Education Today Essay, Research Paper
Testing today has taken over schools. The pressure of society for a person to strive to reach the best schools and therefore the best education, to do this your test scores have to be the best. This brings up the question on weather or not the highest test scores show who the smartest people really are? These high test scores raise the question, does the school you go to have an influence on how you do on your tests. If it does make a difference does the money involved create a preddjudicous. Also should someone use all their powers available to find get into the best schools? Society is leaning more towards Machiavelli s view where the ends justify the means. This also brings morals into the situation.
The education system of today has used testing as an easer way to show how smart someone is. Teachers use tests to see how well students understand what they have taught. This has a positive effect making the students learn the material that the teacher wants them to learn, however the student ends up just learning it because they have to. In order to become educated someone has to want to learn something. That is the only way that they would truly push themselves to further their knowledge. The only thing that pushes students to learn today is the pressure that society makes. These pressures consist of anything from parents pushing the child to go to college, to business that will not hire anyone without a college degree. Parents want to see their child succeed more then the child wants too. The child wants to succeed too because no one wants to grow up only to be able to work in a minim wage job. Without the benefits of a
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college degree a person is limited as to what positions are available in today s workplace. The better the college that the person got the degree from the better chance they have at the job.
This leads into the whole network of schooling involved to get the best jobs available. In order to get into the best college to get the best job one has to go to the best high school, which takes the best lower school, and to get into that lower school one has to get into the best preschool. This path is not an exact one but there is a quality of school that has to be kept up with. At the young age where this cycle is started the child has no say in any of it. The parents are left to put their child in the best school they can. Most parents will go threw many lengths to give their children the best possible start into the world. They will spend all of their precious money and they will use all of their contacts to get their child into the best schools they can. This however is an unfair system. Not everyone can afford the best schools because they usually end up being the most expensive. Like wise not everyone has an aunt to get them into the collage that they otherwise would not have been able to get into. This raises the question do the ends justify the means like in Machiavelli’s peace The Qualities of the Prince . The system that he suggests a prince should govern under is not the ideal system but in the end it makes the best prince. The system that someone uses to get threw schools using all available resources may not be the fairest but in the end they will get the best education possible. I believe in using all available resources to give yourself a leg up on others. Sure it is not an ideal way to run the education system. It is not fair to everyone that dose
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not have the same resources, but it is a dog eat-dog world and you have to do what you can to make it.
In order to make education less of a social and financial thing standardized testing was invented. These tests were and still are supposed to be a way that gives everyone, no matter what connections or how much money they have, the equal chance. This in theory would be perfect but it dose not work that way. The tests can only test on so much material, and who says that the material is the most important. These tests did lessen the gap between schools. Someone that went to a private school with the best teachers had just as a student that was home taught. It tested on the same material and it gave everyone the chance to show their knowledge. There are many nitpicky things that come up about the unfair ness of tests like the SAT. It is impossible to make questions that equally apply to everyone. As an example a question about sailing would be a lot harder for someone that did not live near water then it would be for someone that grew up on a sailboat. The only major problem with tests like the SATs, is that it dose not take into account the people that are smart and know just as much as the next guy but just doesn t do as well on tests. Tests only show you so much of a person.
The problem of a test is in its inability to show the person. Sure it shows how well that person knows the material he or she is tested on, but it dose not show that person. What if the student dose poorly on the SAT, but ends up having the best management skills. He won t get into the best collage and there fore the biggest companies will not look at him and he will end up getting a lesser job. It also has the opposite possibility. If someone dose amassing one these tests and gets hired by a big
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law firm but this person cannot get along with anyone, it turns out just as bad. This too can be argued by the fact that many of these business hiring these people, that do amassing on these test, are looking for they type of person that is known to test well.
There is an endless list of prows and cons for testing. Some of them are so nitpicky they are laughed at, but in the hole I believe that tests are good. They are only good for finding someone s intelligence if they are used along with other methods. There is no one way that is good for everyone. If every person was the same and knew the same things then you could fined one way to see who was smarter, but people are different. Some people excel in English and some excel in math but how do you judge who is smarter. They do not have a common area to be tested in.
The editoral by David Ignatius points out all the wrongs with today s education system, but it dose not give a realistic solution. Sure it would be nice to encourage people to go to collage just to learn more and farther their knowledge, but most students go to school now because it is the only way to keep their options in life open. I personally came to college to learn how to become an engineer. I am very interested in this field and am doing well. In the beginning of the year I started taking psychology, which I fined very interesting. I had to drop the class. In order to excel in my required core sources I needed more time and therefore had to drop psychology. This was a very hypocritical move on my part. I wanted to farther my knowledge in other subjects that interest me but I gave in to the pressures to succeed instead of learn.
School is not ideal and the education systems are not completely focused on learning, but that is the way it is now so as a student I have to deal with this and make the
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best out of what I am given. Every advantage that is possible should be taken, like when Machiavelli pointed out the methods for becoming the best prince, not the best methods for becoming a prince. They were not always the ideal way of dealing with situations but it was the most effective. Just like testing and using connections is not the best method for getting an education but they will give you the best shot at excelling at it.
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