Whenever people realize that I am a junior in high school the discussion always turns to college. Where are you going to apply? Have you visited anywhere? Do you know what you want to study? What were your ACT and SAT scores? etc. Those are probably the four most common questions I get, and of the four, only one of them seems really exciting to me right now. Throughout grade school, junior high, and high school all of my classes have been chosen for me (except electives once I got to high school). It seems to me that college is my first chance to choose to study subjects that interest me and that I am passionate about. I understand that in order to find my passion I first have to get a general idea of potential options, and that's why my classes are very similar to most other juniors' in the country. This brings me to a point I want to make about Doc Oc's most recent post How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Screw Up a School? He opens it by talking about a lady named Diane Ravitch. According to Doc Oc, Ravitch used to support standardized testing, but is now against it because she doesn't like the idea of a "one-size-fits-all test."
As much as I hated taking the ACT and will hate taking the SAT, I think that they are necessary. It's clear that there isn't a "one-size-fits-all test" but there needs to be some level of comparison to differentiate between students applying to colleges. I'm not saying it's fair to judge an AP Art student based on an SAT math score, but I believe that standardized tests are necessary and do a pretty accurate job in demonstrating potential students capabilities.
Even though standardized test and a typical grade school curriculum don't encourage that "out of the box" thinking that Ravitch is pushing for, they both provide an ample background for a student to find out what he or she wants to focus on. Also, I think it is necessary that the standard classes persist through high school. For example, in fourth grade the one class I hated more than anything was science. Now as a junior, science is one of the subjects I am most interested in. Continued exposure has allowed me to come to that realization.
