9/19/25
Most Likely To Succeed Documentary
This week we were assigned to watch a documentary Most Likely To Succeed (2015). After watching it, it was interesting to see a new modern way of learning. As the documentary went on it was fascinating to see how independent the students were, in the video where they it was shown how they were often doing group discussions or seminars, and freely being able to create a project for their exhibition. It was interesting to see their opinions on standardized testing and how they opted to assess their skills through an exhibition of the students project as they feel like it is better than taking a test. In a way I agree with them as I feel taking tests can be controversial in the sense that the information we learn and get tested on is often only in our short term memories and we tend to forget majority of the information afterwards, especially with multiple choice tests, it feels like a lazy way to assess students as the answer is right in front of you and doesn’t produce critical thinking, I find it to be very black and white and doesn’t help me retain information in the long term. In the video they mentioned a study done that asked returning boarding school students to retake a test they had done 3 months priors, and the results show that the average grade fell from a B+ to an F, this shows how fast the information can leave our memories and shows that we are taught to memorize information for a short amount of time rather than teach information to students that they will actually be able to remember. I think High Tech High did a great job at accomplishing this, with instead of the standardized testing’s they did exhibitions instead to showcase students achievements and what they have been working on over the course of the year and their dedication to a single project has helped them work on something they are actually passionate about and will remember for the rest of their lives. Overall, this documentary has broadened my view on a new way to educate the younger generation in a positive and innovative way.