Dan Saffer briefly talks about why teaching to standardized tests is a bad thing:

We’re six years into the No Child Left Behind education program, which is to say about half of a generation has been taught rote-style in order to pass standardized tests. Children have memorized facts and multiplication tables and the like to the detriment of, well, real learning.

Being taught in this rote-style isn’t only a problem for the design world; it’s a detriment to an entire generation.

(via cubicle17.com)