Is all learning and testing just a conspiracy to manipulate us?
Teachers test to get some kind of idea about what a student does and doesn't know. A teacher, if left to her own devices, then develops a plan to further the students education by building on what the student does know and by further explaining and developing what he doesn't yet fully understand. That is how it is supposed to work and it does work if you are an A list actor in a Hollywood teen struggle movie [emphasis added].
BUT . . .
In the real world, testing is a way to make Pearson rich, fire/ . . .
Pearson?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_Education -- Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman, Scott Foresman, and others. Pearson is part of Pearson plc, which formerly owned the Financial Times. It claims to have been formed in 1840, with the current incarnation of the company created when Pearson plc purchased the education division of Simon & Schuster (including Prentice Hall and Allyn & Bacon) from Viacom and merged it with its own education division, Addison-Wesley Longman, to form Pearson Education. Pearson Education was rebranded to Pearson in 2011 and split into an International and a North American division.
Although Pearson generates approximately 60 percent of its sales in North America, it operates in more than 70 countries. Pearson International is headquartered in London, and maintains offices . . .
But what was testing prior to 1840 (before Pearson)? Was Pearson created as a front for the Freemasons? the Illuminati? the Rothschilds? What's the Ultimate Source of all this shit?
. . . testing is a way to make Pearson rich, fire/demote teachers, and have the state or a private education company take over a public school.
"a way" to make this happen? Whose way? Who or What is guiding this process? Who is plotting to fire and demote which teachers? or have something "take over" what?
There is no way to test this, to distinguish it from paranoia. It's possible that everyone posting on this website is secretly conspiring to put Trump in the White House again in '24, and this website is their secret way of making this happen, and I'm the only one here who's not in the conspiracy, and everyone denying it is just lying.
And even if it's true that some conspirators secretly do testing for the above sinister purposes, that doesn't prevent others from trying to improve the testing to make it serve the "plan to further the students education by building on what the student does know . . . etc. . . . how it is supposed to work" etc. So regardless of the conspiracy by some, it's still the case that the correct solution is to improve and increase the tests (i.e., the good (improved) tests which legitimately promote learning).
It is a way to beat students into submission through a regimen of . . .
Learning does mean a certain amount of "submission" to the truth, to reality, to facts, to correct answers on tests or correct answers to problems or questions arising from the real world one is trying to learn. A student can feel intimidated by this, and maybe should be. There should be such a feeling of intimidation, and then hopefully an attitude of facing it realistically and trying to overcome it or even take power over it ("master the subject matter") in a kind of contest between the student and the subject matter in which the student rises up and conquers the subject matter.
So how do we know if the "submission" is to the truth, i.e., to the real world we want to learn, or to the Conspirators who founded Pearson in 1840 and have been brainwashing all of us and planting all these lies about evolution and climate change and moon landings etc. into our minds?
Why not TEACH TO THE TEST, as long as it's a good test?
. . . through a regimen of teaching the test instead of freeing young minds through teaching to the student.
But maybe learning is only partly a "freeing" of the mind, while also partly a FORCING it to take in the real-world stuff to be learned.
And TEACHING THE TEST (or TO the test) is the same as freeing the minds (and also forcing them) to learn, if it's a good test. There's nothing wrong with "teaching to the test" as long as it's a good test, forcing the student to learn the subject matter in order to perform well on the test. If the test accomplishes this, then it's a good test, and teaching to such a test is essentially the same as teaching the subject matter to the student, as it should be taught. -- unless everything we're taught is really just lies planted in us by the Pearson founders, who probably trace back to whoever it was who abducted Constantine (and replaced him with a duplicate) and launched the Council of Nicea's Reign of Terror.
It doesn't really matter what the test says or if the questions are bias since even a perfectly balanced test will be weaponized against actually teaching children to think for themselves.
"weaponized" by whom?
E.g., does it "really matter" if Muslim children in a Madrasa are tested on their knowledge of the Koran? If instead their schools and tests were abolished, would those children then learn more because then they could "think for themselves" rather than memorizing verses? Aren't the children still learning, and mentally improving or acquiring more knowledge, while also the methods could be improved so that the learning is made still better, with better testing? and maybe expanding the subject matter? Why doesn't it "matter" if tests are made better?
But "even a perfectly balanced test" makes no difference, because no matter how good the test is it can only become a still better weapon to thwart learning? That means nothing can ever be made better, because anything we might do is just another conspiracy and manipulation of us to thwart us and beat us down, because the entire world is rigged by some Establishment to destroy us no matter what anyone does to try to throw off the yoke.
If it's true that "even a perfectly balanced test will be weaponized against" us no matter what, then nothing matters, nothing can ever be fixed, nothing ever learned or improved or overcome or made right. Even if you post in this message board it's just another manipulation of you by those rigging the system against us, to deceive you into thinking you have a voice and an independent mind, when all you're really doing is reciting back what the Pearson Conspirators programmed into you.