Wednesday, April 1, 2009

“How the Test was Won.” The Simpsons, Season 20. Hulu. March 1, 2009. March 30, 2009.
In this episode of Fox’s popular animated series “The Simpsons,” the time comes for the Vice President’s Assessment Tests to take place in Springfield Elementary School. Nervous about the school achieving an excellent overall performance in these exams, Principle Skinner and other school staff make the decision to cheat. To do so, they give the students the answer to the test ahead of time and they also make sure that the worst students like Bart Simpson never make it to the exam. Common themes referred in this episode are childhood, standardize testing, money, and education. In particular, dishonesty, which is seen in the amount of cheating that takes place during the tests, is the main theme in this episode. This episode intends to make fun of the importance that American society gives to standardized testing and how Americans measure the academic performance of their students based on these tests. This show is also poking fun at the fact that teachers and parents sometimes wrongly encourage their children. The Simpsons appeals mostly to a white American audience by reflecting a stereotypical American society.

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