Ok, I realize that I have sort of been ranting throughout this entire post, but...yeah...I also realize that it may not make sense or be kind of cheesy...I apologize in advance.
I agree with what Will Richardson is saying because I truly think that these test prep classes (that haven't been changed for the longest time) are going to be preparing us for, as he put it, a world that will no longer exist. Because in our generation and the generation of our kids, there will be more problems to solve that the people of the older generation (the ones who wrote these tests) would never have thought of. Basically, it would be like teaching someone how to use a hammer to nail nails...and find out that there is a wall that needs to be painted. One wouldn't succeed, no matter how talented they are with a hammer; they need a paintbrush. A real life example right now is that many bright, young, as extremely smart students are graduating from colleges...just go home and have to live with their parents because they can't find jobs that put the subject that they've studied and majored in to good use. Mr. Richardson is right that nowadays, we can learn so much with the help of the Internet and technology; with YouTube videos and personal blogs. But if this is the case, then why do students even still need to come to school? They can just stay home and learn whatever they want to... It's true, I think, that the test scores of a district or school don't truly capture the abilities of its students because, as our teachers and parents have sort of been trying to tell us all this time, someone will never (or at least, very rarely) be good at EVERYTHING. If they're telling us this (along with all the cliché "oh, just be who you are!" "Your appearance doesn't matter, it's what's on the inside that counts!" "It doesn't matter what you got or how you did, it's the effort that counts!") then why are they still judging us by our test scores and grades? If I'm just not good at math and it doesn't click for me, and if what I want to do with my life needs only for me to know the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, then why in the world do I need to know Calculus? I don't think they understand that kids can have interests that don't require all of what they're teaching in school.
I guess teachers aren't literally restraining our creativity, but I think it is still decreasing, at least to an extent. For example, that stop motion film I posted last month? We really did present it as a grade to the teacher for the class. When we finished, I felt like we did pretty good. Boy was I surprised and disappointed when I found out that we had gotten a B on it. So, what I'm learning here is that the rubric is the most important factor of the project? I understand that the point of the rubric is to present to us the requirements for getting certain scores on this project, but no where on there was there anything about time/effort/or creativity. I think that we should be encouraged to search for different ways to present material that is interesting and worthwhile. What good is reading words off of slides and forgetting all the information the minute after the test has been taken? Exactly, there's no real point. But if we can explore these ways of doing something with the material, then there are higher chances that we'll remember more of it while we're assembling it. Creativity should be expected to spring to life during projects in which you're given free reign, but not to just slap it all onto some PowerPoint and read it all off when the time comes for you to present.
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