What do you think is one of the biggest flaws in the American education system?

“In my opinion I think that [the American education system] stresses [students] out way too much because a lot of the time [teachers] put way too much emphasis on tests and stuff and not, like, actually understanding the topic and learning. It’s more about just cramming for the tests and not actually retaining any of the information that could actually help us in the future. A lot of times I’ve had a test over the chapter of a book or something like that, and instead of me focusing on learning from it, I just memorize certain pieces of information and just cram it all in my head the night before instead of actually learning from it. None of us [students] get any g–d— sleep. I stay up till 3:00 a.m. every night. It causes a lot of stress because of how much emphasis the school puts on our future. They say that one wrong move can totally crash it all, so there is a lot that’s riding on our success. In actuality it’s not that deep and it’s not that stressful, but it just adds so much stress because of how over-important [teachers] make [our work] seem. I think it would be helpful to change the way standardized tests are given and make standardized tests not the only way to get into a good college. We should decrease the importance of tests. It’s not encouraging when we are told that our entire future is riding on this test.”

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