Musings and an Essay on Grades

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Top of the morning to you! Im enjoying having a blog again and feeling like I can have some sort of connection with people who matter in my life. Firstly, emiliano sent me a really fantastic essay by Orhan Pamuk (it was actually an acceptance speech for the nobel prize) that Id like to sent on. the link is...

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html

I added some people to the mailing list, so if you are reading my blog for the first time, I urge you to go back and read my last entry, entitled "a personal essay on Delhi". I consider that piece to be the first thing I have ever written. After laboring through the project (and I don't consider it yet close to the finished product), I now see just how different writing is from all other ways of life. Writing is at times like the painting of Bob Ross; smooth strokes successfully paint the desired image, but at others it seems like that annoying board-ish game "Operation" where no matter what you do your efforts are to no avail. The piece is 10 pages, but I actually wrote 16, cutting 6 comepletely out, and off my hard drive. After meeting with a teacher i decided that my description of the club carredi on too long, and I amde the decision then and there that I would cut out the three superfluous pages. There are few Buddhist, non-attachment excersises that rival deleting something that you fought with for 4+ hours. It took me hours to write the scene where Shane, Emiliano and I were standing outside the Alderfer's house in Delhi. Looking back, I realize that for hours my consciousness was there; my body was in my chair directly in front of my computer, but my mind was floating in 120 degree heat, looking at the park, surrounded by bags. I was actually in that place. And if what imagined wasn't actually accurate, well, hold on, stop that thought. What I imagined WAS accuracte, simply because it is what I imagined. Tad's favorite quote, a line by the rapper The Last Emperor, goes, "Imagination is the fabric of Life." How true that is. So anyway, here is an essay on grading.

Of all practices integral to our society, grading may be the least questioned, and ironically enough, the most questionable. For the longest time, grades have been thought to be the only means by which to motivate a student, yet recent observation has provided adequate proof that the untainted love of learning can flourish if given stimulation and support. Unfortunately though, most people, especially those attending mandatory schooling, put the little effort they do into education solely because of the grade they will receive. Thus we arrive at a paradox; grades stem one's inquisitive nature, yet are in many cases a necessary evil that provide teachers and students alike with a tangible incentive to work hard. To reconcile these opposing characteristics of grading I advocate a nuanced approach that utilizes grading as little as possible while still maintaining motivated individuals. The lower the level of schooling, the clearer the incentive, ( i.e. grading) must be. Conversely, as one advances beyond obligatory education, grading loses its importance until finally becoming irrelevant in graduate school.

The American fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander once wrote, " We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself. " This is indeed true, for learning is, in its essence, a channeling of curiosity rather than a project with a finite end. It should be exploration as opposed to a chore. Yet when one's entire motivation for schooling hinges upon grades, the element of exploration is quelled, replaced by a begrudging sense of duty. And what a shame that is! The world is brimming with fascinating subjects, full of skills to learn. Learning doesn't happen when facts must be remembered for the test next period, but rather when the knowledge is grasped, comprehended, for use in its own right.

Grades provide an incentive to learn the subject matter that will be tested. They go no further than that. In fact, it has been argued that they hinder student's pursuance of interests outside of the classroom. Writes Jerry Farber, a professor of English at the University of California at San Diego, " I suspect that most kids fool around with writing on their own at some point—diaries, poetry, whatever—but this interest rarely survives school." Grading seems to curb one's curiosity, allotting a certain amount of time, and a certain amount of brain power per day to study. It is no surprise, then, that throughout high school I only read for my own pleasure during the summer, even though I had nearly as much time throughout the school year.

Language learning is indicative of the importance that personal relevance plays in one's comprehension. I spent this last year in Tamil Nadu, India on a program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and took a Tamil class in Madison for two months last summer prior to leaving the country. Even though Tamil is an incredibly difficult language with completely unrelated roots from English, I picked it up far quicker than I had Spanish, even college level. What could explain this phenomenon? I was graded in Spanish, many times the simpler language, and not in Tamil, so shouldn't I have been working harder and thus picked Spanish up more easily? It seems so, yet that was not the case. Since I would soon be leaving for India, I had a huge vested interest in learning Tamil, regardless of the difficulty. In fact, had I been graded in the summer class, perhaps my focus would have slightly shifted from learning usable Tamil to that which was going to be on the test.

Another example of the importance of interest in education is the discrepancy between the rate at which major language (English, Spanish) speaking peoples and people whose mother tongue is uncommon learn other languages. Although a second language is mandatory in most American high schools, very few, if any, people come away proficient. This is as opposed to countries such as Holland and Denmark where English is almost universally known, and it is not uncommon to find a person who speaks over five. So you see, people follow incentives, it's just that there are much grander and useful incentives than grades. When I asked a Romanian girl in my elementary French class how many languages she knew, she responded "Six" and then continued proudly, "Romanian, Spanish, German, English, Italian, and Portuguese". Her desire to take French, her seventh language, was not aroused by the thought of an easy grade, but rather the ability to communicate with more people around the world.

