Socrates, who is widely regarded as the “greatest teacher of all time,” believes that the ultimate goal of education is to inspire students to discover and acquire knowledge on their own rather than to simply feed them the information they need to know. In creating a successful learning experience, he values empowering others to discover their path to knowledge over rote memorization of a subject matter. This explains his unique ‘Socratic method’ of assessing students through engaging dialogues and conversations, completely devoid of right or wrong answers. However, as society became more industrialized, we became more fixated on numbers, percentages, and benchmarks. Furthermore, the Industrial Revolution and the No Child Left Behind policy have both driven more children towards the education system, placing more pressure to keep teachers and schools accountable in providing an effective learning experience to the increasingly large amount of students. …show more content…
While it is easier for teachers to administer and grade, merely shading in bubbles hinders students’ critical thinking skills and often only encourages rote memorization. Although testing is a simple way for educators to measure the material comprehension of large amount of students, the success of a learning experience such as higher education should be assessed through practical activities that challenge students’ application of their knowledge and skills in the real world. Such practical activities, which range from projects, discussions, labs, puzzles, and even competitive games, should engage students in the subject material, enable them to demonstrate their mastery of the knowledge, and develop important personal skills that will allow them to become successful in the