Stifling Our Students' Minds

I find myself writing this piece because of my recent forays into the world of education. Last summer I taught at the Summerbridge Miami program, one of a network of programs designed to offer guidance and academic instruction to hundreds of at-risk students in America's cities. My approach to this enthusiastic group of middle school students was influenced by several motives. The most prominent of these impulses were my feelings of optimism and shameless idealism. With this attitude I prepared to take the teaching world (or Summerbridge Miami) by storm.

One of the first things I learned in my teaching workshops was, "these kids have to be able to pass the FCAT [Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test]." Subsequently, I received a substantial number of handouts, collectively titled "Taking the FCAT out of the Bag." In these pages, I was assured, I would find guidance to success in the classroom. The expectation was that I would conduct myself according to the guide.

I found it somewhat dismaying to see that even the Summerbridge program--a program designed to teach America's students using a non-traditional method--was confined by standardized testing strictures. This fall I read an issue of Newsweek that spoke to my concerns. A flood of memories poured over me: I began to collect information from editorials, essays, novels, speeches, casual conversation and personal experience. Now, I feel compelled to contribute my viewpoints to the already volatile debate.

America's obsession with standardized tests as the measuring stick of academic capability is at an all-time high. Now, a considerable portion of adolescent life revolves around successfully surmounting these tests. Likewise, education is increasingly involved with making students capable of passing the specific tests required by their state or region's education department. This increasing emphasis on standardized testing has had a negative effect on many aspects of American education.

From a teacher's perspective, standardized testing has limited creative license in the classroom. Many of the rising "education workshop" programs such as Summerbridge encourage teachers to bring creative ideas into the classroom.

Once these aspiring educators enter the teaching sphere, their carefully developed approaches are stonewalled--they are asked to conform to the increasingly rote systems of teaching. The attempts of education programs like Summerbridge to foster novel approaches to teaching are continually nullified by the teach-to-the-test approach that transforms teachers into machines. Richard L. Wade, Headmaster of the prestigious Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, refers to this trend as "packaging our schools." This process of frustrating the ambitions of would-be teachers perpetuates and validates the saying, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

America's students are suffering the greater injustice. As America looks increasingly upon standardized testing as "the way," students watch as school districts and educators hopelessly abandon approaches and curricula germane to classroom creativity.

The American values of free expression and individuality are being undermined in the very places where they should be nurtured. Students find their unique talents and abilities ignored in favor of rote memorization skills. Students quickly learn how to play the game. In his essay "A Proposal to Abolish Grading," Paul Goodman states, "The naive teacher points to the beauty of the subject and the ingenuity of the research; the shrewd student asks if he is responsible for that."

These problems, however, are purely external, and say nothing about the emotional trauma which this testing system puts students through. America's most famous standardized test, the SAT (presently named Scholastic Assessment Test, formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test), provides the best example of the potential emotional harm to students. According to a report in last month's Newsweek, the long-term effects of the SAT are not negligible. This takes into account the domino-effect theories linking SAT scores to success in life, and the wide range of fields (including unlikely areas such as real estate) that are indirectly influenced to some degree by the SAT. A considerable number of students--the overwhelming majority of the private school population--are beginning to see the test as an indicator of their value as human beings. The higher the SAT score, the better the person.

Granted, standardized testing is a necessary tool in determining whether a student has a sound educational foundation and as such, cannot be completely abandoned. However, the prevailing notion of standardized tests as "the goal"--inciting unhealthy stratification and competition--conflicts with their utility as simple diagnostic tools. In fact, many of the items students are tested on are based on an arbitrary standard of what we think students "should" know.

By dehumanizing teachers and demoralizing students, standardized testing unintentionally contributes to the state of decadence present in American education. Ridiculous as it sounds today, Harvard University originally championed the SAT (the first major standardized test) as a means to achieving a classless society. However, the system implemented has achieved other, unintended purposes. Instead of the mechanism leading society towards utopia, testing has become an absurd beast ravaging American academia.

Malik B. Ali is a sophomore English major at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga.