The Contents of Today's Curriculum

While trying to research articles to correspond with the text, “teach for the test” is one common phrase that continues to make an appearance. It appears as though it is a vicious cycle- teachers strive for their students to be the best (or have the top grades), but being the best is only recognized if certain material is taught and not necessarily easily transfered education into real life for students, but aren’t we supposed to have our students best interest at heart, etc etc.

So where does this problem stem from? Do school boards understand the pressure teachers and students are faced with when it comes to testing and curriculum contents in education today? Do they realize the difficulties students are having in translating this information into the real world? Do we need to revise our curriculum into one which could be more useful for students? What is the purpose of an "education" if it cannot be used in the outside world? To me, this seems like an issue of what is the educational value of material being taught? And what is more important, the quantity of material vs the quality. Students are beginning to recognize the lack of relevance information, they are learning, has in their everyday lives, soon they will probably loose interest altogether, forcing even more lack of interest in the classrooms. I think we need to reevaluate what and why we are teaching and keep students our top priority, and not the test.