Author Archives: Sarah Campbell

The Scholastic Aptitude Test

Posted on by under Civic Issues

 

The SAT’s. A supposedly equal, fair assessment of high school students from every corner of the United States. While this test was designed with equal education and treatment of all American high schoolers, it has more recently been a heated topic across the nation on whether or not this idea is being properly executed. Before we dive into the controversy of standardized testing and how some of these problems could be addressed, let’s take a look at some of the history of them. 

In 1890, Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard University proposed “a cooperative system of common entrance examinations that would be acceptable to colleges and professional schools throughout the country, in lieu of the separate examinations given by each school” (NEA). Before his proposition, testing in America was very inconsistent, with each school having their own methods and standards. As one of the most prestigious universities in the country, Harvard was looking for a better way to find students that met their standards for admission, and a nation-wide, nation-regulated test to all willing students seemed to be the answer. Over the next several years, many people worked to develop a standard exam that would show the readiness of a student for the intensity of a college education. At first, these tests were based more on achievement, which classes the student had taken and how they could apply that knowledge to a standard exam, sort of like an AP test. 

However, the subjects on this exam were the same for everyone, whether the student came from an upper class family with private tutors that had studied all of the subjects (math, english, foreign language) or if they had grown up in a poor community with an even poorer education. Some sources say that the SAT was developed as a way to register the “competition” of the large wave of immigration into the United States on an intelligence level. American Scholars knew that not every immigrant was an “asset” to them, but they needed to sort out which ones could be. 

 In 1901, the College Entrance Examination Board administered the first tests, originally quizzing participants on 9 different subjects. Over the next 30 years, quantifying and regulating intelligence became the focus of the education system. 400 tests, ranging from math to foreign language, circulated around the United States, gaining massive popularity especially when the U.S. army created their own version (Army Mental Tests) to test new recruits for which jobs they would take during their service. Standardized Intelligence Tests were achieving the very thing they sought out to do, find the “special” people among the masses of the average. Within that they could sort those “special” people into smaller categories of special, were they better at math or english? More empathetic or systematic? Standard exams of intelligence became one of the hottest trends in education, with everyone wanting to discover where they laid on the scale. 

However, even by 1922 there were many concerns regarding the effectiveness of these tests and how they would impact our views as a society. John Dewy, a famous philosopher with no relation to the creator of the Dewey Decimal System said “Our mechanical, industrialized civilization is concerned with averages, with percents. The mental habit which reflects this social scene subordinates education and social arrangements based on averaged gross inferiorities and superiorities” (NEA).

Dewy, along with many others, was concerned that quantifying our intelligence would actually limit it. We couldn’t evolve as a society if we were constantly gatekeeping a good education based on a number that could determine the rest of your life.  Needless to say, his words and others alike were unable to stop the booming business of quantifying intelligence. Today, the SAT is the most popular standardized test, with over 60% of all colleges and universities in the United States saying SAT scores are of “Considerable importance” in the college admissions process. While the idea behind the SAT may be to equalize education opportunities and to find where some students may be stronger in some subjects rather than others, the SAT still has many, many flaws. So why is it still so highly regarded across the country? 

 

Diving into the flaws of standardized testing is a bit of an impossible task, from the advantages privileged to upper class students whom have more access to resources and torturing, to learning disabilities and test anxiety which can impact a students performance by up to 40%.  One of the main issues people have with the SAT test is it’s seemingly biased grading system. According to the American Education Finance and Policy, “Men outscore women by an average of 37 points on the math section, and 7 points on the reading section. Asian students score the highest on average, with white students trailing them by 22 points on average, and black and hispanic students trailing white students by an average of 50 points. Finally, students who receive need based aid score an average of 20 points lower on both sections of the test.” Even though the College board and SAT’s have an extensive process to screen for possibly biased questions, each race and gender seems to succeed (or not) in their own field. Students are often told that Standardized Tests are “trying to trick you”, but what if they aren’t trying to trick anyone at all, they just happen to use questions that are more tuned towards the white male’s thought process. I understand that this is a very large statement, yet it’s possible to be true. There aren’t always cruel intentions in bad outcomes, but the bad outcomes happen nonetheless. 

