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Education Keeping with the Times, or is It?

By Jessica Corder

In this ever changing world, how can Americans expect anything to stay the same? As society advances from a time of simple math and reading skills to an age of concept, analysis, interpretation, and application, education experiences great progression as well. From upgrades in the audio visual department to distance learning and computer labs, schools keep up well with these changes. Most of the improvements made by school systems better our childrens’ education, and others raise questions, such as standardized testing. Though local, state, and federal governments intend to keep the childrens’ best interest at heart, these new methods of assessment hinder our students, prohibiting them from learning at optimal level.

As a means of determining student success and progression, American school systems have shied away from written essay and elongated explanations, to multiple choice and fill in the blank responses. Every piece of information children absorb in schools today can be answered with A, B, C, or D. Sad to imagine! In this new age of application, our children are being denied. Our society praises itself for the demands asked of our time, and the wonderful changes made in education. Why, then, can our children breeze through school testing with a possible twenty minutes of studying? Memorization, not comprehension, is the only requirement for these methods of assessment, and yet our society has entered an ‘age of information.’

Forgetting for a moment that these standardized tests completely go against the new demands of our society, how reliable can a multiple choice test be, when judging a child’s entire content knowledge? Used as a reliable guide for retention or advancement, multiple choice tests barely scrape the surface of any subject area. Narrowing an entire content area down to four or five specific choices leaves little room for explanation or complete understanding. Children can easily study for a multiple choice test, yet know very little about the material. One test, using very little information, cannot correctly judge a child’s comprehension. The validity is zero.

Not only are standardized tests a bad idea for lack of toughness, test scores have too much influence on schools and their occupants. Children who perform poorly on a given test may be held back and forced to repeat the grade level. The proper attention these children need is rarely given, and they continue to fall behind. Sadly enough, the entire school suffers as well. Schools who receive failing marks on their report cards get less funding. Without proper funding, no school building or system can keep up with the changing times.

With so much pressure on schools to do well on annual report cards, more and more lessons are being based on test material. The actual information students receive is being lessened. After test preparation for the different subjects, only little time remains to focus on any broader aspect of a child’s education. Deprivation and denial are the two issues our children are most faced with in school today. We deprive our children of the education they deserve because of the ‘importance’ of high test scores, and we deny them the opportunity to reach their full potential. A time when children were expected to use their imaginations and be creative has long been forgotten. Instead of teaching our children the importance of a vast knowledge, we feed them tiny bits of information about each subject, which the state and federal governments say we must know.

From simple math and reading competencies to multiple choice testing, this huge improvement schools have made in the past several years seems quite small. Supposedly demanding more of our children, yet denying them the broader education they deserve, our society has become a contradiction to itself. Preparing the future of our nation with multiple choice answers to everything, these children will have much difficulty in a world of compromise and explanation. The world does not have answers written everywhere for anyone to guess the best possible choice. As adults faced with situations where the knowledge attained has to be explained and applied, how will these children respond? In a world of concept, interpretation, analysis, and application, the future of this nation is looking rather dim. Unknowingly to these youngsters, the ‘real world’ questions cannot be answered with A, B, C, or D!

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