How academic testing fails us
Test to learn, don’t learn to test.
Your palms are sweating. Knees weak, arms are heavy. You’re nervous but on the surface, you look calm and ready.
Yes, I am quoting Eminem. No, I’m not talking about vomiting on stage or losing yourself.
The scenario above is played out a thousand times each day, when students all over the world are faced with a vomit inducing chore — taking a test.
For the first 20+ years of our lives, we’re taught that we must prepare, study, practice, and study again for tests. We must memorize and internalize everything we’ve learned so that we can beat the test and score a 90 (or if you’re of Chinese decent like me, you better score 110% even without bonus questions.)
Whether we do well or we do poorly, tests define a large part of who we are growing up. We’re either the smart academics or the lazy slackers (also known as the goths, jocks or breakers)
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When someone can’t achieve a certain level of success in academia — they instinctively attach themselves to another group of similar stature.
I’m not here to talk about how messed up the school system is. (though it is REALLY messed up)
I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to know the answers to be good at tests. In the real world, the people who are the best at what they do have one thing in common — they love testing. But not the kind of tests you’re thinking of, they don’t even need to know the answer when they do these tests — the tests actually answer themselves.
WHAT KIND OF GOD LIKE WORLD IS THAT?!
Doing a test to RECEIVE answers?! Rather than making sure you give the right answers for a test?
Yes, there is a god and there is justice.
In the world of start ups, you are running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off 85% of the time. We have no idea what we’re really doing. So the only way to find out, is to run a LOT of tests — testing every assumption, every opinion, every tactic. Only by testing what we think might be correct, do we find the actual answers.
We have a school system that uses tests to instil fear into the hearts of children. Children who grow up to be adults that are afraid of testing assumptions because they were taught: “I need to know the right answer”. In my start up experience — the right answer is always found by running another test.
Even if you think you’re right, test it — more often than not, you’ll be surprised.
