Understanding the Issues: Education

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Not really. Teaching to the test is helping the kids figure out how to pick the right answer, as opposed to teaching them the fundamentals that allow them to understand why the answer they chose was correct. The former skill becomes useless when the test is over, while the latter is a base for the next year's education. Skipping the base leaves you with pretty much nothing.

Watch season 4 of the Wire. It may be hyperbole (or maybe not), but it highlights the problem.

I agree that the emphasis placed on the standardized testing probably, to a degree, distracts from the subject matter that should be the main focus of teachers and students. But teaching to the test still has value. It teaches kids how to analyze the question, how to logically think through the possibilities and use process of elimination to narrow it down, to understand when they're overthinking vs when they're trusting their instincts, etcetera.

These tests, and teaching to them, certainly results in downtick in creative thinking. But logical and analytical thinking gets a lot of focus. I don't see it as a bad thing for kids on the whole.

Besides, you can use process of elimination all you want on a multiple choice standardized test, but in the end if you can't eliminate more than a couple answers, you don't know the underlying material well enough anyway. I do think there's an appropriate balance being struck.