The Standardized Test Generation Goes to University

I was listening to panelists on CBC radio last week discussing the current state of the Canadian student. University professors were expressing frustration at the lack of thinking abilities of today's students.  Where in previous generations students were activists wanting to drive change in their communities, current students display a marked lack of interest in political events and community building.  They do not even seem to have a desire to engage in debate and discussion of ideas.  Part of this may be the crotchety  "things aren't what they used to be sentiment"  but I have a strong suspicion that something greater is at play: the standardized test generation has arrived at university.

Ten years ago a change happened in our education system. Teachers by and large lost control of our classrooms and top down direction of what and how to teach became the norm.  We were given specific texts that we had to use and many learning activities that we used to engage in were dropped. Specific curriculum was developed and teachers became obliged to teach to that curriculum and in ways specified by the decision makers.  This required us to drop certain parts of our programs including current events.  There was no longer time to include them in our units of study.  When elections happened, for example, I was no longer able to cover them, because government is a grade 5 unit of study and in grade 6 we learn about First Nation's and Explorers.  What was taken away from classrooms was the flexibility to respond to events as they were happening.   Once the Fraser Institute began publishing test results and ranking schools the pressure was on.  Teachers in my school became stressed, angry and frustrated and many tears were shed as we struggled to obtain good test scores, even though we questioned the value of those scores.  Some of the in-servicing we received to improve our teaching skills was useful, but I don't think it made up for the loss of  developing informed citizens. There may have been a major event happening, but we had no time to read about it and discuss it because our long-term plan required us to be reading certain genres of books and texts.  I no longer taught about the Olympics when they happened, for example, nor topical social justice and political issues.   Our only social justice topic became those in the Nelson readers. So now these students have arrived at university and they are uninterested in topical issues.  I find this very interesting and somewhat disturbing.

This is opinion - I have no research to validate my suspicions. I could be wrong, but my gut instinct says I'm not far off the mark.