Essay Sample on Education Standards

Are standards really improving the education system? In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, they clearly were not. This is seen through character Clarisse McClellan, a seventeen-year-old outcast with her own opinions on the school system in Bradbury’s dystopian society. Although education standards are beneficial in that they create goals for scholars, standards fail to provide students with meaningful knowledge since teachers only teach to the test, and all students cannot learn information in the same standard way.

To begin, education loses its value when teachers only focus on standards that are tested. As author Tsin Yen Koh writes, “too high an emphasis on standards and high-stakes testing could lead to a narrowing of the school curriculum and the cultivation of practices such as teaching to the test” (Koh 1). Teachers focus on just what is on the exam. A student’s whole person is not developed, and they don’t gain any life skills along with learning the material. Further stated, “The purpose of education is not to win a global race in mathematics and technology. Education is designed to enable every child to achieve his or her full potential as an adult human being” (Kramer and Vance 2). Education is to teach the individual person to become better in all aspects of life. Just focusing on standards takes away many of the important teachings and ideas of what education can mean. Also, education isn’t just core studies. “Society needs a broad range of skills and capabilities, and education should not be about meeting standards, but rather should be about maximizing the potential of every person” (Kramer and Vance 2). All people are good at different tasks, and not necessarily the same. Schools should help kids find what they enjoy and succeed in, not just what they must know because of standards. Finally, when teachers do have to teach to the text, “’[students] never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four or more hours’” (Bradbury 27). There isn’t enough time spent on making sure students understand the material. With education standards, a lot of valuable teaching is lost both in giving and receiving because teachers only have time to ‘teach to the test.’

On the other hand, supporters of education standards argue that they create the same goals for all students. “In a world of global competition, every child in every school deserves a chance to succeed; that means that every child must be held to the same national standard as every other child” (George and McMahon 3). This is somewhat a good point, but all students need different things to succeed. They are all not exact copies that can be duplicated with a set of standards. The same thing isn’t going to work for everyone. Furthermore, competition can be good, but with standards students would compete to an unhealthy amount, just learning to be better than others. That is why when critics argue that “standards would make academic success a universal goal in America rather than a state-by-state competition against the rest of the world” (George & McMahon 3), it is invalid. Furthermore, supporters argue that “[w]ithout a set of high national standards, local school boards can--and, demonstrably, will--fall into a pattern of mediocrity, a pattern that will, sooner than later, be reflected in the unsuccessful performance of the United States in an increasingly competitive world” (George and McMahon 3). In reality, school boards can set standards low or high, but it is up to the individual student how they choose to perform in the classroom. It is not standards that make a student successful or unsuccessful, but their own will and drive to learn. Most importantly, “People are not standard, like parts off an assembly line, and education should not be revamped to treat them as if they were” (Kramer and Vance 2). Not everyone fits into society’s mold of school smart, but everyone does have something they are good at. Standards don’t and can’t measure these other things. They are not a true measure or tool for success in the education system.

Finally, standards teach information in the same way for everyone, even though all students learn differently. “Common Core is a first step toward the development of a national curriculum, which would allow the federal government too much control over curriculum and teaching methods” (Koh 1). Standards should not control education because each school and teacher know what's best for their students. Standards enforce learning material the same exact way. And “[w]ith standards, teachers must teach the same exact way. This limits students' creativity and outside of the box thinking. It also prevents teachers from doing what they know is best for their students. This is due to the fact that “standards will discourage innovation and initiative at the state and school levels and will inhibit teachers from tailoring curricula and lesson plans to the needs and circumstances of their students” (Koh 1). Furthermore, the standard education system tells students what to do and learn and not why they do it. Bradbury writes, “‘She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why’” (Bradbury 57). And “‘It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not’” (Bradbury 27). Standards make out like information is vital to our success in the real world when most of us will never use the majority of things we learned in school, if we were able to learn it in the way it had to be taught.

Education standards fail to provide students with meaningful knowledge, even if they create goals for scholars. Teachers only teach to the test, and all students cannot learn information in the same standard factory-like way. Because of this, education has lost its value in the way material is presented and learned. As Bradbury predicted many years ago and as we see today, education standards have failed students in teaching them valuable knowledge. If the school system doesn’t change its historical practice of teaching standards in a standard way, students everywhere will end up in their own dystopian society.