Things That Are Bugging Me Today

1. Standardized Tests

I know, standardized tests bug me every day, but I am especially bugged today by the way standardized tests are developed. First the test guys write the test. Then they test the test on kids. Real kids. Kids in school. Kids who already spend way too many school days taking tests that count, and now have to spend an additional school day, a day they will never get back, a day they could spend reading or doing art projects or learning about Peru or Mars, they need to spend that day taking one more test, a test for which not only will they never get the results, but their school won't even get the results, so the test in no way can be said to enhance their learning on any level, except that it helps ensure good tests for future generations of test-takers, which simply isn't a good enough reason.

2. Bureaucracy

There are two bureaucracies I deal with a lot these days (I'm not sure bureaucracy is exactly the word I mean here, perhaps it would be better to say systems? or administrations? or bureaucratic systems? or administrative bureaucracies? but bureaucracy has the negative connotation I need, the idea of a system that works nowhere near as well as it could or should, regardless of any individual's efforts, largely due to layers of complexity and tradition and inertia and obfuscation). One of the bureaucracies is smaller and more accessible to me. I roll my eyes at its numerous shortcomings, but I can find my way through it, I have connections who can--often enough, though not always--make things happen for me, and basically I accept it as a generally navigable if often frustrating part of my life.

But the other bureaucracy, oh my god. This is the kind of bureaucracy that give bureaucracies a bad name, except it's worse. This bureaucracy profoundly affects the lives of lots of people, in generally dreadful ways. This bureaucracy makes no sense and contradicts itself constantly. Whereas I have faith that the people in the other bureaucracy, which I know more intimately, are at least trying, this bureaucracy makes me lose all faith. And I wonder, too, whether bureaucracies turn people into obfuscating obstructionists, or whether people who tend toward obfuscating obstruction find their way into bureaucracies.

Can you tell that I spent my day in meetings?

3. Internet Meanness

I don't have strong feelings about Dani Shapiro's Mother's Day essay in Salon. She's a fine writer and I'm almost always interested in personal narrative and mothers, so I read it, but I found it neither fabulous nor terrible, nor was I particularly invested in either Shapiro or her mother. Clearly, however, others felt differently, for if you keep going to the letters, you will find vicious attacks on Shapiro from all directions (as well as defenses, but that's not what's bugging me). You might argue that anyone who writes personal essays lays themselves open to criticism, but so much of what I see on blogs and websites with comments is so hostile, so rude, so cruel, so mean-spirited, it just makes me sad for all of us that this is what passes for discourse in our communities. Or perhaps, the problem is that we do not think of ourselves as responsible members of communities, but simply hurl our words into the ether at targets we forget are real people with feelings too.

So what's bugging you?