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Showing posts from December, 2014

The Blight: Could It Happen?

The future of the Earth is a big concern for most of our people. We begin to think a time in which our planet will be an improbable place to live in. Indeed, the 2014 movie Interstellar depicts interstellar travel brilliantly, but the movie has left various questions among the audience. Most viewers are intrigued about the gravitational singularity, the people who are called as “they”, the “Tesseract”, and other nebulous things. One of the most intriguing yet ambiguous thing is the Blight. Though the movie does not explain anything about the cause of the emergence of the Blight, there is one big question: are we ever going to be in danger — in the most extreme and speculative sense — of ever having just corn and okra to eat? In my opinion, the Blight depicted in the film will hardly happen because such pandemic will not occur easily, even if the Blight is caused by either a contagious disease or global warming. The Blight depicted in Interstellar is possibly a widespread dis

Why Standardized Test Is Essential

The fact that many countries use standardized test as the final evaluation has enraged many students across the globe. One of them is an American student, Suli Breaks, who questioned, “why unique individuals tested by the same means?” Similar remark came from an Indonesian student, Nurmillaty Abadiah, who wrote an open letter criticizing the 2013 difficult national exam. Nevertheless, there is indeed a reason why the US’ best universities require standardized tests along with GPA results and why national exam is used in Indonesia for applying to higher educational institutions. Standardized testing is ultimately important because it holds schools accountable, guides teachers to determine their teaching procedure, and is the most objective academic assessment. To ensure all schools’ accomplishments are as what the government expects, a standardized test is needed to assess schools’ accountability across the country. In Indonesia, every high school has the same curriculum, but