I was recently at an educational exhibition, and I met a highschool senior. Our conversation started with pleasantries and then moved on to talking about schoolwork. She said that she writes poetry and is involved in various extra-curricular activities. She stated that she has high ambitions, but she worries that her average-to-low Grade Point Average (GPA) may hinder them. I assured her that things will work out and began to recount my own experiences at school. I told her that if my school had a “least likely to graduate award” I would probably have been the only contender.
Nonetheless, this situation got me thinking. The education system places too much emphasis on standardised tests and not enough on the things that actually matter. Test scores, in my opinion, do not tell you anything about a student other than the fact that he or she can recount and recall facts. This is, of course, if the student didn’t cheat on the test. Perhaps a test can show you certain things but it cannot measure drive, describe passion, calculate creativity and it most certainly cannot tell you anything about someone’s ability to succeed in life.
Then, there’s the question of the actual testing situation. Assume that student X studied and memorised everything for a big test. However, he or she had a huge fight with his or her mother in the car before getting to class. Student X forgets some of what he or she studied and gets a C. Student Y didn’t study but gets lucky and guesses most of the answers correctly. Before anyone argues about this, I have been in similar situations and students can get lucky. So, student Y gets a B. Both students took the same exam, yet one got a C and the other got a B. For those who need something more concrete I would like to make two points. First, I graduated at the bottom of my high school class but now run circles around those “high achievers”. Secondly, in 2001, Brookings Institution, an American centrist think tank conducted a study, which concluded that “50 per cent to 80 per cent year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning”. It is necessary to do well in some tests, but it is not definite.
This argument goes deeper than these words, so I conclude by saying exactly what I told the girl at the college fair. The next time someone tries to tell you that calculus and test scores will determine your professional and personal future, please refer them to me.
— The reader is an Emirati event coordinator based in Dubai