People in the United States

People in the United States continue to move towards a better tomorrow each and every day but there are still others around the world that are not as lucky and are willing to do absolutely anything possible to live such a life. In Amy Tan’s essay, Mother Tongue, she discusses how much of an impact it made knowing english as a native language when growing up. Amy Tan’s mother could not speak english as clearly and because of that, she was treated unfairly. Amy retaliated she was able to distinguish what her mother was saying, despite her broken english. Even though it was difficult for others to understand her, she knew her mother could communicate. She was able to get points and ideas across to other people which was all that mattered. The main topic argued in this essay was that words can hold special meanings to people if they are able to look past correct pronunciation and usage of them. This is the strongest argument presented, but there are others overlooked that can be equally as interesting to discuss. An important argument that is ignored is personal opinions of standardized testing and if these tests help determine a student’s intellectual abilities. Standardized testing is ineffective in determining a student’s intelligence level and continues to raise concern around the globe. It has become extremely problematic, specifically, for students belonging to a varied type of background. They are defined in these categories: students who were brought up or influenced by culture and students who were brought up or influenced by language/communication. Some students were raised believing aspects concerning their culture- race, ethnicity, and religion while other students were raised believing aspects concerning their language/communication- tone, presentation, accents, and etc. Students could fit into one or both of these categories. A person who demonstrates fitting in both is Amy Tan. Not only did this strongly affect her life, it also affected how she handled standardized testing and why these reasons: what information is allowed to be tested over, the education system relying too highly on tests scores which is decreasing chances of success, and prejudice towards a different interpretation and approach used to solve/answer a question are unfair justifications in determining a student’s level of intelligence.

The first reason people may be against standardized testing is because it raises the question about what information students are allowed to be tested over. Is math, science, english/writing, and reading that important to where it is required for every person to be tested over them? (Sadker and Zittleman 376) According to many education observers and test creators, yes, because through their research and observations, these are seen as more “difficult subjects” and have found that quite a bit of students struggle in them. (Sadker and Zittleman 376) With this theory, they believe that these are