abacus?

It's dumb, wasting time doing all this long division and stuff in your head. I swear to you, I found myself counting with my fingers more than once! I don't do this stuff...ever! I'm even starting to forget my multiplication tables.

It's true! At one point, I kept getting an answer I knew was wrong. It wasn't even one of the five lettered choices. I went back to discover that I had written the product of 8 and 6 as 46. Yikes. That's powerful stupid. You really shouldn't need a calculator for that one...just a central nervous system.

What can I say? I suck at math. Math was my worst subject in junior high and high school. Worse even than woodshop, and I nearly lost a limb in that class.

The last section on the CBEST is the writing section. So, yeah, I figured it would be a snap. After all, I write crap on this here blog near every day (when Blogger's not experiencing total meltdown, that is). But the writing topics themselves were fairly loopy, and I'm not sure I wrote exactly what they were looking for.

Question #1 asked me what one value I'd like to pass on to future generations. It's a hard question to answer in two handwritten pages, mainly because I don't really have any values. I mean, I've never killed a man, and I guess "don't murder people" is a value. But I didn't want to write that as my response - "I think we should teach the younger generation not to kill each other." It's kind of an obvious choice.

It was almost like the essay topic wanted me to come up with some kind of moral value, like "meat is murder" or "women connected to life support systems and feeding tubes are, like, so totally still alive." So I wrote that I'd like to pass on to our children intellectual curiosity, that I think kids are too complacent and willing to accept what they are told by authority figures and media. It's a truthful response, and I even got in some cutting remarks about Fox News and whatnot, but I'm not sure it's what the Board of Education will be looking for. Even as we speak, my response may be on its way to Porter Goss' office, so he can debrief his staff tomorrow about my traitorous and un-American philosophy of "education" and "media literacy."

So if this blog disappears tomorrow, you'll know the government has finally come in and shut me down.

Question #2 continued the warm, fuzzy essay style. It wanted to know about a goal I have accomplished in my life of which I was proud.

It immediately occured to me that a group full of hopeful teachers was the wrong crowd for this question. No offense to teachers, who have one of our society's most important and least respected jobs, but any room full of people hoping to be substitute teachers most likely includes its share of failures from other industries. I don't isolate myself from this category either, mind you. It just seems kind of insensitive, like asking people in the unemployment line for sound investment strategies.

So, yeah, I finished the test in just over 2 hours. It wasn't a race, but just so you know, that was second out of everyone in my assigned room, and I think the girl who finished first just kind of gave up halfway through. I'll let you know how I did whenever I get the results back, unless I failed the test, in which case I'll never bring this up again.