How Mussels Killed the Hopes and Dreams of Teenagers Across America

     As many of you remember, AP testing happened last month. (Actually, you might have just pushed this memory into the depths of your mind with the rest of your traumatic memories, in which case you don't remember.) It was a stressful time for students across the country as they prepared for testing. When the day of the AP Biology exam finally came, I felt prepared: I had memorized the steps of cellular respiration and photosynthesis, the Hardy-Weinberg formula, and how DNA replication works. I opened the test booklet with all of this information stored away and the first question was about...mussels. Every AP Bio student in the country stressed over memorizing cellular respiration, but it didn't appear once on the test; yet we got a question about salinity in mussels, something not discussed once in class.

One positive of the exam was the memes!

     Some might say that AP testing is stupid. Why should we have to memorize facts and numbers in class, only to be asked if we know how to read a graph on the exam? At first, this was my reaction. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that AP testing itself isn't stupid - it just seems so because there's serious disconnect between how American education works and what the College Board (the entity that writes AP exams) expects.
     The College Board actually expects good skills of us. The questions on the AP Bio exam required graph analysis, logic, and problem-solving, all valuable skills to have. I think most people found the exam hard because these aren't skills that are emphasized as much in day-to-day school. People prepared for the exam by memorizing facts, which is what school typically encourages us to do. A good way to understand American education is by thinking back to a talk we had in history a few months ago. Some teachers are hesitant to teach the Holocaust in classrooms because the goal of education as a whole is to memorize facts simply to spit them back on a test. This very mechanical way of learning would detract from the emotional value of teaching the Holocaust.

Oh, the memes!

   The implications of this type of education are pretty depressing. As it is now, the most valuable skill you can have in a classroom isn't even learned: memory. With as much grade inflation as there is, having a decently good memory is good enough to succeed in a class. Because of this, succeeding in a class isn't all that impressive. One could easily memorize a set of facts or a sequence of phrases that earns them an "A," but in reality have no idea what the facts mean. (That basically summarizes my math class this year.)
     This is why a 5 on an AP exam is so much more valuable than an "A" in school. With the structure of American education as it is, students aren't exactly set up to do well on AP exams. This makes it much harder to succeed on AP's than in a regular class.
     Then what makes some people more likely than others to do well on AP exams? As Mr. Warren has been telling us all year, the AP Bio exam is an intelligence test. Because the College Board tests us on critical thinking (lol) skills we usually don't get from school, students who are naturally good problem-solvers, thinkers, etc. are given a huge advantage on the exams. Until the US Department of Education realizes the inconsistencies between public school systems and national college-level exams, AP testing will continue to be an intelligence test.

More memes!