All tests should be open book. It’s not like your future boss is going to say, “I need those tax returns finished by noon, but don’t look at any of the financial statements. Do it all from memory.”
Exactly! You should be tested on application of a concept not memory
I’ve told this story before but idc I’m doing it again.
My dad once taught some class at a conference. He gave everyone a worksheet and after watching them flounder for a few minutes on their own he said, “You guys know you can talk to each other and work together, right?” These were industry professionals who suddenly reverted back to that must-not-collaborate mentality when put in a classroom setting.
school fucks us up soo bad
It becomes more and more obvious every year that public school as it exists was designed to prepare people to enter the factory system in the 1930s.
In case anyone didn’t know, the above is literally true. The modern public school system was designed a little over a hundred years ago by captains of industry to train people to do the dehumanizing labor needed on assembly lines.
Human beings crave meaningful work that makes them feel accomplished and resourceful. Humans like to feel like they’re part of a community, and see the results of a job well done. These desires are incompatible with industrial and post-industrial economies, so people have to be brought up in a system that crushes as much of this desire as possible and convinces them that any remaining scrap of yearning for dignified labor is not worth acknowledging or pursuing.
Class periods that aren’t long enough to devote serious thought to a subject; the bells that tell you when it’s time to eat, regardless of when you’re actually hungry; the alienating tedium of standardized testing; these things didn’t develop organically. They were designed by the people who stood to derive the greatest benefit from them.
“The Rise of Standardized Educational Testing in the U.S.: A Bibliographic Overview,” Torin Monahan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1998)
“Standardized Testing: Fair or Not?” Dr. John Poulsen & Kurtis Hewson, University of Lethbridge
