How to Fix School
There are lots and lots of people that have an opinion about what is wrong with the educational sysem. They can opine about the scourge of grade inflation or low standards or funding or standardized testing or some other irrelevant side issue. The problem with school stems from the fact that it’s a restrictive, confining institution more in love with dominance, competition, and enforcing social hierarchies than in learning.
Marks and grading are a perfect example of school perpetuating dominance and submission. Students compete with each other for high marks on a transcript. Only a few people can get the highest mark. These are usually the people that try their best to impress the teacher and tell them what they want to hear. Dissenting viewpoints are often ignored or silenced. Students are severely punished for making mistakes. Their mistakes are permanently recorded on their transcript. They might get an 85 instead of a 90. This will block admission to a prestigious school. Better to read the teacher’s mind and give them exactly what they want, rather than take a risk. Failure is not an option.
Mistakes should be celebrated as a part of the learning process. The only way that this can happen is to ditch the marking and grading system. Get students to prove their knowledge and understanding of course material before they can get a credit. There are many ways to do this that do not require assigning marks. There are essays that can be written and presentations presented and assignments completed. Teachers can give written and oral feedback rather than numbers. Tell students what they need to learn, not give them a low number.
All forms of assigning numbers to learning needs to go. However, the school system will not allow this to happen. Just look at what happened to Denis Rancourt. He taught a forth year physics class at the university and got into all kinds of trouble because he gave everybody in his class an A+. The university would not allow him to go to a pass fail system.
You should have seen how all the teachers and administrators at SPSD (my employer) reacted to a speech by Alfie Kohn in the fall. He is a big proponent of ditching the marking system. It’s not what people want to hear. Teachers simply can not imagine what they would do if they could not dangle a number in front of their students. Behaviorism is entrenched in the school system. We are all primitive organisms looking for rewards and avoiding punishments rather than human beings going through each day and trying to learn from each other.
The only way to have a minute chance at making school relevant and rewarding, like it should be, is to get rid of marks. Multiple choice tests are useless and irrelevant. I have spent far too much of my time teaching kids how to pass tests rather than learning about interesting and meaningful things. Rubrics are horrible things. Rubrics sit on the school systems brain, like a pulsating octopus. They are simply one more way of assigning a number to learning. They need to go.
Before I go, I should emphasize that I do not blame teachers for their inability to see the problems in the school system. After all, they are simply doing what they are taught to do. The system teaches them, and they pass it on to their students. It is going to be a painful process to wean teachers of their marking addiction but it is incredibly important, if school is ever going to lead to lifelong learning.
Have I made myself clear? Good. Class dismissed! Have a nice day!
