It’s not about SAT scores. It’s about the ability to solve deeply important real world problems & positively influencing others.
“We try to convince them it about perfect grades & high test scores.
It’s really about the ability to solve important problems & influence others.
It’s about gaining access to their purpose through deep meaningful work.
The traditional model is as broken as the world is.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Go to school, take all the AP classes you can, make perfect grades, and score in the 1% of standardized test scores.
Do this so you can go to a college, make good grades, and get a good job.
In 2024 we legitimately still try to convince our kids that “this is the way”.
And it’s not the way.
And for those who are interpreting my words as “school and making good grades is unimportant” that is not what I am saying.
I may look at school a little bit differently than you, but that’s okay.
I believe kids should work hard in school so they can learn useful information that can be applied to the real world, and I also believe that GPA’s and what college you go to have little to do with real world success. Multiple things can be true at once.
But still in America, every day we are tying our kids’ identities to subjective measurements they receive in the school hall and beyond. Endless tutoring, Standardized Test Prep, it never ends.
Kids have an immense amount of pressure associated with regurgitating information onto a scantron (Do they even use those anymore?) so they can get a “score” and then forget most of the information to make room for more information to get another “score”.
Is this this practical, applicable, creative thinking-based education? Or is this schooling?
Again, I’m all for education, but time bound, in the box, group think based information regurgitation?
Is this stuff really going to help our kids find access to their passions?
Is this going to help them find meaning in their own lives?
Is following the same path that “society” says we should follow going to help them gain access to their personal purpose in life?
We’ve been using the same model for over a century with little evolvement, yet the world is evolving at a pace that we don’t have the ability to fully comprehend.
Where does that make any sense?
If the traditional model is “the way”, why do we have masses of kids who are book smart as whips, but lack confident identities and clear direction to act on their deep purpose in life?
It’s a bit more complex than judging them off an SAT score.
