Biggest Challenge in Education Today Essay

Total Length: 784 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 2

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54) the student want to know what they will need to know for the test and this paradigm is frustrating because it support subsistence learning, i.e. learning just what you need to know and no more. Subsistence learning does not support or foster independent though and educators answering the questions the student ask with formal preparation material, especially very specialized material would seem to be ethically murky and frustrate creativity and independent learning. As Gallagher stresses in a work about what she terms readicide, where students and individuals are not out seeking new and novel ideas and are in fact not likely to read independently at all the problem is that the education system, "teaching to the test" is not responding to the need for individuals to develop independent thought (2010, p. 36). Though there are likely hundreds of other contributing factors as to why students today are just simply not reading independently, in part the delivery of instant entertainment and the information explosion of the internet, offering students countless other non-reading materials to focus all their free time on. The problem is still evident as is the lessoning observable qualities of independent thought and development in many people.
To some degree the exceptions are now given serious highlights as something advanced and amazing and yet it was not long ago that intelligence was much more closely aligned to innovative thinking. Now it seems we can what we want everyone to know and then they do not seek to know more, i.e. subsistence education. Teaching to the test is an example of how we use our limited time in the classroom to make the whole look better at the expense of the student. What really needs to happen is for our curriculum to align more with materials for testing in a way that makes the presentation creative and engaging and a reassertion of the value of independent though needs to be demanded in the classroom.

Resources

Gallagher, K. (2010). Reversing Readicide. Educational Leadership, 67(6), 36-41. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Longo, C. (2010). Fostering Creativity or Teaching to the Test? Implications of State Testing on the Delivery of Science Instruction. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies,….....

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