Tony Jiang, Tyler Halpern, Niekie Mojiri, Osmond Wen, Darrell Sung

Ms. Gomez
AP English 4 - 2nd
18 April 2014
Satire Project - Are You Smarter than an AP Student?
In our project, we satirize the ambiguous nature of AP-style questions through a
game show, in which an AP student (Darrell), a teacher (Celena Gomez), and an AP
official (Dr. Jennings) compete in answering AP-style questions presented by the host
(Niekie). During the game show the contestants will choose a category and difficulty in a
style resembling Jeopardy and then be presented with a question by the host.
Our audience for this satire is everyone who falls into the three categories
represented by the contestants: AP students, AP teachers, and AP officials. AP
students are well-aware of the difficulty of the questions posed by AP tests, so students
would simply get a good laugh out of this satire. As for teachers and officials, we are
aiming to have them reassess the subjectivity of these questions.
The undefeated returning champion of the show is Dr. Jennings, who has never
missed a single question in the shows history and is coincidentally an AP official. This
introduction of Dr. Jennings serves to exaggerate the biased nature of AP questions
and how correct answer choices are decidedly based on parallel alignments with the
opinions of those who wrote them.
Our AP student, Darrell, is an extremely gifted, intelligent student as the host
points out. However, despite his talent, his perceptions seem to misalign with that of AP
standards. Thus, he fails to give satisfactory answers to the AP-style questions asked.


Every question seems to have a blatantly obvious answer, which Darrell asserts
is indeed the correct answer. However, the host emphasizes that there is a better
answer choice, which is usually a synonym of the answer choice given by Darrell. The
host exaggerates the nearly imperceptible disparity that exists between Darrells answer
and the correct answer. This is representative of the difficulty and ambiguity of AP
questions presented to students today as they face the difficulty of having to choose the
best answer and not just the correct answer.
Celena Gomez, our stereotypical AP teacher, is constantly looking toward Dr.
Jennings for answers. It is clear, however, that Celena herself has no rationale for the
correct answer. She simply acquiesces to Dr. Jennings answers, believing that they are
correct only because Dr. Jennings says so. This is representative of the penchant for
many teachers to consider AP as the ultimate measurement of learning.
As the game progresses, Darrell attempts to adapt to the situation by giving
answers that resemble the intricate, complex nature of Dr. Jennings answers. However,
when Darrell gives a complex answer, the answer turns out to be a simple one. And
when the answer seems like it should be simple, it is complex. This is exemplified by the
question in which Darrell claims the black shirt literally represents a black shirt after
Celena correctly answered that a cloud literally represented a cloud in the previous
question. This dilemma illustrates the difficulty AP students face when trying to answer
AP questions that lack clarification.
The nature of these questions seemingly sets students up for failure and does
not accurately represent or test the intelligence of these students. Students become
subject to the opinions of the teacher, whose ideas are mere reiterations of the AP


curriculum. As a result, students cultivate a sense of doubt for their own thoughts and
beliefs, while learning to automate their thought process to correspond to AP standards
in desire for a high score. This presents a broader problem for the student body: a true
education is sacrificed for meaningless scores.
Of all the subjects that AP has to offer, we are specifically targeting English
because attempts to standardize a discipline whose very nature is subjective ultimately
fail. Every mind will imbue its own personal meaning to a sentence or passage based
on past experiences, culture, and knowledge. Therefore, it is inevitable that different
answers will be favored by different people. This is especially true in the case of essays
or free-response questions. When Darrell answers the question about the egg falling on
the left side of the fence, he gives an accurate but incomplete answer. Dr. Jennings
gives the exact same answer but with an extra phrase at the end, which causes it to be
correct in AP standards. Although an extreme exaggeration, this scenario typifies the
narrow expectations of AP for students to conform to its understandings of a passage.
Even though we agree English is a necessary course, we feel it could be taught
through a better medium than the AP curriculum. Students should be taught how to
voice their opinions and argue them effectively rather than be taught that one opinion is
correct.