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anidada who suggested I get this book. :)
"Notice that this argument for the abolition of traditional grades isn't based on the observation that some kids won't get A's and, as a result, will have their feelings hurt. Rather, it is based on the observation that almost all kids will come to accept that the point of going to school is to get A's and, as a result, their learning will be hurt."
So, what happens to a "good kid" like me, who internalizes that second message?
First, one of the things that made me a good kid was that I almost never experienced a lack of understanding; I could do pretty much anything I needed to do with minimal effort. So I was mostly spared the anxiety of a fear of failure. Even so, it reared its ugly head a few times in my school career. There was my father's jocular habit of looking at a grade of 95% and remarking, "Not bad - but it leaves room for improvement." There was the internal, quickly-suppressed panic when I didn't understand something instantly. I suppressed it because it was imperative that NOBODY KNOW I didn't understand. I knew I was capable of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and making them think I understood just fine, until I figured it out. There were my siblings' efforts to be different from me, often by underachieving so as not to compete.
Even so, when it came to school work, I put in minimal effort to get the grades I wanted. Grades were everything in school, from - as best I can remember - about grade three. That was partly because my grades at the end of grade two were among the lowest I ever experienced in my school career. My parents' and teachers' disappointment in the grades - not in the learning they represented, because I actually knew everything they were teaching, notably in phonics in which I got a C - was like a slap in the face. I knew even then that I'd been shafted. The teacher hadn't marked how well I understood the phonics - I was reading "chapter books" fluently by then. She'd marked the answers in the workbook, which, because I was bored and slightly depressed from a recent move to a different province, were incomplete. Not wrong - INCOMPLETE. What did I learn? I learned that what you knew in school didn't matter, unless you answered the questions correctly, no matter how boring you found them.
So I coloured my title pages, underlined my titles in red pen with a ruler, whipped through spelling exercises without ever paying much attention to them - I was a natural speller with a good grasp of phonics, so this didn't matter - and spent my daydreaming time with a pencil in hand, writing stories. My teachers loved that, and the rote learning was so boring that I had plenty of time for cooking up stories, often while my pencil was busy with the "real work." The stories always got A's.
Time passed, and I began to read more outside of school than in it. This is where the really interesting part comes in, in terms of pedagogy. I was a reader by nature and nurture. While I didn't read earlier than kindergarten, I did read better, faster, than most of my peers. When I learned, it was with a sudden light bulb rather than a slow progression. The important part is that I didn't see reading as a school activity. I saw it as something people do for fun, because that's how my parents saw it and how they encouraged me to see it. The things I saw as school activities were still done well, mostly because I was too much of a pleaser ever to risk the displeasure of the adults around me by doing a half-assed job. But most of my learning didn't come from those activities. I can't remember more than a handful of activities I was actually assigned in school, nor more than a few things I was told to read. The books I remember, the books I learned from, the books that informed my worldview and gave me the historical background colour on which to pin real historical understanding - ALL of that came from reading that I did for the love of reading.
Which makes me wonder: what happens to the kids who don't grow up with the knowledge that reading is something people do for fun, and who don't have the benefit of reading early and well? I can answer this, this time from looking at my students: they see reading as an in-school activity, and they see it as something on which they will be graded. The "good kids," that is, the pleasers, will do fairly well at it in the context of school work - but they'll stick to reading material with no meat to it, whenever I let them get away with it. They'll refuse to challenge themselves, and they won't think about what they're reading unless I can get them to forget about the grade. The not-so-good kids, that is, the ones who don't read early or well, will start to give up by the end of grade one, sometimes sooner. They'll have their failure to read on the school's timetable reinforced as a failure of their ability, and each time they fail at a reading task (in their own estimation) a failure becomes more likely the next time.
I continued in much the same pattern through high school and even into university. Coursework was a slog that I had to get through - often even if the topic was fascinating. I managed not to read half the books I was supposed to read, because I knew I could pass the tests by regurgitating what the professor had told me, especially since my own ideas were unwelcome and got lower marks on those tests. If the prof only wanted his own ideas given back to him, why would I read the book and risk getting some of my own? That way lay frustration - so I avoided the frustration by eliminating the learning in favour of getting the grade.
The courses where my own ideas were welcome got far more of my effort and taught me far more lasting lessons. Still, much of what I've learned about subjects that interested me came because I read about them on my own. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my success in school is more an indictment of the system than an advertisement for it. I succeeded at school while learning as little as possible in it.
If the goal of school is to educate, then we need to consider: are our methods of assessing students undermining that goal? Are kids learning what we want them to learn, or are they learning to please teachers and parents while avoiding practically all valuable thinking? Are we setting them up for failure by grading their successes?
