When I talk about setting goals as a writer, I mention some of the problems I have had with various goals. If I set a goal to write x number of words, for instance, I find that I always meet that goal, but not necessarily with GOOD words. I find myself writing longer and longer sentences, and repeating things (a tendency I have anyway and which does not need encouragement). This is not what I want, so I have stopped setting word count goals. I have had a similar problem with page count goals, because they lead to me writing up until I get to a point where I have a singe line at the top of the page. Then I hit new page and start a new chapter, because I have more pages that way. Do you see the problem?

I do the same thing sometimes with my workouts. If I start measuring my heart rate, I can become obsessive about it. If I count up the number of minutes per day, I tend to do more minutes that I should, purely to get the count up for the week, even if I'm actually doing a race that week. It's actually quite difficult to work around my tendency to get goal happy. For writing, I have decided that to set goals based on time spent. It's not perfect because I sometimes fiddle around, but perhaps fiddling around is actually getting me closer to the proper goal than anything else.

I am thinking about this a lot in part because of the pressure we put on our children and the school system to measure such amorphous things as progress and learning. What happens is that instead of actually learning and actually having progress, we have made the school system be about measuring those things, which means that the attention of everyone is on the tests. Yes, our kids do better on the tests. But what does that mean?

As a student myself, I was the worst sort of gaming the tests kind of person you'll ever meet. I think I took the ACT about 14 times to get the best possible score. There was no penalty for doing this. The highest score was the one reported, and of course the capitalist system (and don't get me wrong--I like capitalism overall) we live in encourages corporations to increase this behavior, since it adds to their bottom line. I haven't seen a lot of change in this area in the 20 years since then. If anything, the testing has become more powerful. And frankly, I encouraged my kids to test a lot, too. And to read the test booklets and game the system, if they can. It's to their advantage. But it's not to everyone else's, necessarily.

What if we measured something else? I don't have a good idea, frankly. If we measured how many books were read (which the AR system already does), that is just as bad. If we measure how much a teacher is loved by the students or parents, that can be horrible. So what to do? Stop measuring, maybe. Or measure a lot less, anyway. It's making us crazy as a country. I have started to think that all humans have a strong element of OCD in their behavior, trying to find repetition to comfort us, and that's what measuring is. We like to look at numbers because they give us comfort. They mean--something, right?

One other note to those who think that America is falling behind internationally. I went to a high school in Germany for a year. Yes, they taught things there that I didn't learn in the US. They were doing Physics, Chemistry and Biology all at the same time, in 8th grade. On the other hand, the math class was quite a ways behind my US math class (which was advanced). My literature class wasn't ahead of us by any means. There was French and Latin as well as English, but in Europe, it makes a lot more sense ot have multiple languages taught. I'm not saying languages shouldn't be taught here, but Spanish is the one that makes the most sense. (I say sadly, since I wish my kids learned German.)

But the most important thing I learned there was, as House would say, Everyone Cheats. Everyone. I never met a single German student who thought there was anything wrong with cheating on a moral level. They all cheated whenever they could get away with it. They were astonished and then annoyed that I wouldn't cheat nor help them cheat (when I could). We had many MANY conversations about this. They told me that the teachers assumed they would all cheat and that the test scores were based on the assumption of cheating. If they didn't cheat, they were at a serious disadvantage compared to all the other students. One teacher bravely walked out during a test, telling everyone in the class he trusted them to be honest and do their own work. As soon as he was out the door, the cheating began in earnest.

So, when people tell me that German students are doing better on tests than Americans, well, I'm not terribly impressed by the statistics. Lots of Americans cheat, but my guess is that at least half think it's wrong. More in some areas.

When teachers tell my children that they must maintain a 4.0 to get into a good college, I want to scream. Sometimes I do scream. Then I explain that having a 4.0 to many schools simply means that you are a grade grubber and that you only take classes you know you can get an A in. Far more important is how many AP or Honors classes you take, how smart you are about finding other opportunities to learn in at local colleges or anything else. Your essays tell a lot about you as a person and how you see the world. I'm not saying hire someone to write your essays to get into a good college. I'm saying actually do the work to become an interesting person and then write about that. Standardized tests are important, but they aren't everything.

In writing, it isn't having the largest word count per year of any writer that is going to get you published. Believe me, I know. If that were a contest, I would win. It's writing the right words, giving yourself and your story time, finding the right people to give you feedback, finding the right editor and publishing house. Things that can't be measured easily and can't be rushed. I say this to myself as much as to anyone else. I do triathlon because there you really can measure everything and I get to channel my need to measure into that.