Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Teaching to Test
In America, the accomplishments of 12 years of schooling are summed up in 2 statistics; a GPA and an ACT or SAT score. Colleges then rate students upon these two statistics and judge who is prepared for college and who is not. Many will say colleges take into account extracurricular activities and organizations, but in reality, if a student does not meet the minimum criteria, they are not even considered. This provides no incentive for students to study topics of their interests if those topics will not increase test scores. Likewise, there is no incentive to teach extracurricular topics. High School students need to be taught much more than how to simply score well on a test. High School needs to be a time of exploration. Students should be encouraged and incentivized to try new things, think creatively, and develop their talents. Until students are judged on more than just two numbers, High Schools will continue to churn out students who have only learned how to pass tests.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think this is why kids often find school boring. If school encouraged creativity and exploration I'm sure there would be fewer troubled kids in school, and much greater fufilment found in learning.
ReplyDeleteExactly! There are so many different ways of learning and most people don't naturally fit into the "listen and learn" way that school generally works. I don't know how much we can do about this in our schools, but we can do something about it in our homes.
DeleteToo true. My High School guidance counselor wouldn’t stop talking about these two numbers. If he wasn’t harping about the ACT, he was telling me to take the easiest classes available. It really annoyed me because he justified taking choir over physics (Can’t take the chance to ruin a 4.0). I guess the only question I have for you is how do we fix this? Can our education system even change?
ReplyDeleteI agree, passion for learning is a scarce commodity these days.
ReplyDeleteThere is an amazing article about how backwards the US school system is. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-grossloh/have-american-parents-got-it-all-backwards_b_3202328.html
ReplyDeleteIt makes you realize that we teach our kids like it is their full time job instead of allowing childhood to take place.
I agree, you have to make it your purpose if you want to do well in school but also do what you like.
ReplyDeleteI agree that schools put way too much emphasis on these numbers. However, many high school students aren't even good at these two areas after being churned out. These students think they aren't good enough for college or satisfying careers when many times they just have other talents.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI think one important thing we can do is help kids recognize that they really do have other talents as you say. There are more kinds of intelligence than just the kind that helps you do well on tests. Check out Wikipedia's "Theory of multiple intelligences"
DeleteBulimic learning is a terrible thing. Cram stuff in your brain just so you can barf it up on the test. You are happy with your grade, and the teacher is happy with your barf. But is anyone better off?
ReplyDelete