School is typically not a creative environment. School limits intellect, and replaces it with ignorance. The system is teaching the children to be like robots being controlled by the government to attend to an absurd environment for about six hours a day, five days a week, when it should be encouraging the students' desire of going to school to learn something useful every day. School kills the creativity of students by educating them out of their creative capacity, classification and organization, and standardized testing. The system take this brilliant concept of learning and discovering new things, and destroy it with an atmosphere filled with judgment, limitation of creativity, and strict deadlines. School kills creativity, and focuses …show more content…
What is creative about attempting a 3 hour exam that determines whether you will pass school? The school system created standardized testing to measure and compare everyone's level to see how much the students would be at against everyone else in the nation. Nevertheless, standardized testing is quite adverse, because everyone is not at the same level as each other, which results generalizing the whole population of students. What is the point of preparing students all year for an exam that they are being forced to do that supposedly demonstrates their intelligence, and cleverness. Teachers receive pressure to get the students prepared for these exams that they fail to teach students skills that go beyond the tests. This creates an atmosphere that lacks creativity, as teachers are only teaching the students information about standardized testing. 75% of respondents said they are under pressure to be productive rather than creative at work. According to Ken Robinson, our education system works like a factory. It is based on models of mass production and conformity that actually prevent kids from finding their passions and succeeding. The ultimate goal that teachers have is to teach students how to perform extremely well in standardized tests. Teachers spend the whole school year preparing students for standardized testing, when instead they could be teaching them valuable knowledge for their future. Standardized testing can cause a huge amount of stress on students, and teachers. This can lead to negative short-term, and long-term health consequences. This can also lead to feelings of negativity towards school, and learning. Standardized testing kills creativity, because teachers evolve around the pressure of preparing students for standardized testing all year, causing stress for the
All students, and children especially, have tremendous talents, which are forgotten when their minds walk through the school door. Their forever developing talents and favorite interests are left for an uncreative school environment. I, for one, have always been taught and believed in an education, or following the guidelines of another, was essential in achieving wealth and success later in life. However, after listening to Robinson’s argumentative speech, I realize creativity and a valued education coincide with each other. To justify myself, creativity and thinking outside the box has led to many of the world’s advancements. Therefore, when teaching future leaders, and future generations of employees and employers, teaching creativity in a forever rapidly changing and unpredictable world would have benefits. At last, I believe that the educational system puts too much emphasis on a substantial, everyday American future over one’s happiness in a later life. Every human being is already born a unique artist, never made into one; constantly growing into a more talented
Imagine a world without artists, poets, inventors, authors, or designers… Can’t do it? You don’t have to .All you have to do is look at the students being molded by the American public school system, a group of boring conforming unimaginative robots. The problem with the American school system, as argued by John Taylor Gatto in his article “Against School”, is that it’s designed to create students to conform and adapt, to determine their social roles. Schools don’t pay nearly as much attention in encouraging the students to think more critically or creative as they do in making sure they are labeled by some absurd “standardized test”. The school system needs to focus on creating a group of innovators, creative students who think outside the
High school is one of those milestones in an individual’s life that will be remembered for a long time to come. Whether one’s experiences are positive and allow him to find his purpose in life or whether they are so terrible that his view of education is tainted forever, what happens in high school affects how one’s future will turn out. Leon Botstein, author of “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood,” states that the traditional high school system should be abolished because it is not benefitting teenagers. He states that cliques of popularity and athleticism and teachers who care more about money than education stand in the way of proper learning for teenagers. Botstein further argues that school stifles students creativity and that they really do not want to be in school. His argument that the traditional high school setting should be abolished is somewhat justified on the fact that cliques make schooling experiences difficult; however, his statement that children’s creativity is stifled, they are bored in high school, and that they are ready to be adults at a young age is invalid.
