Recent news has revealed that in the near future, the SAT (Standardized Aptitude Test), which tests students’ capacity for critical thinking in mathematics, reading, and writing, is about to have one of those subjects dropped. The essay section is being demoted to an option, and the maximum score will be 1600 points as opposed to 2400. I doubt that I’m the only one that believes that this is not only an outrage, but it’s a huge blow to the education and thinking capacity of high school students everywhere. If essay is only optional, then what’s the point of learning how to write? But being able to write is absolutely necessary to survive in whatever profession one may aspire for. We learn these how to write from a very young age, and we must do our best to keep these skills and refine them with each essay and very blog post we may write.

One thing that we’ve all been taught in school is the importance of writing well. From elementary school, the first thing we learned was to write out our answers in complete sentences. If the question was “What country did King Tut rule over?” we’d lose points if we only wrote “Egypt”, as opposed to “King Tut ruled over Egypt.” Or at least something similar. This is providing context as well as the knowledge that the writer knows exactly what they’re talking about and are able to convey it to the reader in an understandable fashion. Moreover, in my school at least, we had book reports in which we read a different book every week and write a short reflection about it. This teaches another way of properly conveying information in that we learn not to only convey our knowledge, but our thoughts as well. Writing is an indispensable tool for one’s self-development as it helps us to shape the things we want to say into something eloquent and sophisticated.

But what does this have to do with the SAT? A lot, actually. The essay itself is wildly different than the writing section it branches from. The writing only tests one’s ability to improve the grammar of a given sentence; it is meant solely to gauge your capability to write from an objective standpoint. The essay, on the other hand, focuses on the writer themselves. There are no right or wrong answers; they want the writer to express their own thoughts and opinions and back it up with substantial evidence. You are graded based not on what your answer is, but on whether or not you can convince the reader that your opinion is sound. This tests not only a writer’s ability to retain information, but more by their ability to understand what is given to them and their ability to draw a clear conclusion.

This idea applies not only to essays, SATs or otherwise, but to the real world of jobs and careers. Doctors must be able to write case studies that are clear about a patient’s symptoms and means to assist them. If a businessman wants to start a project, they ought to write out a proposal for their bosses and coworkers that explains what it is and how it can help their company. Even in the process of getting a job, resumes and cover letters must be able to prove to the employer that you are worth hiring. Students today must be able to write clearly and convincingly if they want to survive in their chosen career, and taking that away from them would be a huge mistake.