Radicals. Exponents. X. Y. Equation. Simplify. These phrases were going through my mind as I tried to stay awake in Algebra II. Granted, I had only slept three hours the previous night. I finally woke up when my teacher said something that caught my attention. She had just passed out our homework. She said, “OK students, do these problems so you can do well on the test.”

This is a pretty run-of-the-mill routine for a teacher to follow, passing out a few worksheets at the end of the lesson and instructing the students to do them before the next class. However, what struck me in this instance was the latter half of her statement. She told us to do the assignment simply so that we could do well on the exam. There was no mention of learning in this scenario. She told us that the sole goal was to get an A on the exam.

And this scenario isn’t specific to math classes. Unfortunately, our high school education has become more test-based rather than long-term learning-based. Like many other students at CHS, I cram the day before the test, take the test, and then the majority of the information gets pushed to the back of my head, where I ultimately forget about it. By following this routine, I learn nothing in the long run. I study for the test, and then afterward, the information I spent grueling hours memorizing has no use to me whatsoever.

With this emphasis on taking tests, students are not learning anything and are more stressed than ever. We take so many tests that we don’t even have time to retain the information. Students are memorizing information, not learning information.

Learning should be based on observation and real-life application. In real life, our behavior and mind are far more complex than the textbook allows us to believe. We shouldn’t be memorizing what x equals when y is 500 because in the end what use is this to us? The test-based system placed in our school is not working with the dynamics of the normal student. And not only has this system caused us to have absolutely no long-term learning, it also has caused us to lose motivation to learn. Nowadays, students don’t care if they understand the information; they care if there is an A on the top of the paper.

According to Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the key to performance and happiness—at school, work or home—is the important human need to have control of our own lives, to learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world, not material rewards like money. In school, our material gain is grades. Good grades make us happy; however, we are not motivated to do more because of the satisfaction we get from the grade. The failure of our testing system correlates with Pink’s idea because students do not have a desire to learn most of the material taught to them and, therefore, are not successful in learning it.

A couple of years ago, CHS implemented the two nine-week periods in a semester system. Before the school had a system where three six-week periods would make up the semester. This previous system was a lot more beneficial to every student, because even if a student did not do as well as hoped in the first grading period, he still had 12 weeks to make up for it. The amount of pressure in this system was much lower than today’s system and would work much better with students today.

I advise we create a system that has fewer tests per quarter, but the tests would not be weighted as huge amounts of our grade. Therefore, the students’ grades will not solely represent if they can memorize information for a short period of time, but rather if they actually understand the material taught. Currently, numerous classes run on a 90/10 grading system. I propose we remove the separation between formative and summative grades. Although school officials tell us this system prepares a student for college, it does not allow the time or the resources to actually learn the information correctly. Not only will fewer tests relieve pressure on the students, but both the teacher and the students will also have more time to comprehend information. If this new system based on long-term memory and real-life explanation is set in place, students will be held accountable for their own mistakes. We wouldn’t be able to blame the teacher for not explaining the topics well or the lack of time.  If the current system’s focus on short-term memory continues, society will not be able to advance as much due to the lack of deep thought. We must continue to recognize the importance of long-term learning in our society and fight to make it part of our school curriculum.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Manahil Nadeem at [email protected].