NOW, HERE IS a brilliant conceit: a parody of a standardized, high stakes multiple choice test (like our SAT or GRE or LSAT or the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test, Zambra's actual model) that deftly illustrates how remote from any actually-occurring problems or experiences or life in general the questions in a standardized multiple choice test are.
My favorite section was "Reading Comprehension," in which the supplied narratives were a great deal more true to life (and hence more ambiguous) than those encountered in actual tests, and the questions probing your comprehension of the narrative neatly demonstrated the procrustean absurdities of the choices the test-taker confronts. For example--
71. One can infer from the text that the teachers at the school:
(A) Were mediocre and cruel, because they adhered unquestioningly to a rotten educational model.
(B) Were cruel and severe: they liked to torture the students by overloading them with homework.
(C) Were deadened by sadness, because they got paid shit.
(D) Were cruel and severe, because they were sad. Everyone was sad back then.
(E) The kid next to me marked C, so I'm going to mark C as well.
An endnote mentions that the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test was no longer administered after 2003; our own elite post-secondary institutions are vacillating on whether they will continue to use standardized admissions tests or not. I hope they eventually decide to drop them once and for all. I happened to be good at taking them, myself, so they helped me personally, but after a career in academe I am convinced they mainly indicate one's talent for taking multiple choice tests, a skill that is no use at all once one leaves school. If Zambra's satire persuades any college administrators that it is time to junk standardized testing, it will have performed a valuable service.
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