Today’s society as well as the majority of our schools can definitely improve on how it encourages creativity and individuality in today’s youth. A lot of the time, it’s hard to do this, but with smaller classrooms, more qualified and devoted teachers, and more cooperation from the students, everyone’s needs could be met, and students would receive a better education. Many of today’s schools have no tolerance for anything that may go against the “norm.” Schools today can allow for individuality and differences in students, but they either choose not to or are not aware that anything is wrong with the way they do things. In Melville’s, Billy Budd, there are examples of this stifling of individuality. The crew members on board the “Avenger” are made to all conform and follow orders without question. Through Claggart, the men’s individuality and rights as people are taken away through fear. No matter what anyone is trying to accomplish, satisfying everyone is almost always impossible. It is no different in today’s school system, satisfying everyone is difficult. Students are not allowed to express themselves as freely as they should. This is not the case in all schools, but it is Especially since incidents like those at Columbine High School, schools now view acts of individuality and creativeness as those of malicious intent. There is a kind of intolerance for those who act differently from the majority. Ever since the two boys from Columbine murdered their classmates, everyone has been extremely cautious about everything from actual death threats, to mere heated discussion between classmates. It is almost to a point of overkill.
Although there have been legitimate arguments supporting the benefits of standardized testing, such as their ability to successfully measure students’ proficiency, in recent years there have been concerns and disadvantages regarding how their misuse poses a serious threat to the American education system. Despite the belief that standardized tests should be used to measure students’ proficiency, there are more reasons outweighing this statement regarding why they shouldn’t be used for this purpose. Not only is this a particular issue with standardized testing, but the tests are becoming more high stakes and are being used unfairly to determine things such as graduation, or placement in a school, resulting in a significant amount of stress and anxiety in students. Testing corporations are also profiting from the design of these standardized tests, while standardized testing is also forcing teachers to all teach the same thing, leading to a lack of creativity in the students. Aside from these arguments, standardized tests have been found to be becoming flawed and have poor design.
As child growing up some of the frightful memories include a visit to the dentist; an evil man with scary drill whose solve purpose is to hurt you or the first day in elementary school you finally leave all behind the cozy classrooms and nap times of kindergarten and enter the big leagues. All of these are considered a cakewalk compared to standardize testing. Since the start of elementary school students in the United States are taught to test. In many instances students are held back or placed in remedial classes because of lower grades. But many don’t realize that some students are not great at testing taking and because of the lower grades some educators believe that these students are lower achievers. This leads to lower self-esteem and encourage students to drop out in later years. Also students are forced to memorize information merely as facts without sparking their creativity or enhancing their knowledge.
The current education system and its goals of focusing on standardized test scores has provoked heavy criticism from individuals who see the system as a failure to students by suppressing creativity rather than allowing them to express their personal genius. This type of “strategic” teaching seems anything but strategic; by adopting this method, teachers harm and limit students in a way beneficial to, literally, no one. Creativity is the basis of our world’s success, and teaching students away from this is detrimental to a progressive society. In his magazine article “Against School,” award winning writer and libertarian John Gatto recognizes the flaws of the school system and works to expose them in hopes of provoking a change. What makes
Free thinking is what encourages our creatively but it seems that school systems find it irrelevant. According to Tony Wagner in forbes.com, “[h]e identified five ways in which America’s education system is stunting innovation: individual achievement is the focus, specialization is celebrated and rewarded, risk aversion is the norm, learning is profoundly passive, and extrinsic incentives drive learning" (par. 9-14). Each point he made was to show what schools are currently focused on and how it affects the children’s thinking. In all of the points made, students are taught two things; how to the reiterate the information given to them and to not fail the class by any means. With this current system students are taught to follow directions, ultimately leading them to not think for themselves or how they can get to the solution. In Doomed to Fail, Zoch did researched about Jamesian’s psychology, basically stating a student chooses what interest their minds and learn those lessons. He reiterated James central idea: “That is for James the essence of education: to help students develop their minds in order that they may solve whatever problems life presents” (10). Later on in life, students will rely on people to find a solution to their problem instead of figuring out themselves. If school systems were able to stress the importance of the arts and have it as a daily class or create more real life situations in the class; students would be able to stimulate their minds and offer their opinions to
The National Education Association (NEA) conducted a survey, wherein teachers were asked various questions about the impact standardized testing has had in their classrooms. According to Tim Walker, “Forty-two percent of the surveyed teachers reported that the emphasis on improving standardized test scores had a ‘negative impact’ on their classroom, while only 15 percent said the impact was ‘positive,’” (para.5). According to this survey, fifty-two percent of teachers said that too much time on test prep, with it being estimated that the average teacher spends about thirty percent of class time focused on preparing for the test (Walker para.7). Despite the majority of teachers, the people who see the effects the most, reporting that standardized testing does significant harm to education, the results of the exams are still stressed far too much. It would appear that the stress on standardized testing has taken its toll on the educators, too, as forty-five percent of surveyed teachers reported that they had considered quitting due to the rising importance of standardized testing and their results (Walker para.
