Let Teenagers Try Adulthood Analysis

Schooling has a lot of problems that need a lot of solutions. Many of these problems stem from the fact that the American school system is notorious for wasting the time of students and teachers. Students rarely get the chances to learn and experience topics that not only interest them but are also topics that have the potential for being important in their future careers. Time is also wasted during standardized tests that do not give American students an accurate representation of their intelligence compared to the intelligence of others worldwide.

Leon Botstein, the President of the Bard College, deals with students every day. In his piece Let Teenagers Try Adulthood he goes through a list of several of the problems in high schools and follows that with a list of possible solutions. One of the main problems that Botstein finds is that students entering his university are rarely prepared. And that

For each of these twelve years I, along with the rest of the nation, have been forced to waste several hours taking standardized tests that make a teacher, a school, or a school district look good. Never have these standardized tests benefit me. The scores received by the students do not reflect where America lies on the education scale worldwide if it did the scores would be lower.

There are very few solutions for standardized testing because I understand that it is very important to see how students rank on school, state, national, and global levels. It is the scores themselves that I have the biggest problem with. As a country that puts more and more money into education and the tests every year, the scores should be reflective of that. While the scores show that Americans are excelling when the scores are compared to those of other nations, it is obvious that there are completely different scales, and American is usually on the lower