Let me preface this essay by saying that education is not what it should be. Education in America is like munching down on a couple of cold french fries: not terrible, but not great either. Our current education system in America has produced a great deal of brilliant minds, so what is so mediocre about it? It has created a melting pot of mixed feelings toward it, but it is undeniable that many teachers do not just teach, and many students do not just learn. Students are faced with many daunting issues beyond their control: they are faced with the growing stresses of life, and they are faced with frustrations that they must deal with from being forced to do completely unnecessary and tedious tactics of learning which, knowing from personal experience, do not always work. In addition, the American education system places a reliance on ineffective standardized tests to show growth. Schools usually fail to acknowledge or try to fix such problems, and do not emphasize what truly matters in education: education. One of the biggest problems caused by education include not accounting for what happens in a student’s personal life. Teenagers go through major transitions to adulthood, and they may be confused and prone to misunderstand how everything is dealt with in school. This of course is not the school’s fault; however, they fail to recognize this as a major factor in behavior, attendance, work ethic, etc. When paired with tedious assignments and anxiety-inducing timed scenarios, students don’t learn much other than resentment and towards the education system itself. Furthermore, education tends to put an emphasis on all the wrong topics, focusing more on behavior and uniformity on a common “standard”. Because most students should have already been taught to behave decently, this may further frustrate students who want nothing more than to learn and prepare for the life they have ahead of them instead of being treated The surprising reality of life is that everything is diverse, and everything looks differently, acts differently, and functions differently. Not much changes, even between students. Not all students grew up the same way, acted the same way, or learned the same way. Each student has their own set of abilities that they possess and their own motivations to drive them. Thus, it should seem apparent that not all would be able to complete a standardized test the same way. Life does not reflect constant uniformity; not every job requires the same traits, abilities, intelligence, etc., so why should a test of paramount importance dictate the growth and abilities of a wide range of students that could either help or hinder them in life? It does not make sense to generalize someone's talent by a percentage, especially if it prevents someone from being able to hone their abilities in college. One can see a similar lack of reasoning from testing a fish
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This too, however, is not the best way to approach education. According to the American Test Anxieties Association (ATAA), approximately one in five students have high test anxiety, which leads to an onslaught of other problems, including reduced memory, jumbled reasoning, and overall poor scores due to stress and anxiety, even if the student is overall intelligent. Therefore, it does not truly seem logical to put students through such conditions to show growth, as the entire point of education is to educate, and it is nearly impossible to show that growth by putting an individual in such a stressful scenario where they forget nearly everything they learned. In my personal experience, fast paced tests have consistently made me highly anxious, to the point where I was literally shaking and I could hardly think straight, even though I would have been able to do it just fine if I had more time. Again, this is not truly indicative of life, as the majority of jobs allow for sufficient time to complete tasks and objectives, and does not always tend to have too much of a drastic effect on the employee if he/she misses the mark. However, if a student is unable to think clearly on such a test, there can be tragic consequences, such as a loss of college scholarship money, which could lead to crippling debt in college, etc. Unless one’s specific job requires one to work at such a speed, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to work effectively under such an anxiety-inducing time crunch, especially when it can have dire
This too, however, is not the best way to approach education. According to the American Test Anxieties Association (ATAA), approximately one in five students have high test anxiety, which leads to an onslaught of other problems, including reduced memory, jumbled reasoning, and overall poor scores due to stress and anxiety, even if the student is overall intelligent. Therefore, it does not truly seem logical to put students through such conditions to show growth, as the entire point of education is to educate, and it is nearly impossible to show that growth by putting an individual in such a stressful scenario where they forget nearly everything they learned. In my personal experience, fast paced tests have consistently made me highly anxious, to the point where I was literally shaking and I could hardly think straight, even though I would have been able to do it just fine if I had more time. Again, this is not truly indicative of life, as the majority of jobs allow for sufficient time to complete tasks and objectives, and does not always tend to have too much of a drastic effect on the employee if he/she misses the mark. However, if a student is unable to think clearly on such a test, there can be tragic consequences, such as a loss of college scholarship money, which could lead to crippling debt in college, etc. Unless one’s specific job requires one to work at such a speed, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to work effectively under such an anxiety-inducing time crunch, especially when it can have dire