Stress Testing: Memorization has replaced genuine education

Springtime can easily be labeled the most chaotic time of the year for college students. After speaking with just a few other students, it seems as if the stress of upcoming exams is a recurring subject in nearly all conversations.

It’s the time of year when people begin convincing themselves grades don’t matter on a larger scale and an average grade will still get the degree. These conversations spark the question: does an overload of academic work at the end of the school year discourage college, or any, students from reaching their full potential in the classroom?

Proper time management and responsibility are attributes of “the good student” are expected to serve as solutions for academic burn-out, but it’s still important to question the efficiency of the current education system.

Finals usually make up a reasonable percentage of a student’s final class grade, making preparation an absolute necessity if the student is looking for a proficient mark on their transcript. Tests are primarily distributed in paper format or the lockdown browser and ask a series of questions which pertains to class content provided throughout the semester unless the test is not cumulative.

Either way, the expectation for students to relearn large amounts of class material for multiple classes puts them in the position to only memorize information for the short-term rather than gain a long-term understanding of it. Furthermore, the attention to these facts does not imply testing isn’t necessary, but the desire for a good grade on one test often exceeds the individual’s desire to apply classroom knowledge in real-world situations. 

There are hundreds of research articles and arguments that advocate for change in the American education system. The requirements for testing seem to be one of the easier issues to fix because it only requires redistribution of workloads in the classroom.

It would not necessarily mean the removal of testing completely either, as challenges are important to teach students that meeting deadlines and distributing information is a crucial skill in real-world situations and workplaces. Unfortunately, learning the right methods to pass classes is becoming far more common than learning for the sake of preparing for a professional career path.