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The purpose of standardized testing is to measure and evaluate the performance of students compared to the other students participating in the same test, however, evidence shows that students are not receiving enough knowledge through experimental learning; rather they are learning how to take structured tests. Students who excel in classroom based learning by getting good grades are successful while those who struggle are disregarded. In an essay, “Hidden Intellectualism”, an English professor Gerald Graff explains in his opening paragraph, “… We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subject and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic.” Graff appeals to readers by stating a sad …show more content…
truth of that” street” smart kids are intellectual within what they know, instead of being intellect in schools. Educational institutions do not give those kids who are “street” smart a chance in schools and overlook their intellectual potential even though they have all they need to be taught how to make an intellectual approach. Likewise, students who score high on standardized tests, are seen to be getting into good and well-respected schools. While those who do not score high, are seen as not successful thus do not end up getting in their top schools. However, there are other factors that affect your admissions chances like extracurricular actives. For example, on the ACT I ended up getting a 21 out of 36 on the ACT and 1340 out of 2400 on the SAT. These scores did not measure my academic ability on the standardized tests, but my extracurricular activities, leadership positions and community involvement including by GPA covered for my low test scores. This shows that academic qualities are not always the key to success, but rather we should redefine education and the definition of intellectualism to bring different perspectives into the educational system. The current system puts more value on those students who excel in a classroom environment while undervaluing others educational strengths. If a student is honored for their educational strengths the likelihood of their success improves exponentially. As the number of standardized testing has increased in the United States, so have stress or anxiety for many schools across the nation.
Test anxiety or stress can impair students’ academic performance on standardized tests and thereby hide their true abilities and strengths. Anthony Pasquale quotes, “… Intensive standardized testing not only causes stress in students but may undermine learning," wrote Daniel Edelstein in an article for Brain Connection. “Stress is the body's general response to any intense physical, emotional or mental demand placed on it." Stress undermines learning because it affects the way one thinks. Tests stress some people out in a harmful way, and what happens when stressed out students take tests? Normally not good results…” The education system is putting too much emphasis on testing and not seeing the consequences on student’s mental health. I am personally affected by standardized tests because these tests potentially determine my future. I experienced anxiety, severe panic attacks, and headaches because I was stressed thinking about the tests or simply not concentrating while taking the tests. I know my education has a power to determine my future through the years coming, but I am exhausted at the fact that a grade on the tests determines my
fate.
If someone asked you which was more important, street smarts or book smarts, what would be your answer? Gerald Graff, the author of an essay called Hidden Intellectualism, contemplates on what he thinks because there are pros and cons to being street smart and being book smart.
In the essay ”Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he discusses different types of intellect, more specifically the ways they can apply to us in our lives. He discusses the different types of “smarts” referred to in his paper as street smarts, and school smarts. Graff hints upon the missed opportunities by colleges to embrace the form of intellect called “street smarts” because of a preconceived idea that there is no way to use this form of knowledge in an academic setting. To quote Graff directly “Colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts”. We then learn some of Graffs personal experiences pertaining to this very thing. He shares a story about himself which reviews his underlying love for sports and complete diskliking for books or any form of intellectualism, until he became college aged. He shares that he now believes, his love of sports over over school work was not because he hated intellectualism but perhaps it was intellectualism in another form. He shares his
Education should have helped students; however, Derrick Jensen considers current educational system as inefficiency. Schooling offers students tools to live in “the real world”, but then, he questions “what sorts of beings we are creating by the process of schooling” (3). In Walking on Water, Jensen states that “we are told that standardized testing must be imposed to make sure students meet a set of standardized criteria so they will later be able to fit into a world that is itself increasingly standardized” (5). School gives out standardized tests among different subjects to examine how well each student knows about facts and information, and then, uses test scores to evaluate students’ abilities; also, this is how society estimates each
If I am to read Dr.Seuss over the dictionary does that make me worthless? In highschool I often could never relate to the stories I was made to read. I would always find my mind wandering about different things or I would find myself not caring about the grades I made. I would often put my head in the book and drift off to sleep, that would result in trouble. Many times, when I got in trouble and had to go to the office I did not care because I was not being bored by the readings that were being forced on me. Although teachers feel differently about what is intellectual, but students should not feel bad for not being able to relate.
Intellectuality needs to be redefined; what does the word intellectual mean? Typically one would describe someone as either “street-smart” or “book-smart,” in other words someone who knows how to live in the real world versus someone who has knowledge about academics. But is one more “intellectual” than the other? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff addresses this issue and brings to the audience’s—the audience being experts about the subject along with himself—attention that schools are missing the opportunity to fuse together street-smarts and book-smarts to increase overall academic performance. Graff definitively presents his opinion on this topic by manipulating ethos, pathos, and logos. Through ethos his credibility
In his essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff discussed his hatred towards typical academic subjects, and love for sports. The essay is about the many cases of people not using their gifted talents to their best ability. Are you smart, but secretly acting dumb in public to get attention? Do you waste your knowledge trying to fit in with others? He thinks street smarts is an example of intelligence. “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school. What a waste, we think, that one who is intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work” (Graff 244). Gerald Graff claims that street
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, author and professor Gerald Graff describes his idea of what book smarts and streets smarts actually are. He details how new ideas can help to teach and build our educational system into something great and that perhaps street smarts students could be the factor that traditional education is missing that could make it great.
