As a society, why do we always seem to gauge a person on their proficiency with the written word, through reports and essays? Adults are required to give multipage reports of themselves to even get someone to consider them for a job.
College undergrads must write a several hundred page thesis in order to prove that they understand a certain topic. Knowledge is not proven by an ability to write down information from other sources, the magic occurs when the ideas are used to synthesize new ones. That is not something that is recorded on paper, but merely the aftermath. I believe that in order for an accurate assessment to be made of an individual's proficiency, that we must depart from the ways of old (because papers have been written by college students for hundreds of years). I think that there are many individuals who are very successful, but would seem rather dull and silly if they were to try and show their genius on a sheet of paper. Success isn't something that someone can find on a sheet of paper. It is an intrinsic quality (along with genius) and if you try to measure of quantify it, we will end up with a very broken system of education and assessment of education. One very much like we have today.
So in closing. Let's find a way to teach kids better, and also a better way to make entirely certain that they have learned. I believe the first step to an educational utopia is personalization on the student's behalf. We shouldn't focus on things the student already knows and things which come easy to the student, but the things which don't. And to accomplish that goal, we need to depart from the current methods of education and testing. Writing papers needs to be saved for those points in time when giving an oral presentation or doing real world examples simply doesn't make sense.
Our educational system is a broken mess.
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