Journal #43- Standardized Test Stuff

Taking standardized tests to assess mental health issues is not really a fair way of assessing a persons mental ability.  During World War II these tests were used to determine if youth could join the military or not.  This was not a very fair way of doing it as the graders tended to determine test scores by race instead of intelligence level.  Today, standardized tests are no longer used to assess the mental health of a person, which is a good thing.  Some people are just not good test takers, so you cannot just base a persons mental health on a test score.  Also, mental health is a lot more complicated than physical health.  It is too hard to base an entire person's being on one standardized test.  If I were to take or make a standardized test for mental health, I would cover the topics of common sense and basic decision making.  These questions would not be hard to answer for a person without any disabilities. Question one would ask if the person had been diagnosed with any previous mental illness.  After reading the SQ story, I was surprised at how the insanity problem escalated so quickly.  Dr. Speakie was working with good intentions at the beginning, but fear and gaining power gradually drove him to have alternative motives.  The SQ test was not really a fair way of testing people.  When almost the entire population of the world deemed insane, they should have changed their test.  This topic can also compare to the standardized tests that we have to take for school.  It really is not fair to give one test to test every student the same age, regardless of their ability level.  These tests are also given with good intentions, but their results have been kind of warped in recent years.  It is interesting to see how these problems are the same as they were years ago.