The Future

the Wall Street Journal, David Skeel mentions a college student who tries attending West Point. “Earlier this month, the cadet took to the Huffington Post to announce his resignation from the military academy and attack it for "unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the nonreligious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation" (Skeel, “Military”). The college student, Blake Page, found himself stuck in a situation in which his spiritual abilities were required. All privates should be entitled to fair treatment regardless of their religious beliefs. A spectrum of beliefs is necessary for good judgement. Albert Einstein is another appropriate example. The boy stood out from all the others, not speaking until the age of three and failing the majority of his schoolwork. Einstein points out, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” (Good). Einstein was criticized and believed to be dumb because he did not learn the same way as everyone else, but maybe it was Einstein who was teaching everyone around him and they were just too close-minded to understand his gift. Einstein ended up one of the smartest men to walk the Earth because he decided to live in a way that allowed him to grow. The present society is narrowing the ways in which a person can become successful, therefore prohibiting the ‘Einsteins’ of the future to reach their full potential. Education systems advocate this ‘one-way’ theory. All students in the state of Colorado enrolled in public schools take the Colorado State Assessment Program (CSAP, also known as TCAP for the past year) annually. The TCAP website states it’s goals, “The Colorado Academic Standards (CAS) are the expectations of what students need to know and be able to do at the end of each grade. They also stand as the values and content organizers of what Colorado sees as the future skills and essential knowledge for our next generation to be more successful” (“Factsheets”). The standards of the state decide how much every student should know by the end of each year in school. While this goal may be intended to help students, educators fail to realize that these ‘standards’ do not benefit or show the value of every child. What about the students that learn differently? No common assessment program can decide the path for every child because every child is different. These standards are setting up the future generations to only know success in certain ways. With the guidelines in place, there will not be an alternate option for the people who think differently. The individual will be wiped out and change will halt.