Escandalo 2

My temper is easy to alter. It was altered today. I entered my AP Macroeconomics class which takes place during 4th period and I sat down. There was a boy sitting across the room from me that was still finishing an exam for the period prior to mine. He called me. He was taking a test for his government class and he shouted," Hey, Alex! You'll know this. Come!" Out of curiosity, I walked toward his desk and he handed me a paper and pointed at three questions. I read them each several times and overlooked the answer choices. I did not know the answers and I simply responded with, " I don't know them." He then proceeded to respond with a comment that had benevolent intentions but that pained me like a thorn pains skin. He said," But you're supposed to be like the smartest person in the whole world." I did not look at him. I am not the smartest person in the world. I will never be the smartest person in the world because that is extremely subjective. One person might be amazing at Calculus but horrible at Biology. Just because I have achieved decent grades throughout high school does not mean that I will know everything. I am not a computer. I am not google. I do not have an infinite amount of knowledge. I am not an encyclopedia with information from the letter A to the letter Z. I let it drift. I let the anger dilute like a drop of sugar would dilute and dissolve in water. However, in the next ten minutes, something similar occurred again. We were handed a test. I was angered not only because I did not know anything on my test but because I did not recall the teacher teaching us anything on the exam. I do not recall her doing it. I recall doing book work. Yes, I could learn from a book. Yes, but it does not engage me. It does not allow me to wrap myself around the subject and appreciate it. Book work makes me distant from the content. Defining vocabulary terms does not stimulate me to learn. So there I was sitting on a desk looking straight down at a paper that might as well been scribbles or Chinese. Everybody turned to me. Everybody turned to the imaginary knowledge that I had on Economics. WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT ECONOMICS? NOT ENOUGH! And definitely not enough to fill the vain, hurtful, and unrealistic expectations of a class full of ignorant teenagers. I am not trying to be offensive but they are ignorant because they expect me to know everything. When they look at me yearning for answers that I do not have and will not have, because I cannot grow knowledge out of nothing, I answer, " I do not know anything!" They look at me with wide smiles. They smile because they cannot believe that the perfect student does not know the answers to a pathetic quiz. The great, powerful student has fallen. The great future Princetonian has met her match: a 15 question quiz on demand and supply in economics.

We all sit there powerless. They beg the teacher to give them answers. They whimper with their teenage voices that it isn't fair. Simultaneously, they fill their papers with guesses, guesses that have been discussed various times. It is incredulous how so much could happen in such a small classroom with a teacher present. I guess it shouldn't be so difficult to believe since the human cell could do so many things with its size and resources. It should not be so hard to believe that the teacher is in a classroom and she intentionally chooses to ignore the many voices that are transferring answers from one person to the next. As if being "blind" to the cheating did not cripple the students enough, she chooses to give us clues. She chooses to eliminate two answers per question. She tells us that answer choice C and D are not correct for question 1. She goes down the line until she gets to question 4. She decides to skip that one because it is "easy." The students protest because they do not know the answer to number 4 either. Beggars can't be choosers, right? She says, " You take what you get." We take the answers that you give us. Thank you for the answers. Thank you for stripping us of the great habit of learning. Thank you for making our lives easier. Thank you. You have truly taught us what the great American Public School System is all about.

The American Public System has turned into a battle. It has always been a battle of who gets the highest grades, yes, but this battle is different. Who will win? Your integrity or your need to maintain a decent grade point average? Do you choose to obtain the answers from your classmates and get an A in order to stay in the top ten percent? Or do you choose to be a good person and sink while everyone else gets to the top by cheating? HOW DO WE CHOOSE? If you choose your integrity, you lose your validity. Universities see a transcript. They see a sloppy D or a shiny A. They do not see integrity or honesty. They do not see the snickering students at the back finding the answers on their very smart phones. They do not see the teachers pretending to be blind or the teachers that think they are helping students with their grades. Universities see a letter. They do not see the story behind the letter. So, what is it? Your integrity or your future?