I am writing to you today to discuss the education system in the United States, especially those in the grades from K-8. I would like to mainly focus upon the children who are in Kindergarten. These kids are the ones who are affected the most by the standardized testing. Kindergarten is the grade in school which is supposed to get children accustomed to going to school 5 days a week. It’s meant to prepare them for the next 16 years of their lives. Kindergarten is the point in a child’s life which is supposed to peak their interests in school; so that they enjoy school and want to come back.
These tests that students are forced to take are what makes our educational system worse than it needs to be. Your education system which you build upon is making children hate and despise school, to the point that they don’t want to go anymore. A quote from Derrick Jenson’s text of “How to Not Teach”: The most important piece of technology in any classroom is the second hand of the clock. The purpose is to teach millions of students the identical prayer: Please God, make it move faster.” This quote shows that kids aren’t interested in learning because it isn’t learning for oneself, but rather it’s to remember answers to pass a test. A quote that parallels this is from a text titled: “Road to Rome” by Jonathan Kozol, “The children were told, she said, that “it’s not just ‘important’ that they pass” but that “passing this –the test- is actually the only thing that is important.” Our world has come down to standardized tests and how learning isn’t what we once thought it was, but rather it’s a place to learn how to pass tests.
Education isn’t the same as we once thought it was, it’s not a place to learn new things, but a way of learning answers. Derrick Jenson had another great quote in his text: “The word education comes from the Latin root educe….To educe is to lead forth; to seduce is to lead astray…….More to the point, I wish I had suggested that our departments of education be called, if we were being honest, departments of seduction, for that is what they do: lead us away from ourselves.” These examples go to show that our education system clearly needs a fix, and as soon as possible. We need to encourage kids to enjoy school so that we get more people out of the streets and into jobs and homes. We need a fix, now, before it is too late.
-Joshua