The test itself presents a number of issues, from possibly biased questions to the wealth gap that may act as a barrier to some lower-class students, but finding the problems with the SAT is the easy part; the hard part is addressing and/or solving them. How can we solve the gatekeeping that began before our country was even officially a nation? If the test was originally designed to “sort out” the immigrants that were “worth the time” of scholars, how to re remove that systematic racism from our nation’s mind? The answer is: we can’t. 

However, we can take steps to fixing some of the smaller issues of Standardized Testing before we solve prejudice.  Maybe the answer is better access/free SAT prep courses for lower-class communities to better prepare them where their high school’s may not be able to. The answer could be to drop the fees attached to the tests that could prevent these same students from even taking the test, thus blocking their chances at certain colleges. In my opinion, the answer really lies towards the beginning of this dive into education standards, and that is to stop quantifying intelligence. If the SAT’s held less weight in our admissions process to colleges and Universities, people whom the test was designed for would have less of an advantage over those who are fighting an uphill battle. Plenty of prestigious schools have lessened the weight of SAT’s in the admission process, maybe that can be the next nation-wide hype in education.

Recourses

nea.org/professional-excellence/student-engagement/tools-tips/history-standardized-testing-united-states

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

https://www.universitystar.com/opinions/columns/the-sat-is-unfair-and-shouldn-t-decide-college-admissions/article_05e0c319-0afe-5caf-83a0-9563cda51cef.html

Are the SATs Biased?

Ada Lovelace

Posted on by under Passion Blog

Last time we left off with one of the most famous women in the Music industry and now we pick back up with a woman who was far from a musician, but still possibly an artist: Ada Lovelace, the first computer programer. 

Needless to say, mathematics was not a subject that women learned in Lovelace’s time, but Ada’s father and mother had both been trained in the subject and insisted that she too received an education. Born into a wealthy family as the daughter of famed poet Lord Byron and Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron, Lovelace was privately tutored by William Frend, William King (the man who would one day become the Earl of Lovelace and Ada’s husband)  and Mary Sommorville, a notable female astrologer and mathematician. Lovelace was also partially self taught after she took interest in math and science, later learning more advanced studies from the first professor of mathematics of the University of London, Augustus De Morgan. In 1833, Lovelace attended a party in which Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first machine to be considered a “computer”, was giving a demonstration of his analytical machine. Fascinated by its function, she studied its inner-workings for years as she followed a more typical path for women of her time, marrying the Earl of Lovelace and having 3 children.

 In 1843, a decade after meeting Babbage, Lovelace released an English translation of a French article by Luigi Menebrea an Italian engineer, who was reviewing the uses and usability of Babbage’s analytical machine. In this transition, Lovelace made several of her own contributions, adding almost triple the content on to the original article. She expressed her belief that not only was this machine capable of doing mathematical equations (in which she also provided the formulas and algorithm necessary to complete such actions) but also that it would play a major role in developing future technologies as it could be adapted to process symbols and letters as well. Also within these notes, she described a process in which the computer would process a set of programming over and over again, better known as “looping” which is still used today. Unfortunately, Lovelace’s breakthrough ideas were largely ignored during the time period in which she was alive, and only rediscovered and appreciated in the 1950s.

Due to her actual passion and talent’s lack of recognition and development. Lovelace put her mathematical genius to work in other aspects of her life, particularly gambling. Ada developed an algorithm to predict the outcome of several different types of money-winning schemes. However, her formulas eventually lost enough bets for her to fall into extreme financial debt, owing several thousands pounds. Less than 10 years after her publication of the french article, Lovelace died from uterine cancer at the age of 37. Even though her work was never appreciated in the time she was alive, she contributed significantly to the way our current technologies have been shaped. Ada Lovelace, like most women in the world, was simply ahead of her time, stuck in a world that wasn’t ready for her genius.

References

https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace

https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace

Blogs Announcement!

Posted on by under RCL

Passion blog: This semester my passion blog will focus on underrated female icons, the women who have really shaped our lives without getting a lot of credit.

Civic Issues: I am going to explore how standardized testing has not only affected the school system, such as “teaching to the test” but also how they could possibly be improved, eradicated, or replaced with a more logical method.

