Normal Or Not

I heard a shocking report not long ago. It described how someone had analyzed decades of standardized test scores of high school juniors and seniors and had discovered some astounded correlations and insights. At least I was astounded.

Though they had been stable for years, the standardized test scores began a consistent decline in the early 1960's after the courts removed prayer and the Ten Commandments from the classrooms. The decline has been to such an extent that for the first time, today's graduates are less intellectually prepared than were their parents when they graduated. But that's not the startling part.

Incredulous as it seems, report card grades had remained steady despite the declining test scores. But how could that be? The answer is simple. The grading standards had been adjusted to compensate. With "normal" having thus been suitably redefined to a lower level, the need to actually do anything about the declining test scores could happily be deferred. After all, grades were still OK, and parents were happy. And good grades are what really count in the long run. Right?

It seems that we will go to extremes to be "normal." After all, if one is "normal," what else matters? Such flaw-riddled logic is not hard to spot in the test/grade scenario just described. There is a ticking time bomb, however, acknowledged or not. But what is far more consequential is when we use the same ruse to "lower the bar" on our moral standards.

And we've done just that in the debacle of President Clinton's trial. To a large degree, opinion polls -- what "the people" thought -- were used as a substitute for clear standards of right and wrong. In other words, if polls "proved" that the people thought that certain behaviors were "normal" or "not normal" in particular circumstances, then we could pluck the painful thorn of conscience from our sides. After all, being on the winning side is all that really matters in the long run. Right?

As with the test scores, the consequences of moral myopia can't be swept under the rug forever. The banks of time are littered with the wreckage of defunct civilizations who floundered on the shoals of moral irresponsibility.

In the end, just marching to the drumbeat of "normal" on the basis of what "the people" think really begs the question. Research may have "proved" the stability of grades, but what does it mean? We will suffer serious societal and personal repercussions if we make soft choices ... "normal" or not.

Copyright 1999 James McAlister

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