{"id":188,"date":"2005-05-06T20:59:49","date_gmt":"2005-05-06T20:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/playing_their_g\/"},"modified":"2005-05-06T20:59:49","modified_gmt":"2005-05-06T20:59:49","slug":"playing_their_g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/books\/playing_their_g\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Their Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Endersgame\"<\/a>According to an article<\/a> in The New York Times on Wednesday, Les Perelman of MIT has noticed two things about the scoring of the essay section in the new SAT. First, score is highly correlated with essay length: "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you’d be right over 90 percent of the time." Second, score is not correlated with accuracy: according to the official guide for scorers, "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts."<\/p>\n

Oh, boy, what fun! Manic fabricators will have a field day.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but reminisce about my own days of pre-college standardized testing. The College Board, which administers the SAT, also administers the AP exams. Taking the English Literature AP, I had a problem. I felt pretty good until I got to the big essay section at the end. It asks a question and then says, "Answer this using one of the books listed below or an equally high-brow piece of literature." I don’t remember the question, but I wasn’t comfortable answering it using any of the suggested tomes. I also could not bring to mind any other classic I had read recently that I could apply to the essay. Fuck.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I briefly entertained the idea of inventing a book and writing about
\nit. I could pretend it was obscure, perhaps translated from the Inuit.
\nBut I’m not a liar at heart.<\/p>\n

Finally I decided to write about Ender’s Game<\/em>.<\/a>
\nYes, the science fiction novel. The protagonist, Ender, goes to
\norbiting battle school and eventually <spoiler> saves the world
\nfrom aliens.<\/spoiler>  So I told the story of a young boy coming of age under
\nenormous pressures, yada yada yada. But–aware of the stigma attached
\nto sci-fi "literature"–I prayed the scorers were unfamiliar with this
\nwork and LEFT OUT ALL REFERENCES TO SPACE AND ALIENS.<\/p>\n

Okay, here’s the kicker. I got a 5 on the exam. Out of 5. <\/p>\n

I had always suspected there was an Ender fan among the scorers. But
\nPerelman’s findings suggest something different. Perhaps the key was
\nnot appealing to an undercover sci-fi fanatic, or even writing really
\nwell. Perhaps the key was choosing a book that I liked and could write
\nLONG about. On the other hand, I could have done just as well taking
\nthe other panic-option, speciously rehashing the adventures of Tartok
\nand his pet orca Arrluk. So what if the Board did their research and
\nuncovered my bullshit. Who cares if the premise of the essay, every
\ndetail, and every supporting argument formed an elaborate web of lies.
\nAs long as it was a BIG web of bullshit, and they didn’t deduct points
\nfor mixed metaphors, I coulda been aight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Les Perelman of MIT has noticed two things about the scoring of the essay section in the new SAT. First, score is highly correlated with essay length: "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you’d be right over 90 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}