Letters: Standardized tests aren’t the problem

I am an 82-year-old woman educated in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, and we were given Iowa Standardized Tests in January and May throughout my elementary school years.

What James Kirylo calls stressing out the students, we called paying attention in class and doing our homework every night (“What if we skipped over standardized test season?” May 8).

There were no parents hovering over every movement of their children in those days, worrying about our self-esteem. We were raised to be obedient, respectful and accountable, all the things missing in today’s young people.

Standardized tests had to be passed or the student was held back to repeat that year. But that seldom happened because we studied and learned. The extraordinary number of uneducated people in our country today is appalling. We’ve become a land of nitwits who don’t have any idea of what’s happening in our world. God help us all.