Outdated assessments

Teachers go to wild lengths to stop students from cheating—even making them install surveillance software (malware) that locks their browser and monitors their screen, webcam, and search history.

If the point was academic integrity, maybe that would make sense.

But the point is not academic integrity.

The point of taking a test—and going to school itself—should be learning.

And life is an open book test.

At work, you Google things. You check your notes. You use AI tools. You collaborate.

In school, we often punish those behaviors.

We should be teaching students how to think, how to find reliable information, and how solve real-world problems using the tools that are available.

Instead, we trap them in a controlled environment and pretend that’s how the world works.

Like—I don’t know—asking them open-ended questions in real-time.

Letting them explain concepts in their own words.

Watching how they solve problems, and giving them the time and space to make mistakes, rethink, and try again.

That’s what school is for. Not regurgitating facts.

But learning how to learn.

Learning how to think.

Learning how to listen, question, and make things better.

The problem isn’t cheating, and the solution isn’t surveillance.

The problem is outdated assessments. And the real solution? Rethinking how we do it.