When did it become more important to sustain a 4.0 GPA rather than develop the skills and traits needed to be successful in today’s society? When did schools start to stress the importance of getting perfect SAT scores instead of stressing the importance of humanity and good morals?
As students, we have had it drilled into our heads that the grades on the paper matter more in life than anything else. We are taught that our grades will carry us in life and if we get amazing grades we will be successful. We have learned tricks and techniques that will help us to become efficient test takers, even if we do not fully comprehend the material.
Further, schools often fail to work overall necessary development of soft skills into their daily planner. They forget to teach us how to be good people and how to be successful in such a competitive world. We go to school daily, learning a new algebraic equation or how to properly place a comma, but we fail to learn how to be a good person.
We don't learn how to be human.
Although it may be part of the human condition, many people fail to exemplify traits of pure existence. We are an automaton to the schools we attend; prioritizing homework and receiving good grades overall. People of this generation are going to look back on their high school days and remember the AP classes they felt they had to take, the long hours of studying and memorization, and the expensive prep classes taken to ensure a top ranking SAT/ACT score. What did they really get out of all of this?
Although our job as teens is to do well in school and work hard, administrators fail to realize that we need to have balance. We need a balance between our academics and soft skills, as well as a balance between our home and school life. Spending eight hours a day in school and returning home to do eight more hours of work is absolutely absurd. No one wants to look back at their childhood and feel like it was wasted because all of their time was consumed with school.
I believe that high schools need to rethink their strategy when “preparing us for our future.” Placing priority emphasis on standardized test taking results should not be the focus. It’s been my experience that high schools are more concerned with how their students rank in standardized testing, as it directly affects their “blue-ribbon status” and subsequent state funding. This is not limited to SAT and ACT testing, but all state standardized tests.
Why should high schools dedicate days to prepare their students to take standardized tests? Should these standardized tests not be a true reflection of the school's ability to teach the subject matter, rather than teach the students how to do well in these individual tests? I think so.
There are so many social skills needed in order to succeed in the real world. The schools should have a responsibility to aid the students and teach them how to communicate and be diplomatic with their coworkers and superiors.
Yet, the focus continues to be placed on successful testing scores. It’s important to be well rounded in all areas, scholastically, socially, and personally, so we can actually advance and be successful in our careers and be positive contributors to society.
In the grand scheme of things, most colleges assess high school performance as their admission criteria. We have been told relentlessly that colleges want to preserve an upstanding reputation, and often bypass someone who has mediocre grades or is a bad standardized test taker. Which leaves high school students with no choice but to put forth every effort to maximize their GPA and prepare for tests that have little relevant information that will be useful to them as adults.
In as little as five short years, it won’t matter what your high school GPA was or how you ranked in your class. What will matter is how we rise to the opportunities in front of us and what we are able to contribute to society.
Your employer, friends, family, and even your high school teachers, will not care how you did on your SATS, but they will judge you on your character, humility, work ethic, and dedication, which high schools do not focus enough on developing.
In my opinion, it is these areas that need to be more of a priority focus as we progress through our high school years.
