I have some questions for the big wigs who pour billions of dollars into advocating, legislating and implementing the sham that is high stakes test driven standardized education here in the U.S.:
Are their educational, emotional and psychological costs to the children and citizens of the U.S. who endure non-consensual learning experiences, high stakes testing environments and pressurized school climates in public schools across the country?
Think standardized high stakes test prep learning experiences are a good thing?
The United States has the highest known rates of mental illness in the industrialized world.
Mental Disorders in America
Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.1
Educators and many
psychologists have been warning policy makers to
lower class sizes, provide teachers with opportunities to personalize learning experience, use alternative assessments and increase whole child learning experiences in schools for many, many years now, but those warnings have been
ignored.
Ignoring the imaginative, psycho-emotional realms of children in our schools today in favor of high stakes corporate mechanized assembly line approaches to educational experience has numerous drawbacks including this one.
Have our schools become pressurized environments generating toxic childhood stress that can impair the development of brain circuitry resulting in smaller brains, increase levels of cortisol thereby suppressing the body's immune response and increase the likelihood of cognitive deficits and mental disorders?
Why is the U.S. population leading the world with high rates of mental illness?
Should Americans be concerned about the psycho-emotional affects of stress that occur in significant numbers of children who are compelled to endure high stakes standardized educational experiences?