I believe in mismatched socks

Posted on by under RCL

I believe in mismatched socks. Honestly, what’s the harm in it? It doesn’t physically affect anyone else, and as long as they are generally the same in material and size, wearing two different socks won’t physically affect you either. Sometimes it even serves as an interesting ice-breaker or conversation-maker. I started un-matching my socks fresh out of the dryer about 6 years ago, primarily as a ruse that would produce an eye-roll from my mom when I pounded down the stairs in one blue sock and one green. For a while it really was just about the game; I even bought two different types of long black socks for marching band so I could continue it while in uniform. 

But as the years went on, the meaning of the game changed. It became less about how I could get that time-old reaction from my mom and more about how much fun it was for me to not match my socks. I would bring flowers and stripes to play practice, polka-dots and stars to gym class. However, now that it is time to grow up, get an education, and go off into the adult world, I don’t have as much time to mismatch my socks. It’s no longer about the game. I spoke to my mom about our old game recently and she pointed out that my reason for not matching my socks was probably never about her reaction, but rather the giddy, childlike joy it brought to me when she would point it out. No matter my mood of the day, if she or my grandmother pointed at my mismatched socks and said “you’re still doing that”, I would break out into an enormous grin. 

I have always been a “mature” child, I have honestly wanted to be a grown-up since I was in 4th grade. I can remember wanting to wear sweaters like my mom, jewelry that my grandmother had passed down to me, and staying inside for recess so I could read instead of playing tag. As I grew up, I continued to separate myself from my classmates because I felt that I was “too mature” for some of them. I began to live in the fantasy of my future, spending more time creating the perfect landscape for my adult life than on the playground. Looking back, I wished that I had embraced that playful part of my childhood where my afternoons could be spent with my dog instead of my computer. 

Today, I am still focused on my education, my career, my future, except for now is when I am supposed to be focused on those things. I spent years wishing to be exactly where I am right now, forgetting to pay attention to the amazing things I had at the time. But I will always have my socks. 

My mismatched socks no longer serve as a “game” or a way to get a rise out of my family members or friends, but rather that I need to embrace the childish excitement I have when I see a puppy, or to not take myself so seriously in every waking moment of the day. They remind me that I don’t always need to be my most perfect, “grownup” self, That I am allowed to relax and have fun, and do something wrong. Make a podcast about socks! In a world where everyone is desperate to grow up, remember to still be a kid, maybe even wear two different socks. I believe in mismatched socks.

Blog Ideas Spring 2022

Posted on by under RCL

Passion blog:

I would really like to continue my exploration on women of the past and present who have shaped the way we think of feminism and women today. I recently have come upon new material and Think that I could tie my passion blog into my civic issues blog on how certain women of the past have impacted the education of women today (ex: Malala).

If this doesn’t pan out the way I would like it to, I may shift the focus onto women behind the scenes of history (Betsy Ross, Josephine Baker) who had significant impact without any of the glory. I seemed to focus on more famous women last semester, so this could add an interesting twist.

 

Civic Issues Blog:

For my civic issues blog, I want to focus on education: how the education system operates and how it could be improved. as someone who has been taught the value of education, I would like to explore how other value their own education or not, and how that can play into adjustments made to the system (do standardized  test really show who you are as a student, teaching to the test rather than the student)

A different angle to this topic would be to look into how the history of our country/world has played into how we have shaped the education system and why some schools thrive while other struggle to keep their graduation rate at an acceptable level. how do our social views/prejudices effect how we how the system decides to teach certain groups of people versus others. This angle will also most likely have some political influences as well, but the main focus would be fairness in the education system.

 

This I Believe Podcast:

I am a big believer that the amount of work you put into something will be equal to what you get out of something, whether that is studying for days to earn an A on a test or putting countless hours into a volunteer service for other people to thrive, your work is always equal to your reward, even if you don’t see it that way. I think this would be a really good topic for this podcast, especially because it is a mindset that I buy into every day.

My second idea for this Podcast would be to express my believe that social media and photoshop has destroyed the image of what a “healthy female body” should look like. We are shown so many images everyday of size 0 or 00 women who are either starving themselves or photoshopped or both to look that way. This constant content is terrible for not only are self-esteem, but also for our own mental health, and many women suffer from eating disorders or body dysmorphia because of it.

