America’s educational system is not often analyzed by most citizens; some parents can’t even keep up with their kid’s homework, much less recognize the systemic problems. The pressure students grapple with in the classroom on a day to day basis can be detrimental to their mental health and their mental growth. It has become apparent that the staggering, debilitating, and shocking decrease in student mental health has not only been criticized but ignored amongst parents, who tend to call student’s anxiety about school being snowflake-like.

Our parents had a very different school environment than the students of today. In those days, they still took English, history, math, and science courses, but students also took gym, had open campuses to go or stay for lunch as they pleased, they had to take art, music, metal/woodshop, home economics, and other electives such as languages. The bullying problem was worse, teachers were more disciplinary, but there was freedom given to students.

Education today is sometimes referred to as prison-like. There is no freedom, there is no choice, the buildings are in poor conditions, the food provided is terrible, there are punishments, and there are high-stakes, and while some things got better, most students don’t even learn any real-life skills. School is a full-time job that comes home and hangs out on nights and weekends. So where did education go wrong? Why are our students so stressed out? Why are the numbers involving students and mental health crises growing every single year?

Education today is competitive. We have to “keep up with China” and all of the other countries. Students today must live in fear, as our youth are constantly under attack from psychopaths who shoot-up elementary schools. Education is corporate. That’s right. Corporate. Starting with a President named George W. Bush. President Bush signed the No-Child-Left-Behind Act into law in 2002. The bill essentially requires children in grades 3-8 (and one time in high school) to take standardized tests in mathematics, reading, and writing. The idea of this bill was to provide an equal opportunity for disadvantaged children, exemplify student achievement (in order to keep teachers accountable), and to prove the effectiveness of educational programs. In short, it is supposed to be a measure to prove that students and teachers are working effectively. When a school’s children are not proficient, they do not get the government funding they need to improve their scores; effectively taking funds from those who need it most in order to improve their education and giving those funds to those who are already deemed proficient. It is a rich against the poor system and it is mass murder of our educational stamina. It has taken away a child’s freedom to learn different methods and has turned the system into a one-size-fits-all mania.

In a sweep of corporate greed and punishment, NCLB has ruined the education system and even more bluntly, the art and love of education. It has infiltrated our classrooms and the minds of our students and furthermore, it has taken away from genuine learning. In order to dig deeper into the major issues of education, one must first dig deeper into the history of NCLB, but also understand who owns education. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson passed through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as ESEA) during his War on Poverty. The goal of this bill was to give an equal opportunity to American youth in order to help children move forward in financial status. It was known as the farthest reaching policy that America has ever seen. Later on, President Bush passed the NCLB bill. There were studies about how raising the achievement level of education can largely improve a country’s economy, and these ideas are what drove President Bush to NCLB. There were (and still are) significant disparities between different classes.

NCLB is arguably a money based endeavor and the largest beneficiary of NCLB’s legislation is the test-making company, Pearson. Pearson is the United Kingdom-based “education” corporation who owns the majority of the education system. With a revenue turnout of over 400 billion dollars, it is no wonder the corporate giant overruns the education system. First and foremost, Pearson Educational Corporation makes tests. They make those pesky standardized tests that NCLB requires students to take. They also make tests for future educators. They formulate curriculum for students from K-12 and even college courses. So, why does this mean that they own the educational system of America? They are ultimately deciding who the teachers are, and how students learn. How do they do that? As previously stated, Pearson makes tests, this includes the state demanded -- and the most likely government demanded -- PRAXIS tests, which are made by ETS, or more formally known as Educational Testing Service. ETS is owned by Pearson. In order to become a teacher, a future educator must be able to pass the PRAXIS test in their focus area. A standardized test that does not even begin to show the skills or substantial knowledge of future educators, but should you fail it, you may not become a teacher. This is just one instance in which Pearson has overrun the education system, and has been “lawfully” given a monopoly on the educational institution. Pearson also makes SATs, ACTs, PARCC, the GED tests, the Common Core Standards, and the reading curriculum. When one business is written into law, it becomes a massive transfer of public funds to private corporations, and that kind of corruption breeds poor education.

