My Opinion of Today’s Education

　　I think one of the main problems with today’s education is that too much emphasis is placed on test scores. It has become the most important criterion for college enrollment. A student, however creative and intelligent, will not be admitted into a college if his total scores are just one point less than required. It is also one of the crucial factors either in job assignment or in employment competitions.

　　The competition for high scores among students becomes intense. Students find themselves concentrating more on strategies to achieve high scores than on acquiring knowledge. They will play truant of some subsidiary course, skip over the substance which will not be tested on, even pump teachers for hints on upcoming exams. Teachers are apt to give their students high scores. As their job is judged mainly by the students’ performance in terms of scores, some teachers tend to set easy papers to test their students on or narrow down the scope of the exam. Some teachers even leak “accidentally” the exam questions or lower their criterion of scoring.

　　As a result, the competition for high scores becomes so intense that it actually defeats academic goals of education.