In their frenzy to make sure students are
able to pass a standardized test, to make sure no child is left behind,
educators are forgetting what the purpose of education really is. I wonder
sometimes if it is because so many administrators’ egos have become so inflated
that they want to show their district is the best, their schools are the best
and their students can outscore other schools. I wonder if it is all just an
ego trip in which administrators are in the driver’s seat claiming they want
what is best for the kids, claiming they want “none to left behind” while in
the end all they are doing is cheating the very students they say they want to
help out of a high quality and beneficial education.
Administrators should stop making schools main
focus on all of the testing which is mostly just memorization...it should focus
more on teaching logic and reasoning skills because at the end of the day
people use those skills more than the skills it takes to test and in reality
most humans forget what they memorize in time but they never forget how to use
their logic and reasoning skills...which are being lost in the frenzy of
teaching to the test.....
When I look back at my school years I don’t
remember much of what I memorized, I do remember being taught how to think,
being taught how to do something as simple as look up a word I did not know how
to spell or define in a dictionary. I learned how to study for tests, how to
complete the basic tasks I needed to function as a human with a brain. I
learned how to use my brain.
While much of what I memorized in school
is in my long-term memory I don’t remember many of the things I memorized for
tests, yes we did take tests when I was in school but most were based on the
unit of study we were working on. I don’t remember most of that content but I
do know how to recall it, how to research and rediscover what I once memorized.
The important things I took out of education
back in my day were the reasoning skills schools taught us before the
standardized testing frenzy, before the bloated egos had to be nourished by
high scoring students, before students became just a number and before no child
was supposed to be left behind.
In leaving no child behind education is
leaving most children behind. The ones who succeed most are those who learn how
to reason, how to use their God given logic to learn the things they do not
know and how to apply that information to daily life.
I look at so many of the young adults
today, many scored high on the tests in school, they got good grades and made their
school and district proud however they are struggling as adults because they do
not know how to use their logic and reasoning skills to survive in the new
world they have entered.
I am not saying all young adults struggle
but many of them are spending so much of their time as adults learning the
logic and reasoning skills school did not teach them that they are already over
stressed in life. They are experiencing stress they should not have to experience.
But hey, they can pass a test with flying colors.
These young adults should not be under this
kind of stress, they should be focusing on their new adventures in the adult
world and have the tools they need to succeed in whatever it is they choose to
do. The frenzy of testing needs to end, egos need to be placed in check and the
focus placed back on teaching logic and reasoning so that all those children
who were not supposed to be left behind will stop leaving them behind.
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