The Flip-Side of Standard Negative Impacts of the Standardized Testing

The Flip-side of Standard – Negative Impacts of the Standardized Testing
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September 15, 2016
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The Flip-side of Standardized Testing
Even during the ancient times, honor, respect, fame, and wealth can be acquired through one’s actions and decisions. The way a person think, act, and respond to society’s pressures can determine whether he/she would succeed in life or not. As a process, one can think of this as something inherent and continuous beginning from childhood until the adult stage. As adults teach the younger generation on what’s and how’s of life, their children also learn from their older models how to cope with certain societal pressures. However, this process acquiring knowledge does not come without a way of measuring, how much an individual has grown and learned. Thus, a system of standardized measurement was constructed. During the ancient times, this system of measurement comes in different types and scope. Many individuals who are considered to be an artisan in one field might not know anything about the other, and that is perfectly fine. Take for example these giants from the Classical period: Mozart and Macchiavelli. Both are known to be geniuses in their trades – Mozart for music and Machiavelli for politics – but both of them also doesn’t have any knowledge (or at least, very little) on the other. Still, they are considered to be an immovable and highly appreciated pillars in the world today. However, as societies came to be more organized and bureaucratic, a need for an “easier” and more convenient way of measuring things have to be created – thus the inception of the Standardized testing system. Gone are the days when anyone can just delve for their specific passions, become lost in what they want to do, and practice a particular trade from the get-go until they grow old in their lives. In this contemporary society, an individual is forced to learn everything and be measured based on a standard, unilateral, and highly constricting method of measuring one’s knowledge - a standard level of measurement that forces an individual to know everything and anything that can be learned from this world. As Foucault have written in his article Discipline and Punish, this is society’s way of creating “docile bodies” – Individuals reared and designed to fit and follow the social structure and its needs for the rest of their lives. From a wider perspective, this is good news. Society now has designed a new set of individuals who will fuel its structure and inner workings. People would now be flexible for any work that is demanded by the market (even if they are not the kind of work which is related to their passion and education). Though, as said earlier, it is not the same case from the individual perspective. Forcing a standardized set of testing is like making a goldfish, not only climb a tree but also 'like' the act of doing so. Thus, an artist this day, despite his inclination in ar...