There is significant research into all this high risk, learning based testing. Most research into high-stakes testing says that testing children and only teaching to the test limits the knowledge and thinking abilities of the children who are being taught in this fashion. High-stakes testing also endorses the notion that students who cannot perform on standardized tests are not smart, eventually leading to the overwhelming research about the amount of pressure high-stakes testing thrusts onto students and giving insight into the dramatic climbing numbers of poor mental health among students. When schools rely on the funds they are granted from passing tests that are written into law, just to spend money to get those very same tests, then there is something systemically wrong with that system of education. The school is pouring all their money into the pockets of a huge corporation, just to make sure that tests are provided so they can get more money just to buy the tests, when those very tests take away from well rounded learning and create this viscous cycle of using students to gain currency. Wayne Au (a former school teacher, and current Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Washington) says, “The tests have the predominant effect of narrowing curricular content to those subjects included in the tests, resulting in the increased fragmentation of knowledge forms into bits and pieces learned for the sake of the tests themselves.”

Typically, when these tests are involved in the student’s daily learning, it takes away time from other activities even when the tests are not being given. Subjects like social studies, science, physical education, music, arts, and languages, all suffer at the hand of this testing but English also suffers, as students are not learning practical skills in writing, but only how to write in a manner that passes the tests. One can clearly see that education is more of an algorithm than an actual learning experience. Everything has a rubric, it must all match a standard. The more standards and tests, the better. But this is untrue. There is a lack of passion for learning when learning is set up to demean children -- to change children into numerical algorithms that think less and guess more. We let children’s passion for knowledge suffer and their confidence in their intelligence to rely on a test. Then, when we have diminished their will to learn and erased the options in their learning just to use them for data, we lose what it means to be a student. This was best said by educational theorist, Alfie Kohn; “Standardized tests can't measure initiative, creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, or a host of other valuable dispositions and attributes.” When considering these two statements made by these two men, one has to wonder that if that information is out there, and the effects on children’s learning in this kind of environment is knowingly detrimental, that we are turning children into sheep and numbers for data bases, then why do we continue to teach children in this manner? Why do we continue to allow this blasphemous waste of time to become our education system? Just as healthcare should not be a business for profit, nor should education. The only investment education should make is in the children because the children are the future.

Student’s who are made to believe that their only value is how they perform on a test are less likely to do well, and more likely to drop out when they feel that their abilities aren’t good enough. As Alfie Kohn says: “the more people are rewarded for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.” If we take away their ability to love learning in it’s full capacity, for what it is meant to be, then it is easy to lose a student. Alfie Kohn is also known for telling a story about a principal and a parent and this idea of “rigorous” learning. So the parent asks if the curriculum is going to be more rigorous this year and the principal asks the parent to wait until the next day so he can look up the definition and get back to him. The next day the principal finds the parent and says that he has an answer for them; goodness no. Rigorous education suggests that it is going to be rough and exhaustive. Just because an education is described at rigorous does not make it a better education. There is no reason to want to exhaust children into hating learning. There is no reason to make it so difficult that they cry. There is no reason to make children hate learning. Rigor does not mean better.

There is still a chance that the education system could be saved, but only when the people truly start to care. If we let this law continue, we are voting for a world in which we are legally giving one company a monopoly on education and that is unconstitutional and unfair. Education is not supposed to be measured in this format, the students and teachers should be evaluated on how well they do in class and how teachers conduct themselves in a classroom. They should be measured by passion, interest, real knowledge, and the ability to effectively use one’s knowledge in different capacities. We should also insight inspiration enough to spark debates and meaningful commentary, but if we never teach a student how to be a thoughtful or how to evaluate things, or that there are grey lines, and that we are more than the tests; children will always judge themselves as fish who cannot climb trees and so they will spend their lives believing they are less than they actually are. When we teach to the test, we spend more time putting wealth in pockets rather than spending time putting wealth of knowledge into our students and that is the biggest flaw that the American government and people could have made. When our student's only job is to produce numbers and money for schools, then schools are no longer a place of education, they are a sweatshop or worker-bees trying to earn money for schools, rather than learning.

They are a place of immense pressure that breeds sheep.