Extra Time, The Race to the Bottom

I saw a patient last week, a young lady, who demonstrated a very mild hearing loss on her hearing test. She was going to take the SAT and her mother wanted me to write a note saying she needs special attention because she would have a difficult time taking the test due to her VERY mild haring loss. I told the mom I didn't understand since the SAT is a test where hearing is not required. She said she wouldn't be able to hear the instructions or hear when time was up. I didn't continue my questioning but thought to myself if she cannot figure out how to take the exam without hearing the instructions and use a watch to gauge her time she has a lot more problems than a mild hearing loss. But this just demonstrates the desirability to be seen as handicapped or as a victim. These labels are used to receive special dispensations. As an attempt to level the playing field for people with true disabilities, gamers of the system will try to receive a leg up on the competition by claiming a handicap.

This is similar to the situation that goes on regarding granting of extra time on exams to certain kids who are diagnosed with attention disorders. Now all mothers want their kids to be labeled with an attention deficis since they receive extra time on exams. Some parents pay therapists to purposely label their kids in order to obtain a leg up on the competition regardless if they have an actual disorder. It wouldn't be so bad if grades on tests would be designated as having been obtained with or without extra time, but in our p.c. world we cannot place labels. So there is no downside in getting extra time because no one ever knows about it. So the college who is seeing the SAT score or the medical school who is evaluating GPAs have no idea which transcripts include extra time and which did not.

Extra time is granted in high school, on the SAT, in college and beyond. Isn't the point of examinations to let competition determine who is at the top versus the bottom. Isn't the point to select out those kids who can work under pressure within a certain time frame. The point is specifically not to level the playing field but to stratify it. The pc nonsense has us believing everybody is equal, that any poor performance is not due to inherent inabilities but due to a disorder that needs to be compensated for. It is the same nonsense that proposes that poor people are victims of outside forces not of their own inabilities. And the same nonsense that proposes that there are no evil people just victims of bad upbringings or psychological disorders, or impoverished childhoods.

In real life there is no extra time. When I am in surgery performing a difficult case on a sick patient every extra moment under anesthesia carries increased risk to the patient. I cannot turn to the nurse or the anesthesiologist and explain that I need extra time since I am having difficulty concentrating. I certainly cannot go out to the patient's family and explain to them that the surgery took twice as long because i needed extra time due to inability to focus. Do we really want our doctors/surgeons to be the ones who required extra time due to difficulty with paying attention to the task at hand?

It used to be that the kids who couldn't concentrate were considered slower. They either improved with practice and time and caught up to the rest or they performed poorer and chose professions not as intense. Nothing wrong with that. By perpetuating extra time these kids are placed into situations requiring too much intensity and eventually fail. Were they truly served well by extra time or propped up to eventually fail when real life approaches.

Everybody wants to be labeled as being disadvantaged. It may be claiming to have minority status or being handicapped or even to have a learning disability. In our upside down pc world this is somehow seen as advantageous. We are in a race to the bottom as more people claim victimization to receive special treatment. Don't be surprised when we end up there.