And if so, how do we fix it, in such a way that ALL students come out educated?
anidada who suggested I get this book. :)"Notice that this argument for the abolition of traditional grades isn't based on the observation that some kids won't get A's and, as a result, will have their feelings hurt. Rather, it is based on the observation that almost all kids will come to accept that the point of going to school is to get A's and, as a result, their learning will be hurt."
So, what happens to a "good kid" like me, who internalizes that second message?
First, one of the things that made me a good kid was that I almost never experienced a lack of understanding; I could do pretty much anything I needed to do with minimal effort. So I was mostly spared the anxiety of a fear of failure. Even so, it reared its ugly head a few times in my school career. There was my father's jocular habit of looking at a grade of 95% and remarking, "Not bad - but it leaves room for improvement." There was the internal, quickly-suppressed panic when I didn't understand something instantly. I suppressed it because it was imperative that NOBODY KNOW I didn't understand. I knew I was capable of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and making them think I understood just fine, until I figured it out. There were my siblings' efforts to be different from me, often by underachieving so as not to compete.
Even so, when it came to school work, I put in minimal effort to get the grades I wanted. Grades were everything in school, from - as best I can remember - about grade three. That was partly because my grades at the end of grade two were among the lowest I ever experienced in my school career. My parents' and teachers' disappointment in the grades - not in the learning they represented, because I actually knew everything they were teaching, notably in phonics in which I got a C - was like a slap in the face. I knew even then that I'd been shafted. The teacher hadn't marked how well I understood the phonics - I was reading "chapter books" fluently by then. She'd marked the answers in the workbook, which, because I was bored and slightly depressed from a recent move to a different province, were incomplete. Not wrong - INCOMPLETE. What did I learn? I learned that what you knew in school didn't matter, unless you answered the questions correctly, no matter how boring you found them.
So I coloured my title pages, underlined my titles in red pen with a ruler, whipped through spelling exercises without ever paying much attention to them - I was a natural speller with a good grasp of phonics, so this didn't matter - and spent my daydreaming time with a pencil in hand, writing stories. My teachers loved that, and the rote learning was so boring that I had plenty of time for cooking up stories, often while my pencil was busy with the "real work." The stories always got A's.
Time passed, and I began to read more outside of school than in it. This is where the really interesting part comes in, in terms of pedagogy. I was a reader by nature and nurture. While I didn't read earlier than kindergarten, I did read better, faster, than most of my peers. When I learned, it was with a sudden light bulb rather than a slow progression. The important part is that I didn't see reading as a school activity. I saw it as something people do for fun, because that's how my parents saw it and how they encouraged me to see it. The things I saw as school activities were still done well, mostly because I was too much of a pleaser ever to risk the displeasure of the adults around me by doing a half-assed job. But most of my learning didn't come from those activities. I can't remember more than a handful of activities I was actually assigned in school, nor more than a few things I was told to read. The books I remember, the books I learned from, the books that informed my worldview and gave me the historical background colour on which to pin real historical understanding - ALL of that came from reading that I did for the love of reading.
Which makes me wonder: what happens to the kids who don't grow up with the knowledge that reading is something people do for fun, and who don't have the benefit of reading early and well? I can answer this, this time from looking at my students: they see reading as an in-school activity, and they see it as something on which they will be graded. The "good kids," that is, the pleasers, will do fairly well at it in the context of school work - but they'll stick to reading material with no meat to it, whenever I let them get away with it. They'll refuse to challenge themselves, and they won't think about what they're reading unless I can get them to forget about the grade. The not-so-good kids, that is, the ones who don't read early or well, will start to give up by the end of grade one, sometimes sooner. They'll have their failure to read on the school's timetable reinforced as a failure of their ability, and each time they fail at a reading task (in their own estimation) a failure becomes more likely the next time.
I continued in much the same pattern through high school and even into university. Coursework was a slog that I had to get through - often even if the topic was fascinating. I managed not to read half the books I was supposed to read, because I knew I could pass the tests by regurgitating what the professor had told me, especially since my own ideas were unwelcome and got lower marks on those tests. If the prof only wanted his own ideas given back to him, why would I read the book and risk getting some of my own? That way lay frustration - so I avoided the frustration by eliminating the learning in favour of getting the grade.
The courses where my own ideas were welcome got far more of my effort and taught me far more lasting lessons. Still, much of what I've learned about subjects that interested me came because I read about them on my own. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my success in school is more an indictment of the system than an advertisement for it. I succeeded at school while learning as little as possible in it.
If the goal of school is to educate, then we need to consider: are our methods of assessing students undermining that goal? Are kids learning what we want them to learn, or are they learning to please teachers and parents while avoiding practically all valuable thinking? Are we setting them up for failure by grading their successes?
And if so, how do we fix it, in such a way that ALL students come out educated?