The teachers aren’t to blame. Neither are the students. The problem is simple. Due to many standards that a “good” student must meet in order to get into a decent college, which is the whole point of high school, education is focusing more on improving test scores than actually teaching students valuable lessons.
This can easily be exemplified by any lab based science. When students are assigned a lab to complete, the teacher expects one certain result because the lab has been conducted so many times in the same exact environment and circumstances. What is the point of students doing such labs if they could have easily gained the same information from a video or slideshow? Hands on experience, one may say. But it isn’t a true experiment if we know the preferred outcome. This causes students to alter data in order to fit the “correct” result better. Sure, this method gives students a real life representation of what they read in textbooks, but this doesn’t allow them to completely understand the scientific process because they are being spoon fed such information. The reason why we have to do these labs is that we will be tested on these specific labs in tests. F For example, in Advanced Placement Biology, there is a series of labs that students must perform because the Advanced Placement test will test them on the labs. The fact of the matter is that the tests that determine whether one is “smart” or not are limiting the depth of the knowledge we can gain.
Not only do tests hinder students from gaining deeper knowledge, they also provoke cheating. Test scores have become more important than learning itself and some students will go out of their way to get the test scores that will prove their “intellect.”
All in all, the education system is doing its best to educate and motivate students to strive for a better future, but with the increasingly burdensome emphasis on test scores, students cannot gain the profound knowledge that can be used in the real world.