Dazibao 3 (Anti-test)

Imagine with me for a moment, a corporation. Let's call them Widgets Inc. White Collar John walks into Widget Inc. for his first day on the job as, let's say, an engineer. He's expecting to spend his day designing widgets and widget-related items, working out problems with widgets, and so on. When he shows up to work, his boss comes by and dumps a bunch of scantron multiple choice tests on his desk and tells him to spend the next four years filling them in. Meanwhile, Widgets Inc. goes out of business because all of its employees are wasting time filling in tests instead of designing widgets to be sold.
High school is similarly useless, the difference being that it's government funded, so it won't go out of business until the state collapses, at which point inefficient education policies will be the least of our worries. And education shouldn't be a for-profit venture anyway, but the point here isn't that the school system should be turning a profit, but rather that the school system should do something.
One of the things the school system claims to achieve is to prepare students for real life. I think I've proven above that school and real life don't have much in common. I suggest we reform school so that it does. Specifically, in real life, the goal is always to create a product or provide a service. Students should also seek to create a product or provide a service. Being that these will be created/provided by students and not professionals, these can be expected to be of much lower quality, of course, but it will still act as a practice run for reality.
Another supposed objective of the school system is to teach students valuable skills. In this it also fails, which is why a large percentage of high school students entering college require remedial courses in math and science. Something that educational professionals have recently caught onto, however, is that hands on learning is more effective than classroom lectures. Conveniently, the system I proposed above is very hands on.
Teachers, then, would truly be teacher, not wardens. Their job would be to teach students how to do things, not pass tests. A lot of the details would be left to the discretion of the students, the only real requirement of any given assignment being to demonstrate the ability to apply certain skills by giving the finished product certain features, similar to real life where the only real requirement is to satisfy the demands of a customer. The details don't matter to the customer and they shouldn't matter to the teacher, either. The student would then be free to do whatever he wished with the finished product, whether that product be a literal material good, the results of an experiment, a piece of writing, or what-have-you. The student would willingly come to classes to learn how to do these things, because the student would have a project to complete, which is much more compelling than the threat of a test. It give one and immediate sense of purpose and an immediate sense of satisfaction upon its completion.
Teachers would also likely have a good deal more job satisfaction. Their students in general would have much more respect for them because the knowledge they are imparting has clear and immediate use. Students and teachers alike would also have more flexible schedules. In a system like this there is no need to have set class periods. You see, the day is already split up into twenty-four units of time known as "hours," which are not only more numerous and thus more flexible than the seven periods a day in High Schools, but which can also be broken up into even smaller units for even greater flexibility. Universities figured this out, and I don't see why High Schools should be different.
This would also hypothetically give teachers something to compete for; students. Teachers who are available more often and who are helpful and knowledgeable in their subjects will get more students, which would hypothetically translate directly into more money. Teachers may not find the concept of having to compete with other teachers appealing, but considering that right now you're paid a pittance to herd cats who make fun of you behind your back, I honestly think that any job that actually makes use of your ability and desire to teach would be an improvement.

-Ashen, educationliberationfront@gmail.com