We are all different. We all have our own unique talents and skills. Maybe it is juggling, or balancing on one hand, or even being the best magician in your state (although I highly doubt that). However, in the educational system here on our school campuses teachers are taught to judge a skill. A single one. We are forced to take classes focused on certain skills or strengths. Except how can each student be graded on the same scale for the same skill when none of us are equally blessed with the same talents or abilities? How can professors grade based on assumptions that everyone has this skill and if not penalize those who do not?

Take for example an English based class for public speaking. Why is it that speaking in front of large groups is something we all have to be perfect at or else suffer penalization? Public speaking is an acquired specialty that varies on an individualized basis. In other words look around, people like boss's, CEO's, The President and others can speak well publicly. But there are also individuals who work in quiet away from most like programmers and the cliche "office cubical guy". Even those in the middle require a lower standard of public speaking. Now as a young adult, we are forced to take classes built around skills a student may or may not possess and is then graded upon the assumption of you have to be gifted in this ability. That is nonsensical.

Schools should be built around the student not around an educational agenda. An agenda driven by politicians and school officials isolates us from our own strengths and instead attempts to build its own perfect learner by embedding skills. In other words, find the student strengths and allow them to build a schedule of classes that will benefit them most. Do not schedule the classes and build the person. Yes, we know there are certain skills in daily life we all need and that we will learn. We do need to grow up and become well rounded citizens, but no one can be perfect at each skill and no one ever has been. We have missed the person often in the learning process. There needs to be a more individualized approach, less focused on this perfect human that does not exist. Grading someone based on a skill that is individually earned and learned is a wrong approach . We are hurting teens and young adults in telling them they all must be the same, and that because they lack a single skill they will be punished if they cannot meet a certain mold. ONE skill that is forced by the state and if they do not do it well, then they will amount to nothing?

Let us stop saying, "This skill is more important than the other". Instead start saying, "What are your skills, what can you do to strengthen them and how?". Teachers are taught to individualize their teaching, so why not individualize how they grade and even test us as well? School is here to teach and prepare us for life. Let's be careful to make sure that we are not teaching hypocrisy by telling everyone to be themselves and then grading everyone as the same. We are teaching kids to check the right box instead of thinking outside the box....