I remember taking my first standardized test.
We sat, 20 of us, in Mrs. Nelson’s third grade classroom. I swung my feet freely beneath my desk, as my legs were still too short to fully reach the ground while I was seated. Except for the shuffling of papers and the occasional scuff from the toes of my Nike Shox hitting the carpeted floors, the room was silent. We were each given a large booklet, and our chewed up, smiley-face ridden, unicorn-covered pencils crested with pointy, colorful eraser tops were replaced by shiny, yellow number two pencils that had never been used. Confusion hung in the air. Our pencils had become quintessential to our identity. Everyone knew that Nick’s pencils had race cars on them, Peter’s pencils were garnished with craters and divots as a result of being continuously gnawed at, and my pencils proudly embellished the wild animals that roamed the African Sahara. But they wanted us all to use the same type of pencil to take the test; the same test that thousands of other kids across the country were taking that week.
They wanted us all to be the same.
I loved learning. I read for fun and watched documentaries about animals and attempted to solve massive puzzles that spanned the width of my kitchen floor, as did many other kids I grew up with. But there came a time in which I began to dread sitting in a classroom for 45 minutes. I also found myself dreading the 60 minutes I was expected to read out of my textbook every night and eventually I found myself dreading the 480 minutes I sat in a desk, Monday through Thursday, having information thrown at me to ensure I would, in fact, not be a child that was left behind. My one saving grace came in the form of short bus ride with roughly six other kids in my class to the Enhanced Learning center every Friday. Here, elementary-aged kids from all over the district came together to learn about anything we wanted to. It was a self-driven system led by four sassy, middle-aged teachers, each with short hair and big lipstick-lined smiles, and it was the greatest day of my week. We built and programmed robots, wrote short stories and dissected things and learned, firsthand and hands-on, about subjects that sparked something within us that drove us to discover more and delve deeper. The transition from my final day at the Enhanced Learning center into my first day of middle school marked the end of an era of discovery for me.
Raise your hand. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Don’t leave your seat. Stop fidgeting. Don’t look out the window, look at the board.
I learned, quickly, that education was no longer about the quality of information you learned, but rather about the quantity. The teachers had a strict curriculum that most absolutely needed to be followed, because if we didn’t get through chapter eight in our biology book by the end of the year, we wouldn’t be prepared to take the standardized test in the coming fall, and God forbid you didn’t nail that test because that would reflect badly on our school. I became a statistic. We all became statistics; statistics that lent a hand in allowing our public schools to keep their accreditation and meet the guidelines set forth by programs like No Child Left Behind and the recent adoption of Common Core within our schools. I realized I was no longer being educated; I was being trained, but I bought into it because I liked the way the crisp edges of a sharp-looking “A” or the smooth curves of a rotund “B” looked lining the middle of a piece of cardstock that was mailed like clockwork to my home each quarter. I still enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge I received in school, and knew I was beyond privileged to even have a right to an education unlike many other children around the world, but it came with a bitter taste.
When did education become synonymous with standardization? How are we to generate creativity and passion from classrooms in which words such as “standard” and “common” have become staples? Understandably, Common Core aims to ensure that children are actually learning in their classrooms and are meeting certain levels of education, but at the same time it can strip away the thrill of learning. I’ve had teachers who have, even under the cloud of Common Core and standardized tests, created an environment in which learning excited us and instilled a craving for knowledge within our minds, but those teachers were few and far between. In those classrooms, discussions were our central focus, rather than an inundation of information. We became dynamic thinkers and speakers in a setting that allowed us to reflect on the thoughts and ideals of our peers.
One thing I’ve found is standardized testing leads to standardized education, which leads to standardized kids. We've lost our drive to be creative and problem solve. How can we be expected to be innovative and inventive when our education system has taught us all to learn and think the same way? And those children that don’t meet these standards, those who simply can’t learn in the same way most other children do, are ostracized and meant to feel as though they are stupid, when in reality many of these children are the brightest among us. There is a quote that reads “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
So, this is for all of you fish and avid tree-climbers alike: educate yourselves. Continue to learn regardless of the letter smacked shamelessly atop your English paper or the red X’s clinging to the work you’ve shown below that Calculus problem. Forget about the points, because in the end they’re just numbers. Read and write and paint and run; do whatever you need to in order to make your brain feel like more than factory that spits out knowledge in the form of penciled in ovals on a Scantron.
Why haven’t we asked students how they want to learn? We are the future. Educate us; don't standardize us.
