Talk Back: The new SAT: A Midsummer Night’s scream
There’s something about Shakespeare that always makes our heads spin. Just like in “The Exorcist.” Sure, the dude was a genius and all that. But like most eccentrics, he was a pretty odd duck. Take that play he wrote about a salad-eating competition featuring bowls piled high with romaine lettuce and topped with shredded Parmesan cheese, croutons and a creamy dressing — all of which the contestants washed down with frothy orange drinks. The one in which Popeye ruefully acknowledged defeat at the hands of his arch-nemesis.
“I et only one. But you et tu, Brutus.”
It turns out The Bard was obsessed with ravenous appetites. Don’t believe us? it’s right there in one of his most famous lines. The one that centuries ago foretold next month’s solar eclipse. “It is the East,” he wrote. “And Julie et the Sun.” Not to mention that he was also adept at plagiarism. In fact, that’s how he came up with the name of her boyfriend. While battling a bad case of writer’s block one night, he turned on the telly just in time to hear the Winkie guards chanting outside the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West. And the rest is history.
Ro … ME … oh. Ro ... MEEE … oh.
But that’s nothing compared to the witches of Macbeth’s ominous intonations as they stirred their eye of newt and toe of frog brew-filled cauldrons. The ones that annually strike fear into the hearts of students everywhere. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. For these bubbles have nothing to do with Indiana State and Seton Hall being among the teams scorned by the NCAA selection committee. Rather, they herald the arrival of the dreaded college entrance exams.
Back in our day, you went to the designated site, waited for the starter’s pistol to go off, then opened a book of questions and began filling in a whole bunch of ovals — just like you were voting. But this is no longer your father’s SAT — so named because it’s administered on a Saturday — because the thing’s now digital-only. Meaning — and this is where the toil and trouble part comes in — if you don’t know your app from your RAM, you might as well give up and go home.
For you’ll be forever doomed to ditch-digger status.
It’s like the old grade-school song. No more pencils. No more books. Just laptops and tablets — you’ll need some for all the headaches the new format’s gonna cause — and maybe a few dirty looks. Mostly from the test-takers. For it’s all BYOC — and if you don’t have one, it will be provided for you — with everything contained in a pre-loaded or downloadable app called Bluebook that looks nothing like the ones in which we wrote lengthy essays while we were in college. We gave it a try — just for kicks — and what a mess!
After using a Sharpie to blacken in all those ovals on the screen, we couldn’t read a thing.
But supposedly the younger set thinks it’s pretty cool. And why wouldn’t they? The College Board’s knocked an hour off the time it takes, made the questions — and answers — a lot shorter, and threw enough AI into the mix that if you tank on the first module, the second one automatically asks you stuff that’s a whole lot easier. So hoist high your “Orange Julius” Caesar. You can still score a perfect 1,600 and earn an honorary doctorate degree for giving commencement addresses even if — as Willie himself once put it — thou art amongst the sodden-witted. And hast no more brain than we have in our elbows.
Live long and Prospero indeed.
— Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time at localbuzzradio.com, Facebook Live and dougspade.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Talk Back: The new SAT: A Midsummer Night’s scream