Grades are far from ideal. In fact, in my ideal world of supportive families, passionate teachers, and curious students, I would abolish them altogether. Some private institutions such as the Waldorf schools have taken this step already. Yet , as is usually the case, the imagined ideal differs greatly from the existing reality. We live in a world full of broken families, burnt-out teachers, and uninterested kids and while it would be nice if teachers could expect all of their 4 th grade students to fill out practice multiplication table sheets on their own accord, that simply isn't case.

Education means not just an understanding of the concepts, but also practice in their application. That is where the need for grading comes into play. If a teacher delivers a dynamic lecture, students will tune in whether they will be graded or not. Yet demanding the requisite practice time outside of class can be near impossible if presented with, truth be told, your average elementary to high school student. To master multiplication tables means hours of practice and countless practice sheets. To be able to convey one's thoughts on history, one must not only be able to talk about them, but write as well.

Farber claims that "Still, some of us maintain that we need grades to give us self-discipline. But do you want to see real self-discipline? Look at some kid working on his car all weekend long. His parents even have to drag him in for dinner." Although I believe this self-motivation to be ideal, it does not relate to apathetic students. Humans, all animals for that matter, must see the benefits of their actions for them to be repeated. That kid won't continue fixing his car if it seems beyond repair. The other kid will stop practicing basketball if he doesn't ever improve. Adults have massive problems staying on a regular diet because of the lack of immediate results. How then can we expect a middle-schooler to see how writing up a lab report or reading from their bland history textbook will make a difference in their lives?

"You say that grades are part of the solution and the problem. What then do you propose?" you may be asking yourself. I recommend that we be flexible about grading, adopting the approach that works best in each particular circumstance. To employ a gradeless system, there are certain requirements. First, the students must be self-motivated, wanting to learn the subject matter for its own merit. Secondly, the students of the school must be supported by families that place an emphasis on education. Next, the school must employ exceptional teachers, ones who "love to teach" as much as they expect the students to "love to learn." And lastly, the school must provide the students with sufficient autonomy to delve into those subjects about which they are most passionate.

Fortunately, these requirements are met by a significant number of schools, becoming more numerous as the age of the student increases. The older the student is, the less incentive is needed to motivate them. People are not the same; neither are learning situations. The best we can do is adopt a system that serves the multitudes of different abilities and backgrounds so that each person gets the reinforcement and support necessary in their particular academic journey. This calls for idealism where it is possible and pragmatism when it is necessary.

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Comments

[oldirtydirty]

2 comments
Looks like I'm currently your biggest blogfan Nata. I have two comments- 1- Different civilizations/cultures/socities (whatever you want to call it) have different approaches to learning. The most interesting cleavage in approach, in my opinion, is between Western (European) and Eastern (Chinese) civilizations. In the West, the traditional approach is to introduce the student to a wide range of knoweldge, and gradually allow them to specialize based on their particular skills and interests. This is evident K-12, as we are required to take Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, Gym, etc etc. To a lesser extent, this is also the case in college, where most schools require students to complete core courses outside their chosen major. The image one could draw of this style is a pyramid, starting with a base of general knowledge, and then narrowing as the student persues a specific interest. In ancient China, the approach was signficantly different. A student was allowed to chose a subject based upon their personal interests right from the begining. The theory held that exploring this topic would introduce the pupil to other, related topics, and the student would naturally gravitate to these subjects in order to compliment and support their core subject. The image here would be of a spiral, starting at a signal point and growing wider and wider as the student developed mentally. This leads me to my second point, related to what you said of incentive. My first semester at college, the adviser who 'helped' make my schedule 'encouraged' me to take core classes (a math course, a science course, a diversity credit art history course, and a study skills course) completely unrelated to my government and politics major. There was a lot of other issues going on that semester, but suffice to say I did terribly in my four non-major courses, and grabbed an A in my gov class. Compare that doleful semester to the one I had last spring. I took five history and goverment courses, all of which related to one another in some demension. My Political Theory class could be applied to my Dictators of Latin America course; my history of Mexico could be applied to my history of Latin America course, and so on. I chose courses that interested me, courses which were engaging and interrelated. I was able to use concepts and information I had learned in one class in a paper or on a test in another. This was extremely helpful. Of course I worked much harder, was more focused, and happier last semester than my first at college, and all these factors contributed to my improvement as well. Suffice to say I went to work. Holler atcha boy. And expect long comments from me from now on. If I've gotta read your long ass blogs, you're gonna hafta read my long ass comments. Peace. Owen