Standardized Testing Causes Teachers to Delve into “Dark Comedy”
Each May, the nation’s teachers brace themselves for three to five weeks of standardized testing, and each May, teachers also begin making casual jokes about suicide. 2017 is no different.
Stamford University’s psychology department has been studying effects of standardized testing on teachers since the Bush administration, when the phenomenon first mysteriously appeared. Dr. Divakaruni, the lead on these studies, described the teachers’ jokes as, “incredibly dark. It is as if they are gleaning jokes from Larry David and Bill Hicks, with a dash of Sarah Silverman for good measure. They don’t seem aware that they are all displaying classic symptoms of major depression.”
When asked for comment, Mrs. Rice, a seventh grade teacher in Oak Ridge, Wyoming, was quoted as saying, “Testing is so hard on everyone. The kids are stressed out, the teachers are shuffled around. Now that I think about it, standardized testing is probably the number one source of my alcoholism.” When questioned about the seriousness of her alcoholism, she responded, “Oh, it’ll probably kill me anyway, but at least then this Hellscape will be all over, am I right?”
Mr. Freres, a high school Biology teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Springfield, Kentucky was reported to be cracking up other teachers in the lounge during the lunch period with his jokes about his own death. “Oh, it was a riot the way John [Freres] was cutting up today,” said Mrs. Bonner, the school librarian. “He was just going on about how he wished we could still smoke in the lounge because at least then we’d all die faster of cancer or something. I mean, it was funnier when he said it. He’s good at that kind of thing. I can’t do it so good.”
The principal at Kenner Elementary in Kenner, Illinois even made jokes about ending her life at a faculty appreciation luncheon. Teachers and staff were crying tears of laughter and hopelessness as Miss Fiore remarked over Subway sandwiches, “Too bad they don’t put a noose in the box with the testing materials, because we all wish for the sweet release of death.” When asked about the ordeal, Mr. McGovern, a first grade teacher, said, “It was a real knee-slapper. It’s weird that she made jokes about suicide. I’ve been talking to my therapist about it lately. She says it’s called ‘ideation,’ but I thought it was just me. Turns out, almost everyone in this school fantasizes about dying. Makes me feel less alone since my wife died.”
Dr. Divakaruni states that the phenomenon is widespread and reaches teachers in big cities and small towns, but that for some reason, it doesn’t seem to affect first-year teachers. Nikki Huffnagel, a teacher just starting out with Teach for America who took part in the study, was quoted as saying, “I don’t understand why all of my colleagues think it’s so funny to make jokes about taking their own lives. Tracking.” Huffnagel pointed with two fingers at her own eyes, then at this reporter’s eyes, then back at her own to make sure I was listening. “It’s just not funny.”
