Standardized Children
I was going to write a post about how stupid career tests are. Or I suppose you call them aptitude tests, right? But then, I got the results to mine and they were...well, spot on.
Let's be clear, I was only doing this for fun. It was on a show I was watching and...you know, I thought it might be interesting. I might have taken one at school when I was small, but I don't remember how it came out. And I started doing this one and it was so...generic and sad. And linear. No space for creativity at all.
I mean seriously – what's important for me in an office? I don't ever want to work in an office, so how does that figure into the whole career path thing?
But then, it seems they got it. Well, kinda got it. They did also get mathematician and physician, and I don't know where that came from, but other than that, it came out with pretty good ideas, right? Weird.
Now, this is a very disturbing idea in and of itself, that some standardized test can actually tell you what career you should have. Seriously? So you're not supposed to listen to your heart and all that crap, right? You just look at the results and choose whatever option sounds best and that's pretty much it, right?
It's very upsetting. I mean, I get the power of this sort of question – you know, the standard rating from 1 to 5 of how true the given phrase is – and I see how that might pin you down psychologically. But I don't think it can tell you what you should do with your life. Now here in Romania, we don't give that much of a shit about this sort of thing. We might have such a test at school, but nobody takes it seriously. Not even remotely.
Do kids in America take this seriously? They might, given how brainwashing and military the whole education system is out there. How terrible for the future of our world is if we start listening to little bits of paper based off the concept that there is a “standard” sort of child.
You can't make a standardized test if there is no such thing as a standard child, can you? Because you can't evaluate all children by the same rules.
But I guess, once again, that people would take pretty much anyone telling them what to do in life instead of thinking about it themselves.
Thanks for reading,
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Three years ago my husband took a medical leave of absence from work and I found it necessary to find a job to make ends meet. I have a B.A. in education, but I was 59 years old at the time and had no interest in being a substitute teacher, or going back to school for who knows how long to become properly certified again after many years of not teaching. I went to the local community college and took an online career assessment to help me figure out what sort of job I ought to be looking for. I actually found the results to be quite helpful. The answers I gave to the various questions helped the program narrow down my interests and skills. I ended up working as a caregiver for elderly people with Alzheimers, and found it both interesting and rewarding. If my employer had not kept calling me to take more and more shifts, I would have kept on working much longer than I did. Based on my own experience, I think those assessments can be useful, especially if the person has no definite ideas of what he/she wants to do.