The current standard curriculum and standardized assessments in American public schools do not coincide with the ultimate objectives of education. Education’s main purpose is to promote student interest and productivity, which are things that the current curriculum and assessments do not focus on. For example, standardized tests put more emphasis on assessing rote remembrance of information than on assessing creativity and critical. Such tests are useful for productive and purposeful education, but they should not replace the ultimate goals of education. Instead, standards and tests should be used as tools to help students become creative, critical thinking, and active learners who are ready to pursue their own interests using their strengths when they are adults. The standardization of public schooling has caused fundamental problems for students and teachers by conforming different types of individuals to the same standard and by discouraging higher order thinking, active learning, and motivation in classrooms.
The curriculum itself provides particular standards for teachers, schools, and students. According to the Ohio Department of Education in “Ohio’s Learning Standards”, there are different types of these specific standards imposed.
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Critical thinking is evaluative thinking that reflects on and analyzes previously learned information (Smith and Szymanski, 18). It requires knowledge of information, which comes from lower order thinking. Unlike lower order thinking, though, critical thinking reasons through and assesses the information. Instead of focusing students on memorizing information to fulfill content and performance, critical thinking focuses students on thinking more profoundly about what they know. Critical thinkers, more than just remembering facts, analyze them comprehensively. Educators should focus more on developing critical thinking than on developing lower order