The Flaws in the United States' Educational System: Standardized Testing

We are focused on perfection. We strive to become united in our ways through our educational system by setting a perfect standard, forcing all that come through into the template. In the process of doing so, we have managed to accomplish something quite the opposite of perfect - we've created a generation of students, equally apathetic and bad in every field of study. Through a bomb raid of standardized testing we have killed all possible spark in the eyes of the students, leaving no room for passion, but rather only rational thought and belief.

The authors Diane Ravitch, Eric A. Hanushek, Margaret Talbot and Roz Chast help us understand the flaws in our educational system through a series of writing pieces and satirical cartoons. Our focus on templating stems from a strong culture of standardized testing. As a fast growing nation, the United States is keen on adopting the most time efficient methods of operation. By subjecting the entire high school population to standardized tests, millions of dollars are saved, annually, on the assessment of students' potentials and skills.

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Diane Ravitch conveys her opinion on standardised testing to her reader after attending an educational seminar. "I started to see the danger of the culture of testing..." says Diane in her essay "No Child Left Behind". (Diane Ravitch) The standardized testing does not differ for students with an interest in art or an interest in mathematics, it simply packs everyone into a template, making them a perfect apathetic billet to be carved into an equally apathetic worker.

Our reluctance to notice the individual interests of the students ultimately results in the deaths of these interests. Stuffed under the same template, the students' interests are trampled in the stampede towards standardization. Without realizing it, we are breeding a culture of apathy. By using standardized testing we create students who hate their majors and workers who hate their jobs. It requires a tremendous amount of willpower and thought to stand up for your interests in the modern educational system. Roz Chast does an excellent job of presenting an example by portraying a young student in his comic strip “What I Learned”, who challenges her math teacher on the topic of education: “But what if you want to be a trigonometrist?' 'Trust me, I won't.'”. (Roz Chast)

As a society we fail to spot the exact moment, when it is crucial to begin developing individual interests of the students. By neglecting to do so, we sabotage our own heritage, kill our own future geniuses and narrow our potential as a whole society. It comes as no surprise that colleges and universities provide a great contribution towards the standardization movement. Colleges thrive off of standardized testing, a set of scores can be used as a determining factor in a student's entire application. By forcing the entire population of high school students under an identical scale, colleges are able to place all applicants on a “level playing field”.

By subjecting students of different backgrounds to an identical test, the educational system takes away the individuality of the students, forcing them to become “experts in everything”. By producing an army of students, equally well - versed in all areas of study, we are simultaneously producing an army of equally mediocre students. As seen on the infographic by Eric A. Hanushek, the US, despite having an strict and enforced testing system falls well below the top 40 countries with the number of students at an advanced level of mathematics and is significantly outperformed in all subject areas by many countries. (Eric A. Hanushek) We have fallen into the trap of optimization. By choosing the most efficient way of handling students, we have chosen by far one of the least effective ways of doing so. As adequately outlined by the aforementioned artists and writers, we have done no favors to our current generation of students. By applying a template to each and every individual, we have killed off all the passion and interest in the students, infecting our young generation with apathy and indifference.