On Tuesday, our 10-year-old hugged us both tightly — her mom twice just before she left to teach, and me just before she got on the bus.

I’m thankful that she still wants to hug and hold my hand occasionally. That is the fleeting sweetness of the pre-teen age.

On that day, it was different. During the middle of my hug, she whispered: “We’re testing again today, and I’m nervous.”

I looked her in the eye as she walked toward the bus and said the following: “You are loved. And you are smart.”

Loved, no question. She is loved by her parents, her grandparents, her friends. She is loved and has been loved by all her teachers — both at school and in her extracurricular activities. Communities like ours love on children her age.

Smart? To her mother and I and those who really know her, there is also no question.

But in the school setting? That, unfortunately, is a nuanced notion for her and so many kids.

I trace it to the testing.

The incessant, anxiety-inducing testing.

The testing that ranks kids at way too young of an age and creates long-standing negative belief from which trauma is born. Test scores that schools build entire teaching philosophies and curriculum around.

Test scores don’t lie, but they also don’t take into account someone having a bad day, or strife at home, or feeling sick. They just churn out numbers and rank and file kids at ages when kids still play house or imagine monsters underneath their bed.

Are you a good student? Yes, if you have good test numbers. No, if you don’t.

Stress.

Test.

Stress.

Test.

Stress.

Test.

There has to be another way.

In our society, adulthood is also a series of tests, but many of those are of the subjective variety. Managing people? Creating an entrepreneurial idea? Knowing how to help when a family member endures a hardship? There are no “pre-tests” for those things, but they still count as tests.

So this column isn’t to pound my head in the sand and pretend we don’t need to prepare our children for “tests.” We should prepare our young for reality.

I also don’t run away from data and recognize its power to affect decisions. Data and feedback are tools and also should be taught.

Also, this world also has a way of ranking us, like it or not. A job interview or promotion. Somebody choosing to spend time with you. Sellers picking your offer on a home. Life is about positioning, and around every turn, we are all being evaluated and chosen.

We should be working to make our kids comfortable with the realities of the world.

But we also shouldn’t be in a rush to get there.

We should be igniting our kids’ imaginations while in school, building their confidence along the way.

Study after study says that kids are more depressed and stressed now than ever. Mental health is among our biggest issues in society, and we’ve got a generation of kids whose mental health was shaken due to COVID-19 and its restrictions.

My daughter started kindergarten the year we moved to Ohio. COVID occurred late in her kindergarten year, and I know she has battled anxiety from both of those things.

Childhood should be about growing and retaining confidence, and schools should do that by creating as many paths as possible through which kids go home thinking they’re “smart.”

Whether that is the future welder whose career was ignited by the local technical center or the third-grader who broke through after a series of struggles, whatever it is, I am convinced we will produce more productive waves of adults if our kids go through their school experience with confidence.

That ain’t easy these days.

I recognize schools’ efforts in building confidence. The Leader in Me curriculum that my kids’ schools have adopted is great at teaching confidence, along with other whole-child building blocks.

But something feels incongruent here.

Testing upon testing upon testing seems to fly in the face of curiosity and whole-child growth. Constantly ranking kids seems to fly in the face of growing kids’ confidence through development and discovery. Schools raising the stakes by crafting programs and their own rankings around data seems to fly in the face of what the true purpose of school should be.

Anybody get through adulthood yet without experiencing anxiety? Like the character in “Inside Out 2,” once it’s introduced, it’s a menace that does not leave.

Why are we working so hard in our schools to expedite our children’s anxiety?

When I think of inefficiency and incongruence, I look to government, and I fear legislators’ lead has produced that over-reliance on tests. No Child Left Behind should be renamed to No Child Now is Fine.

Make no mistake, placing blame on teachers rather than legislators is like blaming the mailman for your electric bill going up.

School should be about relationships, breakthroughs, and confidence. It should be about play, about teamwork — and, yes, about hugs.

Excessive testing culture in schools is undoing the positive momentum within them. And it’s creating self-doubt and stress with our kids, who are growing up in a world full of it.

What, again, are we trying to accomplish with this testing emphasis?

Alpena native Jeremy Speer is the publisher of The Courier in Findlay, Ohio, the Sandusky (Ohio) Register, The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin, Ohio, the Norwalk (Ohio) Reflector, and Review Times in Fostoria, Ohio. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com.