She explains how standardized tests, such as the one her students took, were designed with numerous interference techniques, included questions which were above-grade material, and were administered with inadequate time to answer the questions being presented. Stahlman goes on to express her frustration with a standardized test which was administered to her students by saying "I watched in horror as my precious students, who were gifted poets and writers, inquisitive scientists and mathematicians, lovers of books, remarkable artists, and caring learners, were forced to silently attempt to master a test that was designed to trip them up." (Stahlman 242) The author also states how these standardized tests seem to be high-stakes in nature due to schools being labeled and ranked according to their scores and teachers being rewarded due to their students achievement in these tests. This article serves as one of my stronger arguments for my case compared to my other sources, due to its exemplification of how the proliferation of such tests is alarming and how the standardized testing of students at such a young age is not appropriate due to their cognitive development. The article is also useful in the sense that is provides a valid and sound argument for the opposition of standardized testing. I will be implementing this source into my argumentative essay by providing examples from Stahlman's text on how bizarre standardized testing might seem when it comes to the assessment of students, especially at such a young age. It will also serve as a good source for proving how much of a bearing standardized tests hold on the assessment of not only students but teachers as
Standardized tests have been used to see how much a child has learned over a certain period of time. These tests have been a highly debated issue with many parents and just people in general. In the article “Opting out of standardized tests? Wrong answer,” the author Michelle Rhee argues that people should not be trying to opt out of standardized tests because it allows the country to see how much a child has learned and the things they need to improve. On the other hand, in the article “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong,” the author Kristina Rizga argues that standardized tests are not an efficient way to measure a student’s intelligence.
Intellectualism? Have you ever thought what it really means? Does it come naturally or with time and effort? Hidden intellectualism by Gerald Graff explores the concept of street smart incorporated with intelligence, while What College is for? By Gary Gutting explores the theme of books and teachers that will help us achieve intellectualism. These two essays may be different, but contain similar ideas such as intellectualism. They both state that is is important, but they interpret it differently. Gutting describes intellect as something a person can achieve through reading and studying, which make you book smart, while Graff mentions that you don 't have to be book smart in order to be intelligent. Second topic they agree on is openness. Gutting mentions that a student should be open to his teacher 's style of teaching, whereas, Graff argues that students should embrace their own learning style and teachers should accommodate with
There are many various issues about the education system which are controversial today. One of these common issues nowadays are schools concentrating on raising standards to evaluate knowledge for students. Many students have been working extremely hard just to achieve higher scores on tests. However, asking students to do many difficult tasks in their studies, is really not helpful now, is it? That is why Alfie Kohn wrote the article, “Confusing Harder with Better”, showing his dissatisfaction with the current educational system. In the article, he complains against “raising the bar”, meaning since they raised standards, teachers are making students memorize facts for tests instead of engaging intellectually with them. In other words, with
Many students feel stressed out when having to take standardized testing. According to Kaplan, colleges are relying too much on the SAT and ACT. They are using a long test that becomes equally weighted to years of school. That seems to be a little lopsided. A student can do well through out all high school and then score badly on the SAT or ACT and ruin all of the hard work that the student put forward in order to acquire good grades. That can alter the students lives by making them have to...
The future of this country, and the planet as a whole, rests upon how well-educated our youth are. They will one day be leading this world, and contemporary leaders must ensure that that is a success. Consequently, education is always a hotly contested issue. The way we teach kids now shapes the days of tomorrow, and everyone gives their full effort toward implementing an educational system that they believe is right. Professor Gerald Graff puts forth his opinion in the essay, “Hidden Intellectualism.” He argues that schools fail a multitude of students by ignoring their interests in subjects generally considered to be non-academic, such as cars, sports, television, or video games (Graff p. 198). He cites sports specifically as a personal example, saying that discussions pertaining to athletics taught him many different argumentative and literary skills before his teachers even tried to (Graff p. 202).
Overall it is evident that standardized testing has affected the education in the United States negatively. The main flaw is that policymakers made standardized testing the center of our education system, which intern led to vast changes in curriculum where educators were forced to teach to test rather than teaching materials that fosters creativity, and enhances knowledge. Howard Gardner, famous for his work on multiple intelligences, stated he was unconcerned that American children were ranked last among the major industrial nations in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. He reported that tests measure exposure to facts and skills not whether or not kids can think (Ritter 5).
“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.” This quote by Michelle Obama illustrates the idea that standardized testing should not have such a large influence on education in America. However, a majority of people are under the impression that standardized tests are an accurate method to measure a person's intellectual ability. I believe that standardized tests have developed into a very critical part of the American education system that is hindering the growth of students and teachers instead of providing a tool that can accurately measure knowledge.