I am a firm opponent of equity, as well as anything connected to the "woke" mentality. However, I DO NOT support standardized tests, because they measure only certain types of intelligence and gauge good outcomes in only certain types of fields where memorization and mechanistic thinking are required (e.g., STEM careers and law). And some people are just not good test-takers, and some demographics have advantages over others in terms of having a seemingly immutable talent for this (e.g., often in Asians, which is why support for their fair inclusion in academia often entails support for standardized testing).

For instance, I was a terrible test-taker, yet I was very good at expressing myself with words and creative thinking. Hence, there are plenty of useful things I can do well even if I am not suited for vocations requiring the skills that standardized tests can determine. So, does this make me a worthless "failure"?

There are plenty of ways to gauge competence in certain areas of endeavor other than by testing. I do not agree with any system of education designed for everyone that is designed to "weed out" instead of identifying individual skill sets and gauging their merit and hard work with an appropriate methodology for that skill set.

For example, there are plenty of ways to determine skill, competency, and merit in various creative arts that do not entail strong emphasis on memorization (especially when skill at research is part of your ability set); a purely "logical" way of thinking (there are ways to solve problems that differ from utilizing mathematical formulae); and critical thinking skills are often not adequately measured by standardized testing (our mandatory schooling system pretty much ignores critical thinking since people with that skill do not make good cogs in a machine run by others). In other words, people more inclined towards creativity than pure logic can solve some problems and add much to the table of human progress that the latter cannot -- and vice versa, of course.

So, did I deserve to be weeded out and left by the wayside, as a system based on standardized testing and grading suggests I should have? I like to think that my being a published author and essayist suggests that I have merit and ability in a specific type of contribution to society that does not require scoring high or "average" on math, logic, or rote memorization.

There are other ways to properly and fairly gauge merit than holding everyone to the standards of one specific set of educational methodology. And I also do not believe that I would ever need to rely on equity as equitists define it to prove I can write or edit a book or essay and deserve merit-based work in these vocations. I would never demand "equal outcome" in the sense that someone with my skill set should be allowed to become a doctor or engineer despite lacking the merit to become those specific things.