Upon reading the Daily Texan, I came across an interesting article by J Hermes, an astronomy graduate at the University of Texas. The article, ”Standardized Curiosity” focuses on the TAAS generation and how they’ve become a dying breed. Standardized testing is fed by schools to shape our memory for the sole purpose of making a good grade but not caring if we will remember it.
The state has just replaced the TAKS test with the STAAR test as their way to see if our children are really learning. The TAKS was not working for kids and parents were noticing.
Hermes defines our educational environment as standardized testing. Schools drill into our kids brains everything they need to know that is on the TAKS test. At the same time, telling our children that if they don’t pass then they will not move on to the next grade. Last year, my daughter’s school stressed her out by telling her that she had to do well on the TAKS or she would fail the second grade. Another parent even told me that her daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia during the school year but later found out that it was really anxiety. She blamed it on the pressure administered by the school to do well on standardized testing.
In the article, Hermes characterizes the testing as dull, uncreative, and a stunting way to quantify learning. This opinion made me think about the children who are smarter than the TAKS testing. These children are not challenged because what they are taught is easy to them. What do the teachers do for the kids who are this smart? They freeze the child’s learning time so they can help the other students who are not as advanced as they are and even make them feel special by naming them “helpers”. Children should always be challenged to learn more regardless of what is taught to students around them.
Hermes is a student aide who administers the reviews for exams. He was first irked by the idea that reviews were not a chance for him to blow student’s mind but instead it was used to feed the student the exam. Its safe to say that every student’s mind is trained early to think of school as a way to absorb what will advance you then unknowingly throw it out once the information has served its purpose. This is why students are not really learning. Hermes admits that during the exam review a student will always ask anything they can to find out what exactly is on the exam or how much will they need to know about a subject that is on the exam. This proves that students are not looking to fully understand but to temporarily know to get by.
This article points out exactly what every school official knows but will never admit. I do not like standardize testing and have been guilty of the “temporarily absorbing” to get by. Now that I have a child in Elementary school, Texas’ lack of education strikes home. I see what standardized testing does to our children. I can only hope that the STAAR test will actually make a change.
