LET ME BE VERY CLEAR: My 15-year-old son is not a cannibal under psychiatric care. However, he does have a droll, sometimes macabre, sense of humor, which explains why he wrote a short one-act play involving a nervous psychiatrist and a witty cannibal engaged in what we may infer was their final session.
The play, published in his school's year-end literary magazine, evoked amused smirks from his peers and kudos from intelligent faculty who understand the concept of fiction. More to the point, they understand the author.
Which is to say, context is everything. And context is what's missing from standardized tests, which are now being read for more than punctuation and grammar. In New Jersey and nationally, standardized tests that include writing samples are being "graded" for their potential for psychological trouble.
Readers hired to consume as many as 200 essays a day are flagging samples that suggest violence, abuse, drug use, depression or suicidal tendencies. Though the number flagged are relatively few -- between dozens and 200 per year -- the practice has rankled parents and watchdog groups concerned that government is taking another intrusive step into private lives without appropriate justification or attendant outrage.
In one case involving a girl who wrote about murdering her mother, for example, the reader's red flag turned out to be a red herring. The girl's tale was a work of fiction, nothing more. Nevertheless, the test-reader's concern set off a chain-reaction leading to the child's being questioned.
The flagging process works like this. First, three readers have to agree that an alert is warranted. I like this part. It reminds me of how an editor and I once settled our humor differences. When he didn't understand my bons mots, he carried my column around the newsroom. If three others "got it," the joke escaped his editorial cudgel.
Consider for a moment that you're the parent of a bright, creative child who writes funny plays about, say, cannibals and shrinks. Suppose his work catches the eye of a hired reader, not because it's clever or well-written or grammatically composed but because it's not about dorks cavorting in daisy fields.
Now envision Big Bro' and the Super deciding without your knowledge that little Johnny could use a chat with authorities. Or perhaps more testing. You see the problem.
On the other hand, what if another child writes about abuse she suffers at home and no one notices. Would test readers in Colorado have flagged Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris?
The Columbine killers had a Web site describing their massacre, and no one noticed. One of the boys had bomb parts in his bedroom, and no one noticed.
Maybe we would be grateful if a test reader had noticed that Klebold and Harris were potentially dangerous. Intrusive or helpful?
You see the problem here, too.
The question may not be whether essays ought to be flagged when they spell trouble. There's no harm noticing when a child begs attention. What galls is the assumption that hired readers, government bureaucrats and administrators -- none of whom has sufficient psychological training or contextual knowledge -- should have unfettered access to a child's mind without so much as parental notification. We give accused murderers the benefit of the doubt but not parents?
The thought makes the innocent fantasy of cannibalizing a nosy authority figure seem rather appetizing, eh?
Hey, I'm joking! It's a bon mot! Go ahead, ask three other people. . . . Hey, wait a minute, I need to make a call. No, wait, Mom!!!