In the United States today, education in very different from teacher to teacher and from school to school. I have attended 9 different schools in my almost 12 years in the public education system, and each one places different levels of emphasis on individuality, standardized testing and conformity. In my experience, I learned the math the best when I lived in Virginia, in the fifth grade, where, rather than focus on the standardized test guidelines, the best students went to a different classroom in which we did math that required more logic, practicality, and problem solving. These skills are still necessary in both my math class and my science science class, and I believe these skills have put me at a distinct advantage: I rarely struggle …show more content…
When I lived in Florida, the amount of money the school received from the government depended not upon how well students did, but on how much schools improved from the previous year. This forced the school, which already had incredible taz scores, to push the students even harder: in the fourth grade, my class would spend almost half the school day preparing purely for the test. This obsession, or at least a similar phenom, is evident to some extent nationwide. As seen in source C, there is a manual for to prepare kindergarten students for standardized testing (Book Cover). The idea that five year old children should be preparing for a standardized test is not only asine, bit dangerous. The amount of emphasis and pressure placed on some children by these tests, starting when they are five years old, can have negative effects. In “School is Bad For Children”, by John Holt, the author argues as such, stating that “It is a rare child who can come through schooling with much left of his curiosity, his independence or his sense of his own dignity, competence or worse.” (Holt) This can lead to serious issues, even suicide, in students who are burnt out by such an asine barrage of testing from such a young