Ladies and gentlemen, imagine if you would that I am a young person, perhaps your son or daughter.  I know I am asking a lot but let us exercise our brains together.  Imagine that as your son or daughter, I carry a basketball with me for all of my waking hours.  My attachment or purpose of having this basketball is not always clear to you.  I am not always engaged in the sport of basketball but I always have this ball and I am often using it of my own volition, to my own devices which appear to you and perhaps even to myself as entirely arbitrary - I balance the ball on my head, I bounce it against my balled fist, I spin it on my finger, and I walk around with it between my knees or beneath my shirt.  I use this ball for reasons that appear useless to all of us who have seen what this ball can do when used properly by a gifted athlete.  While the value of my manipulations of the basketball ranges, I am nevertheless constantly manipulating it.

One day, I am asked to play a game of basketball.  I am explained the rules and look around at my opponents and teammates.  There are those who I have seen on basketball courts with coaches, who have drilled the players tirelessly to operate in the manner approved by experts of the game.  The form of a conventional left-handed lay-up, with knee and elbow moving in concert as a marionette’s joints would move.  These players will undoubtedly succeed in the upcoming game.  Others on the court have never played basketball.  They are playing today because they must, because the rules of the playground demands their participation in the game.  They will undoubtedly fail in the imminent contest.

How, my parents, will I do?  I am a stranger to this game, and why would I be anything but a stranger?  I find the synchronized movement of my left knee and elbow boring, frankly.  It is to me one of a thousand and more things I can do with this basketball, whose weight and curvature and grain I know more intimately that any participants present at the court.  Sun-Tzu said that all battles are won before they are fought, and I have already pointed out to you who will win and lose this battle.  I ask you again, my mother and father, how will I do?

If I had to guess, I think I would contribute proficiently to my team’s goals.  I can certainly bounce and throw the ball - it makes no difference to me if those actions in this context are called dribbling and passing.  The basket, to me, is simply a hole through which the ball must pass.  I will fare better than those afraid of basketball, and I will operate less effectively than those who are groomed to play the game.  

But I will escape the contest unharmed, perhaps even better for experiencing it.  Those who fail will be ashamed and shunned, and those who did well will deepen the fissures of their brain that involve “getting the ball in the hole”, however these people wish to identify this process.  The difference, ladies and gentlemen, is that when I leave, I take the ball with me.  The difference is I have participated decently enough in the game to escape degradation that I may have internalized.  The difference is that I leave the court that day having fulfilled my duty but the ball still represents limitless possibility to me.  If I resent anything, it is those who forced my participation in the game.  But I cannot resent the ball.  The ball existed before the game did.  How we do may already be determined in this context, but removed from it, what I have the capability of doing is untellable and brilliant.

[Above is a brief oration I composed that I might try to integrate into a longer creative work.  It is a metaphor for writing - the “game” is standardized testing, the “ball” the written word.  The speaker is a teacher addressing an audience perhaps of faculty and parents. They are trying to convey the importance of not “teaching to the test”.  Sorry to do the thinking for you, but that’s after all what teachers are for…right? Hope it did something for you nonetheless!]