Who is smarter, teachers or students? A recent study conducted by the newspaper aims to find the truth. The study consisted of a 20-question quiz given to 20 students and 20 teachers that spanned a variety of subjects from English and math to recent events. The results of the quiz were surprising and were nothing like what was expected.
One of the goals of the education systems in the United States is to continue to get smarter, meaning what’s taught to 8th graders now might be commonplace for 6th graders in 10 years. This means that as America grows and human life grows, so does education and how young people learn. There are also reports to back this statement, showing that reading and writing scores have grown over time, but not by much. This means that a study conducted on high school students and teachers that tests the high school level knowledge should show students are smarter than teachers. That’s not the case. Teachers are smarter than students… kinda. The average score for the students was 59%, and the average score for the teachers was 64%. While these scores do seem like the teachers were 4% smarter, when looking at the individual scores, it paints a different picture. The range for the teachers was 50 to 72.5, and the range for the students was 25 to 85. Students were able to reach scores half as low as the teachers, as well as scores way higher. This means that it’s not that teachers are just smarter; they are more consistent. Almost every teacher struggled in math and did well in English and history, but for students, there was no pattern. The diverse knowledge shown by the students is a sign that the education system allows lots of information to be administered by many students but can only hold the information in a few classes. Surprisingly, the teachers and students struggled in the same sections. Math was failed by almost every participant, with some even ignoring the section as a whole or writing that they would not do it. Other sections, such as history, saw people struggle, but none were as consistent or as great as math. Both students and teachers did well in the recent events section, and everyone struggled in English.
While many students were confident in their smarts, by the end of the test, most of the students thought they failed. If you want to try the test for yourself, you can use this QR code, and so far, the highest test score is sully the monsters at 85.
