The public school system revolves around testing. But you have to question if this approach -- of forcing kids to take exams -- even logical or reasonable. Having taken numerous exams in my life, I've found that they work against human-nature. In that, people tend to function best in relaxed, low-pressure situations. Yet, exams place young people (children and teenagers) in extremely high-pressure situations, where the outcome of two hours has severe implications upon the rest of their lives? I mean, exam conditions are like being in a pressure cooker. You can't talk, you can't confer, and you can't listen to music... You're given a time-limit, with adults stalking around you, making sure you don't 'cheat'. I mean, how is that atmosphere conducive to expression, free-thinking and articulation? Some will argue that if you study then you will perform better in exams, but what if learning from books and memorizing those books is not your strong suit? Yes, it is vital to learn in classes in order to perform well in exams, but what if the high-pressure situation causes you to panic, to forget. or just cease functioning as confidently as you would do in classes?
As such, I think that exams are designed for a certain type of mind; a rigid, disciplined mind, which is capable of memorizing information and regurgitating that information effectively, and how many teenagers have a mind like that? Some people develop this kind of mentality later in life, but by then, its too late to pursue education due real world responsibilities not to mention adult education is too expensive to pursue. The mind of a teenager is preoccupied with many thoughts and feelings, therefore I think that teenage years are hardly the best time to sit them down in an awful, timed, static environment, and expect to get the best from them, and furthermore, base their intellectual ability, upon those two or so hours? As a teenager, I wasn't focused upon education because I was too busy being a teenager. But if you placed those same exams in front of me now, gave me time to learn the material, and allowed me to do them in my own time, under favorable conditions, they wouldn't even present the slightest challenge.
The overarching point is that people learn in many different ways, and vitality - at different rates. Therefore, in considering this, how reasonable & logical is it, to test everyone under the same conditions?
