Whether it be the testing of a squire’s bravery and skill in battle during medieval times to become a knight, or our now standardized tests such as EOCs, SATs, and ACTs, tests have always been an integral part of our societies. According to the College Board, over 1.7 million people from the class of 2022 alone took the SAT. Knowing this, you would think that tests, in general, would just be another thing in life we have to get through. And, in most cases, they are.

For me personally, I have always had this love-hate relationship with tests. I never disliked them because I was a bad test taker. I am an arguably good one. I’ve never hated a test because of what’s on it. Well... maybe that’s not entirely the case, but Pre-Cal tests almost belong in their own category. It’s more so what all tests bring no matter what subject, no matter if it’s five or 20 percent of my grade. With just the word “test” suddenly anxiety and fear become the lead roles at the forefront of my mind. The problem in itself was never the chance of making a bad grade or even feeling awkward with a teacher because they, too, know you made a mistake. The real problem was that if I made a mistake, I suddenly felt less. Less intelligent, less capable, less me. It never mattered if it was a spelling error or a completely miscalculated math problem, to me they still read the same, “mistake.”

I remember one night vividly when I was doing one of the quizzes in Pre-Cal. For reference, quizzes in Pre-Cal were both a quiz in itself as well as a way to study for the upcoming test soon after. I was sitting at our dining room table, my laptop open to the quiz, and a large notepad filled with synthetic division as I tried to find the upper and lower bounds of the equation on my screen. Every time the equation didn’t work out and I would again end up with a wrong answer, all I could think about was how bad I was going to do on the test. Once you go down that rabbit hole of defeat, you eventually come to the realization that the light seems further away the more you sink into it. On this night, every wrong problem took a shred of confidence with it, and with that shred of confidence also went my ability to calculate the problems accurately.

The problem with tests, or school in general for that matter, is that neither can ever truly measure a student’s intelligence. Tests in school are by definition supposed to “measure proficiency or knowledge,” but the problem lies with what tests will never be able to account for. It’s the off days, the test anxiety, and the spiraling. During a test, a student is more likely to make a mistake. This is purely because, as research proves, stress increases the likelihood of a mistake. There are plenty of highly intelligent students that are just bad test takers. These students are then seen as ‘less intelligent’ or ‘less smart’ based purely on a few one-time grades that happen to account for more of their overall grade. Based on our current school system you can be a wonderful student who does all of their work on time and puts in the extra effort, but in the end, it comes down to those moments when your anxiety is high and your brain is blanking.

To top it all off, schools have these wonderful things called “rankings.” In these rankings, the tests are what matter, where your stress levels are high and you are statistically more likely to make mistakes because of it, they are what matter. The school’s system of intelligence then becomes a measurement of low- performance anxiety rather than a true measure of how proficient a student is in a subject. The problem arises when students get too caught up in their rankings and begin to believe they are less intelligent or believe they are defined by them. The idea that you are less than your peers or the pressure of maintaining your current rank can be detrimental to a student. This pressure can then affect their performance in school, causing a downhill spiral. It may start with a bad test grade, but the lack of confidence gained from that one experience could lead to a ‘bad’ average or rank overall. Intelligence, in schools, is not true intelligence no matter how much we get caught up in the idea of grades and rankings.

It is the students who ultimately suffer the consequences of how we are ranked in school. It is the system of how our grades are measured that has distorted society’s interpretation of intelligence for young minds. This system encourages the need for something within young people that is essentially impossible, perfection. This idea that perfection is the best way to succeed has only led to lower self-esteem when students, being the humans they are, inevitably make a mistake. The system has fed into the idea that mistakes make you less, rather than the idea that mistakes, no matter if they are on math or history tests, are what undeniably make us human.

Saying this, I still become attached to my class averages, test grades, and ranking. Tests, whenever I get a good grade, still make me happy. I am not saying that studying is not important and it cannot help your grade, because it can. But I am saying that off days and stress exist and your grade and confidence can be affected by them. I am also not saying that I have a better option for the way our intelligence is measured in school because tests do inevitably reveal if you know a subject well or not in that one given moment. I do, however, believe that the current system cannot measure true proficiency because of the anxiety and stress that a test will never be able to account for. I also believe that this system pushes aside its fundamental purpose in favor of a ‘perfectionist’ agenda.