Use and Abuse of Standards

To have standards or regulations imposed upon us means we all cannot succeed; some will make it and some will fail. It is by the nature of such measures that they must divide us into sheep and goats. The only standards that we should really accept are those we willingly accept. Only the standards that we set for ourselves can keep pace with our own learning.

Of course society does need valid tests; but these should be as objective as possible. For instance, Charles Handy compared the UK's driving test with its exam system:

• The first test is objective, we take it when we are ready, and it tells us something useful - you really can drive - these kinds of tests are much harder for politicians to corrupt.
• The second is a system of ranking, which we are herded through whether we are ready or not - and it has proved very easy to corrupt.

A driving test is a standard that we can measure ourselves by. Music exams have also remained robust - you take each Grade when you are ready to pass it.

But an exam system which seeks to grade us and which is also taken as measure of the success of the school or the area or the government becomes corrupt. Perhaps systems that try to test both the person and yet which are somehow taken as a measure of the system's own successfulness seem prone to collapse under their own inner contradiction.