Speech reflection + Controversy Brainstorm

Posted on by under RCL

Personally, I felt that this speech went significantly better than my first one. I was more comfortable with this topic and style, and I think that reflected in my delivery. I definitely think that my facial expressions and vocal inflections were better than the last speech, and I tried to incorporate hand movements, but I don’t think those were in the frame as much. I also think that my visuals made more sense and were more dynamic, when I watched my speech back, I wasn’t bored of the image on the screen and it made sense with what I was saying. I feel really good about this speech, even if there were still a few tiny mistakes here and there. 

 

For the History of a Controversy project I had two ideas, which are very different from each other. I either want to try to do Freedom of Speech or Minimum wage. Both have a lot of history behind them, meaning that they aren’t just recently occurring controversies, so my groups would have a lot to build on. Both also are related to how the actions of one group affects another; employees and employers, and how people use the free speech they have. I think both could be a good option for this project and deal with subjects that not only are relevant today, but also have been for a really long time.  

 

Taylor Swift

Posted on by under Passion Blog

I feel that it’s appropriate to finish (for now) with one of the most influential women of our generation, who also just recently made history (again) with the release of her re-recorded album: Red (Taylor’s Version). Personally, I have always looked up to Taylor Swift as a woman who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, someone who wasn’t afraid to embrace her creativity- despite over a decade of backlash- and as someone who showed the world who she truly was repeatedly, dorky dancing and all. Swift has been a glittering example for young girls and women who aspire to be more than people are willing to let them be.

Taylor rose to fame with the explosive release of her hit singles “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me” in 2009, eventually winning her several awards including a Grammy for Album of the year and a VMA for Best Female Video. However, when everyone should have been celebrating the 18 year old’s incredible success at the 2009 VMA’s, they were focused instead on a certain male rapper interrupting Swift’s acceptance speech, saying that Beyonce should have won the award instead. Taylor, at the time, said that she forgave Kanye, and even wrote her song “Innocent” about that night singing “32 is still growing up now, who you are is not what you did”. People applauded Swift for her maturity in the situation and her ability to forgive him, even presenting him with an award at the 2015 VMAs and saying how glad she was that their past was behind them. 

2016 brought hard times on Swift when this “friendship” stabbed her in the back, and even buried her for almost a year. The “snake day incident” was a widespread twitter hating on Swift, started by Kim Kardashian West, after a recorded phone call was released where she was heard agreeing to Kanye referencing her in his song “famous”. Swift claimed that while she was consulted about being referenced, she was never given the accurate lyrics being used to describe her, which included some profane language and derogatory terms, the Wests said that she was lying, and proceeded to release the recording of the phone call. Needless to say, cancel culture took over, and Swift made the decision to go underground for over a year. 

Flash forward to November 2017, when Taylor’s social media, now entirely blank, posted three short video clips forming a snake. Swift made her comeback in the most Taylor Swift way possible, with the release of an album and a sold out studio tour. Not only did her album go number 1 and sold over 1.3 million copies in its first week without promotion, but her predicted “flop” of a stadium tour also earned over 345.7 million dollars, the highest grossing tour of all time. Since then, Swift has become more sure of herself, beginning to make music for her and her fans rather than the radio and critics, hence the release of “folklore” and “evermore” in 2020. She also became a bigger advocate for what she believed was right, officially breaking her decade long silence on politics for the 2020 election. She took a strong stance on women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights with her music video for “You Need to Calm Down”, even starting a petition for the senate to support the equality act, with well over the 500,000 votes needed for a response.

Recently, Taylor has been breaking her own records, setting the new record for biggest debut of “Red (Taylor’s Version) with 90.8 million streams on the first day. The record holder before this? Taylor Swift’s “folklore”. In terms of awards, here is a small list of her wins:

  • ACMAs – 8 
  • American Country Awards- 4
  • AMA’s – 32 (most of all time) 
  • Billboard Music Awards- 23 
  • BMI Pop Awards – 29 
  • CMAs – 12
  • CMT Artist of the Year – 2
  • Grammy Awards- 11
  • Guinness World records – 28 (and counting) 
  • MTV Awards – 11
  • Teen Choice Awards- 26 

With a total of 416 wins over her 15 year-long career. For a complete list of her awards and nominations, click here. 

