Standardized Education

Standardized education is a practice that has been present in our current system of education for approximately one to two centuries. As such, many elements of the education system do not “play nicely” with many of the values held outside of “school life” today, such as the values presented in our schools that belong in an age of industrial factory workers, where following directives exactly as provided was critical to success. Additionally, as there are unique variations between two different students, standardized education may jeopardize the learning potential for particular students that need specialized learning environments in order to best take advantage of their time. A major shift in standardized education practices needs to occur,

According to an article by John Baker of The Huffington Post, “...How to create, how to invent, how to solve a problem, how to continually learn...” are skills that employers of modern organizations will be looking for and that should be nurtured from an early age. However, from an early age, we are taught the opposite; how to conform to a standard of what is “normal”. Creativity has become an increasingly crucial skill in the modern working world, but with a number of notable exceptions (such as Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement (AP) classes), this crucial skill is not taught and nurtured from an early age. Rather, you are simply told to “do what you’re told to do”. Rather, you are simply told to “listen to the adult” and that the adult has a higher amount of knowledge than students at all times. Learning to be creative and “talking back” when it is necessary (such as an unfair employer) will help many students immensely and are skills that need to both be nurtured and kept in moderation at an early age rather than simply following directives exactly as they are provided. The current method of teaching students values other than creativity, such as earning respect and giving it also needs to be improved to provide motivation to adhere to those beneficial values outside of school and their educational careers. From creativity to

The argument supporting a shift in schedule modularity isn’t that it should be introduced as an option immediately, but rather, the student should be provided an introduction to the subject for his/her early grade levels before stepping up to higher education and coordinating with parents to skip the course for something of a higher amount of benefit to the student. Others argue that many kids don’t have aspirations for their future career and that it would jeopardize their education to switch to this type of non-standardized system. The issue with this argument is, however, that many students do have aspirations and are being somewhat restricted from reaching their full learning potential in attempting to standardized and accommodate the “lowest common denominator” in one system. For those who don’t have aspirations, classes offered in the current system of standardized education with the same curriculum should be offered as a choice with the addition of classes/sessions providing further guidance to students who do not have aspirations for their future career to help them find a passion that they can focus on in their education.

Although many valid reasons exist for the continuation of standardized education/curriculum as a practice, many of the values and practices held in