My Rejected Letter to the Editor
I was annoyed about the recent kerfuffle over Nutana’s proposal to do away with failing grades. I sent the Star Phoenix this letter on Friday but they decided not to print it. I would like to think they made this editorial decision based on the fact that they basically wrote the same thing in the forum section today. But with more words and less awesome. That thought is holding my ego together. Here goes nothing, I hope you like it.
Collegiate Renewal
I am very disappointed about the recent bad press in regards to Nutana Collegiate’s proposal to abolish failing grades. I would encourage anyone who wishes to criticize this proposal to do a little research in order to have an informed opinion. This proposal will be a very minor change. It does not mean that students will be pushed ahead if they have not completed a course. A grade of 49% or under indicates that a student has not yet met the course requirements. Thus, putting an “incomplete” on the transcript is quite accurate.
This initiative is just one of many ideas that are being proposed as part of the Saskatoon public school board’s collegiate renewal initiative. There are many reasons why education remains beyond the reach of many people. We really need to do a better job of being inclusive and focusing on learning rather than grading. Learning can not be summed up by a letter or number grade. We need to examine why so many people continue to be frustrated with school. This will require members of the public and the media to be more informed about what this requires. I would encourage everyone to read readily available public documents which are accessible on the school boards’ web site at www.spsd.sk.ca. There are many interesting schools of thought regarding traditional grading practices that need to be examined and discussed in a meaningful way. The works of Ann Davies and Alfie Kohn would be a good place to start. Hopefully we can move beyond meaningless criticism and have an intelligent conversation about educational reform.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Just because your letter wasn’t printed today doesn’t mean it won’t be printed fairly soon. Sometimes letters are held over for a week or two.
Cheers
November 25th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
The SP phoned me today so maybe they will print it after all. I whined for nuthin’. Boy, is my face red.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
um, the system now won’t even fail a student. Where I go to school, if the student is failing a mandatory class the teacher is kind enough to give them a 50% on there report card. nobody fails. The students make there own choice. They don’t want to do the work, its there problem. Its students that fail not the education system. They will pass them no matter what. Its the Teachers that fail to do there job!
This proposal means nothing. Its already in practice everywhere, just not officially.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
maybe if students were actually failed on something they would learn.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hmm…I don’t agree Huff. School is a very cut and dry place and human beings are hardly cut and dry people with cut and dry personalities. School caters very well to people who can succeed in a particularly structured system. For the rest of us, school is next to useless and in fact counter-productive.
Some one with incredible skills in auto mechanics could miserably fail everything else in school and what good would that do them? There are certainly people out there that are terribly served by a system of rote learning and paper juggling.
Traditional schooling is anything but adequate and the fact that we still have a pass/fail system of education in the 21st century is a testament to our inability to explore new options and embrace beneficial change. Rote learning sucks.
It’s no wonder that the people who become teachers are the people who succeed in the traditional system of education. People that do well in a mechanical and structured system that simply wants you to eat up information and them barf it out on command make great teachers in our schools. Some one who can write the most amazing works of literature however can often find themselves in a terrible situation while being told that they are sub par at best…they’re terrible because they can’t deal with a school system and dammit, they’re destine to fail in life.
It’s no wonder I dropped out of high school. What a rotten place.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:02 am
As it currently stands many people that do not finish a course do get a failing mark on a transcript. That 12% or 4% or 49% is there forever.