Thread by @dess_ri

"Standardized Testing and the Destruction of Education"

More testing, less interesting. Our school system is setting students up for long-term failure.

psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedo…

🧵#HyperThread

Most of us know the feeling of hating going to school. For me, that started in 2nd grade with spelling test anxiety. I was convinced I was never going to learn to read or write. A string of infections & a tonsillectomy made it even harder for me to keep up!

The system had nothing in place for me or my brother, for whom they missed dyslexia. I learned to read on my own time, in my own way. School, in fact, held me back. My brother as well, who ultimately learned to read through video games.

Schools put the love of learning in the ground for so many children! Learning something for the sake of being tested on it doesn't exactly inspire positive emotions.

"The data revealed strong negative correlations, across countries, between scores on the subject-matter tests and scores on interest in learning and indices of creativity."

Children are not learning flexible thinking, creativity, or feeling personally connected to their education. Schooling & testing are a burden they'd rather avoid. Too often, those feelings are connecting with learning opportunities outside the classroom too.

We're living in a time where innovation & flexibility are keys to personal success, but our schools continue to focus on testing. It's even stranger because mastery isn't a goal. Receiving a 'D' (usually 60%-69% correct) is considered a passing grade.

Children aren't learning how to make decisions or to be accountable for moving themselves forward. They're waiting on someone to explain, to give them more time, extra credit, to let them do corrections, etc, etc...

Their own interests play no role in the classroom. Their natural strengths & weaknesses aren't worked on. They spend all day from ages 5-17 being told exactly what to do & when to do it.

Is it any wonder so many people don't know to self-regulate nowadays?

We're seeing so much anxiety & depression & so many kids trying so hard to be 'different', which isn't new. Goth, emo, etc, were manifestations of kids trying to find out who they were.

People have been growing up, for decades now, with little sense of who they are or what they actually want to do.

School should be for learning the most basic of the basics. Once mastery of the 3Rs is achieved, students should move on to directing their education.

We have the tech to let every child learn a different 2nd language if they want to. They can learn about a new culture, from cooking to cleaning to child rearing, if they want to.

Why aren't we doing that??

Why isn't a child who loves the ocean having lessons tailored to her based on that interest? Why can't she be on the path to becoming a marine biologist at nine years old?

SHE COULD BE.

The school system, outdated as it is, is holding us all back! We're past the time for needing every child to be on the same page at the same age. We know so much more about the maturation & development of children!

It's insane that we're still trying to keep every child on the same schedule. There's no need for the single teacher to 20+ kids, forcing the same exact lessons at the same exact time on them each day.

We've moved beyond the traditional school setup technology wise & we should know better than to keep using it from a developmental standpoint. Kids are not all the same & they don't need to be.

The school system, however, doesn't want to advance. Their idea of moving forward is to use iPads instead of notebooks & making every child focus on STEM. Not a big change actually.

They still consider kids to be factory products on the production line.

Tl;dr, our school system is super outdated & setting students up for future failure~