A giant "F" written on a chalkboard in a classroom.

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The End of Average" by Todd Rose. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What’s wrong with the education system? Why is it failing to truly educate students?

In The End of Average, Todd Rose says that judging individuals in comparison to the average has caused damage to the modern education system. Rather than give each student what they individually need to learn the most, we give them a standardized experience that forces them to conform or fail.

Let’s discuss three ways that schools fail to treat students as unique individuals, consequently limiting their potential.

Failure #1: Schools Are Designed to Find Intelligence—Not Create It

What’s wrong with the education system? First, Rose argues that schools fail to nurture students as individuals because they were designed to achieve an entirely different purpose: sorting students. Rather than educate each student to help them reach their full potential, as it’s ostensibly supposed to do, our education system is designed to identify and support “gifted” students. That is, it allocates better opportunities to children with the preexisting potential to learn how to solve complex problems. In turn, the system provides less support to those without such potential. 

This model has its roots in the beginning of the 20th century, when early American factories needed to identify capable students who would eventually become factory managers. It quickly spread to industrialized nations around the world.

Rose explains that this education system is supposed to benefit society by channeling the most gifted students into the best, most prestigious schools. Eventually, these students end up in the most important jobs, where they can do the most good for society.

To accomplish this, this education system judges how talented each student is by comparing them to the average student: Schools teach the same fixed curriculum to all students and conduct standardized tests to measure which students are best able to learn that curriculum. In the process, students who score below average end up at a disadvantage when trying to get into good schools and high-skill jobs.

Why Standardized Education Is Bad at Sorting Intelligence

Rose believes that our system keeps the best education and jobs away from those who lack academic success. In theory, this downside is balanced out by the system’s positive impact on society—everyone is better off if society’s important jobs are filled by the most talented people. However, Rose also contends that the system doesn’t accomplish this purpose very well.

According to Rose, our education system is a deeply flawed sorting mechanism because it’s founded on the false assumption that “general intelligence” exists. We use standardized tests because we assume that students who are better at quickly solving math problems or reasoning through logic puzzles are generally “smarter” than others. In other words, we think they’ll be better at solving all problems than their less “gifted” counterparts. Instead of judging students based on individual skills, we average out their various skills into one-dimensional scores that supposedly reflect their general intelligence.

However, research shows that such scores of general intelligence are completely inaccurate. Rose argues that if you ever judge someone as “generally smart,” you’re probably mistaken. That’s because someone who’s good at one intellectual task (for instance, analyzing literature) is no more likely than anyone else to be good at another intellectual task (say, interpreting statistics). For this reason, a student’s standardized test scores or grade point average don’t reliably predict their performance at other tasks, or in their future career.

What’s Wrong With the Education System? 3 Ways It Fails

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Here's what you'll find in our full The End of Average summary:

  • How treating students as individuals can unlock their potential
  • Why companies can profit by hiring employees from unique backgrounds
  • The three ways that schools fail to treat students as unique individuals

Elizabeth Whitworth

Elizabeth has a lifelong love of books. She devours nonfiction, especially in the areas of history, theology, and philosophy. A switch to audiobooks has kindled her enjoyment of well-narrated fiction, particularly Victorian and early 20th-century works. She appreciates idea-driven books—and a classic murder mystery now and then. Elizabeth has a Substack and is writing a book about what the Bible says about death and hell.

One thought on “What’s Wrong With the Education System? 3 Ways It Fails

  • February 19, 2024 at 8:13 pm
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    I agree with iam trying to go back to school, but they don’t have books for me studying my courses, I think it’s rude that I have go to lab and get my stuff downloaded thus 😅 😕 stupid & ridiculous

    Reply

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