I recently got back my ISAT scores, and noticed something on them that I hadn't noticed before. It fascinated me. On the left side of the scoring sheet, at the bottom, was a yellow rectangle containing what it claimed to be my "Lexile" score. This score apparently told me my level of ability in reading comprehension and whatnot. My score was 1450L, which meant nothing and still means nothing to me, for reasons which we will come to later. The yellow box also unhelpfully informed me that books with a Lexile score between 1350L and 1450L should be comfortable leisure reading for me, and that books with a score between 1450L and 1500L should prove to be satisfyingly challenging for me, but not insurmountably so. Armed with this enlightening knowledge, I proceeded to the official "Lexile Framework for Reading" web site and looked up a few books that I'm planning on reading in its database. The database, I was told by the yellow rectangle on my ISAT score sheet, would help me find books appropriate to my Lexile reading level. Tolstoy's War and Peace, this miraculous database told me with utmost confidence, had a Lexile level of - at the very most - 1240L. After picking myself off the floor, I read the entry again in disbelief. Tolstoy? 1240L? This thing was telling me that War and Peace was so far beneath my reading level that I shouldn't even consider it for light bedtime reading! As such, I am once again firmly convinced of the utter uselessness of systems that attempt to gauge your intelligence definitively with a letter/number. IQ tests included. I mean, it's just ridiculous. You cannot tell someone how smart he is judging from his score on a test! A kid who gets perfect grades is not necessarily a genius. Likewise, a kid who gets terrible grades is not necessarily stupid. And besides, one of the main reasons to not take an IQ test is because you might get preconceptions of yourself as either the greatest thing since da Vinci or the stupidest thing since flavored paper. Which can lead to even worse things. If you think you're brilliant, you might think that you don't even have to try hard in school to get good grades, and if you think you're an idiot, then you might question the point of trying in school at all, seeing as the test just told you that you're hopeless.

This Lexile thing is even worse, though, considering its staggering inaccuracy. Maybe in the theory of whoever created this piece of junk, a kid who gets 1450L should be able to walk all over Tolstoy with the ease of walking and talking at the same time, but in practice - in real life - that's definitely not the case. I found out a little bit about how these comprehension systems work. Want to know how they assign Lexile scores? By syllables. They count the average number of syllables in each sentence and figure the score from that somehow. Being able to read a fifty syllable sentence is enough to read whatever you want, apparently. Never mind trying to understand the text, just read it. Never mind the philosophy behind the words, because that doesn't matter as long as you can read them. It makes me want to cry. If you have anything to say about this, feel free to leave a comment under this post.

In other news, and on a much lighter note, I finally finished Flags of Our Fathers last night. I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. Make it your next book, like right now. The main draw of Flags is reading about the story behind the famous Iwo Jima flagraising photograph. You get to know the six boys in the photo as though they were your best friends, because this book was written by the son of one of those boys. It is meticulously researched, rivaled in my experience only by M.J. Simpson's excellent biography of Douglas Adams. It not only reveals so much that has been forgotten about the photograph, but also provides insight into the background of the lesser-known part of World War II: the Pacific Theater of War. Reading it is a very rewarding and enlightening experience, so read it right now. And then watch the movie. This book is WWII at its grittiest and goriest. Not for the faint of heart. Read it.

Oh, and I'm going to the Who concert with Perry tonight. Screaming at the top of my lungs would be an understatement in describing my excitement. I'll be sure to tell you all about it later.