For students to be able to do well on standardized test they rely on their teachers. Several teachers interviewed said they spent hours of extra planning time and hundreds of dollars to create more interesting lessons. They said they must be supremely organized and strict enforcers of classroom rules. (Watanabe). Some teachers are pressured to the point that they make education all about the test and up to the test. The pressure to improve students test performance in California and across the country often meets with disdain from teachers who say they are compelled to throw out creativity and “teach to the test.” (Watanabe). If somehow the test were based on what students learn, then students could score better. Educators are unanimous that high-stakes test should be aligned with curriculum and instruction-taught and are expected to know – and that teachers should be involved in the process. (Nina and Sol Hurwitz). Teachers should continue to teach to the test, standardized test will end up being a simple exam in which every student should find it easy to take. If high-stake tests adequately cover the essential material to be learned in each grade, these practices can enhance the teaching in the classroom. Teaching to a well-designed set of tests can improve both test scores and student achievements. (Crone). Even
According to Fyona Rose, “Not only do these tests belittle students' and teachers' hard work, they also leave them with negative feelings toward school and drain their love of learning” (Rose, 2015). This means that standardized testing can ruin the enjoyment of learning for both students and teachers. The reason standardized testing still happens is because it has become a standard for schools each year. But if the standard is bad something should be changed. Many who do not like standardized testing to do not believe that testing should be done away with, but rather be changed to accommodate the growing needs of society as a
Standardized testing is not an effective way to test the skills and abilities of today’s students. Standardized tests do not reveal what a student actually understands and learns, but instead only prove how well a student can do on a generic test. Schools have an obligation to prepare students for life, and with the power standardized tests have today, students are being cheated out of a proper, valuable education and forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure to succeed are being devoted to standardized tests. Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students.
“ I don’t know what my future holds, but I do know who holds my future.” Tim Tebow’s words blew the door, that was once thought to be closed, wide open. Many athletes before and after Mr. Tebow, have declared their religious views to society. Society refuses to allow this sort of testimony, but welcomes athletes that acknowledge themselves as homosexual, or transgender.
One of the biggest problems with education is that it is poisoned in the way people view school. Some common phrases among students are that ?school is boring; school is work.? Theses attitudes have a direct effect on the effort that students put into their studies. One will obviously work harder when they aren?t bored with the task. There is a difference between hearing and listening and if students approach school as something that they see as boring and stressful than that student will only be hearing what the professor is saying. They may show up to class but this does not mean that they are necessarily there to learn. If school were fun than students would enjoy learning and thus, would learn more since it would be an enjoyable activity. School is just like a sport or a book in that if the book is well written and enjoyable than there is more incentive to read it, just as someone will put more effort into a sport that is fun than a sport they don?t enjoy. If school were fun, than students would strive to learn more.
Vincent, B., 2013. Top Reasons Why Schools Kill Creativity In Students - All Voices. [Online]