Maxim Vitkovsky

Gov & Econ

Period 1
9/18/16

Declaration of Standard Independence

When in educational events, it becomes necessary for students to partake in
normification and standardization activities and under the condition that the creativity
and individual freedom to which every living Soul is entitled to becomes in some way,
shape, or form limited, any student group has, according to John Locke, the right to
declare independence from such unjust and cruel acts and proclaim their own laws and
regulations.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all students are created equal and
therefore are entitled to the same laws. This, however, doesnt include individuality.
Every student has the right to a fair education, a caring teacher, a reinforcing school
principal, and to fair overall treatment. Despite this fact, every student is unique, be it in
physical ways, or in physiological ones. This includes such things as pace of learning,
mental capacity, stress present without school, stress level from engaging in educational
activities, leaning style, learning disabilities, among many others. Whenever either
individual classrooms or a community as a whole largely ignore these truths and opt for
creating a more fair and unbiased grading and judgment system at the expense of
individual freedom, students reserve the right to radically alter and abolish such laws.
While there is a fine line between equality and individual freedom, when an educational
institution crosses these lines repeatedly and for many centuries, no matter how fine the
lines are drawn to be, eventually this patient sufferance must come to an end. Such is
now the necessity which constrains students of the world as a whole to alter the former
Systems of Assessments. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

Teachers have long feared individual assessment due to the structure of our
government, but while freedom of speech, justice in criminal cases, and other such laws
are indeed universal and undeniable, other criteria such as illnesses and extracurricular
activities, to name a few, are entirely subjective and cannot be standardized.
Global standard-based assessments such as ones required to succeed later in life
are designed the same for everyone in the nation and do not account for ones ability
and speed of processing information, academic strength in various areas of study,
anxiety, and other such factors. For example, if a student has anxiety in the situations
required for the assessment engagement, have much better STEM skills and knowledge
than Language and History or vice versa, or if their greatest gift lies in processing
information slowly, but efficiently and to a greater extent, there is a high probability that
they be prohibited from participating in higher education activities, which will ban them
from taking on potentially lifesaving or life changing positions in our society. They will

Maxim Vitkovsky
Gov & Econ
Period 1
9/18/16

be forced to live in misery and poverty for the rest of their miserable and depressing
lives.

While certain students are naturally in-sync with these standards and can achieve
such goals without any additional effort, others who happen to greatly excel in areas that
are not required for success and are therefore less inclined to meet standards in other
subjects are forced to sacrifice sleep and other equally as important goals for success for
the sole purpose of not falling into the bottomless whole called poverty. For example, if a
certain student happens to be an incredible artist capable of drawing on par with the
worlds best artists and yet struggle in the subjects deemed arbitrarily standard by an
arbitrary regulation, they will be classified as unfit to partake in higher education. This
might hinder their ultimate success as an artist. These standards could have prohibited
the next Leonardo da Vinci form succeeding or changing the world.

As these oppressions occurred from the government and not from local
institutions, students input and influence on these matters was damagingly limited, if
not none. We have, nonetheless, on many occasions protested such radical
standardization, however each time we were rejected under the excuse that we are
immature children destined to think all the wrong things. A common example is that
most adults past the stage of life called education do not complain about their
experiences in that stage, and therefore those thoughts must be sourcing from the
immaturity of our young neuron box. But the real reason is that those select few who
managed their way through have long forgotten that stage as they face new challenges in
life and those who were consumed by this injustice are too preoccupied with survival
and other basic human needs to have any time to think about the past. For example, if
you are constantly thinking about where to acquire food and shelter for the night and
how to keep your family safe, it leaves no time to think about the past.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the Universal Students against
StandaRdization (USSR) Committee, in General APS Conference, assembled, appealing
to the supreme judge of education and equality, solemnly publish and declare, that all
global students are, and of right ought to be free and unique; that they are absolved from
all standardization of assessments, and that all current assessments designed to
measure students against a standard in no longer necessary for higher educational
opportunities and ultimate success of every individual student. And for the support of
this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Knowledge, we
mutually pledge to each other our Education, our Creativity, and our sacred Justice.