 

To say Taylor Swift is an accomplished musician is an understatement of her long and impressive career. And while all of these awards and shattered records are certainly incredible, the most incredible part of this woman is her character. Taylor Swift has received so much backlash, slut-shaming and hate for her career and personal life. Yet she has always prevailed, coming back stronger and better each time, proving over and over again that she is here to stay, no matter what may come her way. Everyone, not just women, can take inspiration from her strength and reliance in the public light. As Taylor says, you gotta “shake it off”. 

 

If you find yourself resistant to listening to her music because you feel it may be too “cheesy” or “cookie cutter”, here are my personal song suggestions that tell a better story of who Taylor Swift is as a musician than her hit singles. 

  • All Too Well
  • Nothing New 
  • Champagne Problems
  • I Did Something Bad 
  • tolerate it 
  • exile 
  • False God 
  • Tied Together with a Smile 
  • Sad Beautiful Tragic

TED Preliminary Talk Slides

Posted on by under RCL

 

This will be the opening slide that will accompany my intro.

This chart is from the study I got my statics from, I will use this as the visual aid as I discuss the increase in burnout since the beginning of the pandemic.

The “green” slides (with the green box in the top corner) will go with my points on how the work-rest balance has been destroyed by the pandemic with the distractions of home interfering with work and vise-versa

 

 

 

 

 

The Blue slides will be paired with my discussion of children’s and student’s lives and how burnout has affected them this year and will cause long term damage.

I only have one pink slide right now, the color will be used with my closing. Since I am still in the process of making the final edits to my speech, I am not sure what I want my final slides to look like yet.

(the colored boxes will not be in the final presentation, they are simply for your reference and my rehearsal)

Georgia O’Keeffe

Posted on by under Passion Blog

Oftentimes when we talk about influential women, they have one defining moment, whether that be a speech, an act, or a work of art. These women are known for one moment in their history, which, while still incredible, often puts them above women who didn’t have one large impact point, but rather a constant stream of small influences. This is the case with Georgia O’Keeffe. 

Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most influential artists in the United States to ever live. Her work not only inspired women, but also artists who felt stuck in the formalities of art at the time. O’Keeffe was educated as an artist with very strict rules and ideas, she had learned that “art” was just painting what you saw, making copies of the real world on a canvas. Needless to say, this did not sit well with O’Keeffe. She decided to take a break from art after graduating from the Art Students League in 1908.

Five years later, O’Keeffe began lessons with well-renowned expressionist painter Arthur Wesley Dow, who showed her that she could, in fact, paint what she was feeling and not just what she saw. With this new outlook on art, O’Keeffe began working with charcoal abstract, eventually moving to whimsical abstract paintings. She decided to send these works of art to a friend in New York (O’Keeffe was living in Texas), who ended up giving them to a famous photographer and art gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz. O’Keeffe’s was officially premiered in 1916 in one of Stieglitz’s galleries in New York. She worked closely with him for the next few years, and they eventually became lovers, marrying when his divorce was finalized from his first wife in 1924.

Georgia O’Keeffe is most famously known for her close-up abstract work with nature, which is more famously interpreted as her paintings of female genitalia. Not only was this revolutionary for reasons that do not need to be said, but also because it was the first art series that could be open to interpretation. Most abstract work up until that point had been so abstract that there was no room for interpretation, where O’Keeffe’s work was an abstract interpretation on something real, that could then be seen as something else. She never confirmed or denied if her works were paintings of flowers or females.

In the 1930s, O’Keefe had a breakdown and moved to New Mexico to focus more on desert landscape work rather than close-ups. A few years later, she had 2 retrospectives premiered in New York, One focusing on her flower paintings, another on her desert landscape pieces. Georgia O’Keeffe was the first woman to have a retrospective done for her in the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1977, she was awarded the highest honor of any American Civilian, the Presidential medal of Freedom, which was presented to her by President Ford. She changed the game in interpretive abstract art.  Georgia O’Keeffe was a leader and a revolutionist in the world of art, particularly in the world of feminist art.

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