I have been at all grade levels for over 20 years and this is what I have learned.
All kids are not alike. All have different gifts and use them as they are taught. That gang banger that is good with a knife or gun could be a skilled surgeon or mechanical engineer if given the right teaching.
All learn in different ways. Some learn by sight, some hearing, and some more through hands on, and some through a mix. A good teacher tries to discover how to teach each child.
Not everyone is college bound. Forcing a kid into rigorous academics when they should 'learn a skill' leads to boredom, frustration, and disengagement. Kids need a sense of pride and achievement-really it is a human trait. A true craftsman can be as artistic and offer an elegant solution as any physics problem.
No test can truly measure or quantify what a human can accomplish. Would Helen Keller have accomplished what she did without Annie Sullivan?
All this crap about testing only serves to mask the lack of funding that has occurred in our education. It has served to kill the joy in learning and the general dumbing down of our educational system.
And that leads me to this conclusion (to paraphrase George Carlin). They want us to be smart enough to read the instruction and work the machines, but dumb enough not to think about how bad they are screwing us.
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