Persuasive essay Don’t Teach the Test Students all around the world are subjected into giving ‘standardized tests’ to evaluate their place in this world. Standardized tests have come to a point where they run the lives of students and teachers alike. The point here is to convey the misuse of today’s standardized testing and its impact on young minds. Standardized testing has come to be known as a “core issue in education” (Silverstein 1). Students are shown to have increased stress levels due to testing, for them it has become the ill fate of ‘all or nothing’.
“ (Moore 141). While Moore focuses more on the advertising established into school and companies promoting themselves using schools, Gatto speaks more one the effect that this way of schooling creates the adults in the world. Also he explains how marketing on the school systems is keeping the adults nowadays very “childish” or young in the mind. (Gatto 149) According to Gatto if you strip children of all of their independence, and only develop their trivial emotions, they would never truly grow up. (Gatto 154).
My opinion of NCLB is it is flawed, developmentally inappropriate, ill funded, ←and→ leaving more students, teachers, ←and→ schools behind than ever before because The tests have turned into the objective of classroom instruction rather than the measure of teaching ←and→ learning. Based on my experience, the current implication of NCLB is similar to teaching in a Korean classroom; teachers are teaching the test and the only thing that matters are the test results. Teaching to the test is the number one criticism by teachers and administrators. There is so much pressure on schools to achieve acceptable performance levels that test-taking has become a subject in itself. Everything academic revolves around the year-end state testing to the point that other subjects are usually neglected.
Smith Professor Decker English 106 2010 Summary of Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education” Paulo’s essay The Banking Concept of Education from Pedagogy of the Oppressed has inspired many to take a new approach towards education, and his philosophy is very influential in today’s academic debates. His work (The Banking Concept of Education) clearly challenges the educational system in place and condemns current beliefs; and his essay clearly portrays a mix of strong emotions towards education. One can clearly see Freire’s strong stance in his opening paragraph when he mentions that “education is suffering from narration sickness.” This quotation implies that education is flawed and crippled; therefore, it needs to be addressed. Freire goes on to explain that it’s the repetitiveness in education, not the power in it that constantly thrives students to question the depths in real learning. One can know what two plus two is, but why does two plus two equal four.
Also, explaining that companies turned around and sell teaching materials designed to raising scores on their OWN test. The author also describes how the test disregards the students’ creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, and other valuable dispositions and attributes. The author suggests that test is not designed to meet the needs of the students; rather yet, the students must all rise to meet the same standards. As a reader, one can conclude that not all students learn the same materials, through the same techniques. Furthermore, the
John Taylor Gatto in his article “Against School” addresses his belief that schools are laboratories, turning young, fresh-minded students into stationary consumers who are all alike. The students are bored as well as the teachers, so “who, then, is to blame?” “We all are.” (300-301) It is our duty to push and challenge ourselves instead of waiting on someone else to make that happen. The government will continue to use the few students they believe are capable to continue on their tradition, while letting the majority fall into meaningless stereotypes and groups. We have the ability to change the prospect and goals of public education, and we can bring out the genius in every single student. 1.
Throughout the years there have been many arguments on how to educate and in whether changing the paradigms of education, on how to educate and what’s the best strategic concept to be used in mainly public schools, considering the Latin American context. Paulo Freire, a leading and influential figure inside the “critical pedagogy” to guide students into helping them develop their critical thinking and consciousness of freedom. He noticed and studied a dichotomy between the teacher and the student, shown in the modern education in Latin America realizing there is a “banking concept” being presented. He refers to this “banking concept of education” to be a fractional action of communication from the teacher to the student, by delivering information to the student, having it stored and not exactly storing it and recognizing the information, by simply absorbing and accepting that all information received is the only thing they are meant to digest. Freire believes that this concept of education is suited for oppressors, to have the overwhelming control in aiming the student to adapt to this doctrine.
Blake McMahon Instructor Cheema English 102 02/25/2013 Cheating Outline I. Introduction a. The CQ Researcher’s article, “Cheating in Schools”, by Kathy Koch, shows the matter of cheating in the educational system. b. Recently, the students and administration have had an issue involving cheating in the classroom, because of the high bars in today’s testing.
Albert Einstein once said that the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. I believe the concept of learning and teaching, similar to the world around us, should not be a rigid entity, rather a fluid one with the ability to transform and adapt to the scenario or context. A more modern paradigm of learning envisions the institution of learning itself as a learner- over time it continually learns how to produce more learning with each graduating class, each entering student (Barr & Tagg, 1995). This study has two intertwined objectives, to illuminate education as a transformative endeavour and to discuss the theoretical and philosophical elements of critical perspectives of curriculum and pedagogy. Furthermore, the application and implications of critical curriculum and pedagogy will be revealed and debated in order to fully deconstruct meaning of the aforementioned intentions.
My teacher, Mrs. Hamak, has dealt with cases of vandalism recently. The gas sprockets in her classroom have been clogged with pencil leads, papers, and tiny foreign objects. What does this tell you about some of today’s generation? It tells us that some of the future members of our society are exhibiting idiotically pernicious behavior. I feel that these unknown individuals need to grow up.