Speech Proposal

Standardized testing has been used to measure a student's intellectual ability for many years now. It has gotten to the point now that students just worry about what will be on the test. It does not matter if one can actually retain the information, or that a student is actually enjoying learning new material. As long as it is not in the test, it is not of importance. Albert Einstein was once quoted for saying "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." I will focus on the fact that there are many other ways to judge if a student is learning the material besides using the exact same test for every student. My rationale for choosing this topic is that I think it is relevant in all of our lives currently. We spend so much time stressing about what will be on a test that we don't spend any time focusing on learning everything else. In a more personal example, my stepbrother is currently in 8th grade. At parent teacher conferences this past week, his teacher told my stepmom that "He is the best historian in the class." My stepmom then pointed out that he was receiving a B- in the class and the teacher went on to explain that he just was not doing well on the tests. There has to be a different way for those students to showcase what they've learned. I have found many scholarly articles on this topic that I intend to use for my speech. It will also help that these articles show both points of view.