Social Media In Education

In the real world, bosses don’t know the answers. They have ideas, they have projections, but they don’t know for sure. So, instead of training employees to give specific answers, they teach employees have to solve problems. Problem is, young employees might have no idea how to handle this.

Why? Because they’re used to being taught to excel on standardized tests. No discovery here, just multiple choice questions with straight-forward answers. This works in some disciplines–anything involving math, usually–but not in all. They don’t measure innovation, they don’t measure musical aptitude and they don’t measure writing skills.

So what do standardized tests measure? They measure a student’s ability to take standardized tests, nothing more. No way to determine if the student might be a great speaker, a superb manager or even a theorist who might push the boundaries beyond what we currently know about physics.

There’s plenty of people in my workplace that are good at taking tests. They study hard, they show up on time and they do the right things at the right time, every single time. What happens when something is changed, a crisis happens or life just throw you a curveball? They freeze. They clam up. They offer up nothing but nonsense. These people suck. These people waste everyone’s time.

Students (later, employees) don’t need rote memorization anymore. We don’t need to know all the answers beforehand. The world now has knowledge everywhere. Students need to learn how to solve problems, how to figure things out and how to improve.

Notice how many of the most successful people are the ones who left school early? Who achieved great success in areas unrelated to rote memorization?

I’ll leave you with one last question: do YOU think students are better off now than they were even 10, 20 years ago? I do not.