Sir Ken Robinson and the University of Lethbridge Literacy fair have me questioning two main assumptions of our education system: we have to sort children into cohorts based on their birth year and we have to evalute their achievement with numerical values. We all grew up in this education system. We were all put into grades and were given grades to assess our progress. But why? What benefit does it serve? Tradition will persist as long as we allow it to pass without question.
Robinson cites the industrial revolution as the origin of our education system. He compares schools to factories and criticizes grouping children by age, as if we are primarily concerned with their production date. Today at the literacy fair, Dean Hawkins the Prinicipal of Wilson Middle School, discussed how his school took an unorthodox approach to teaching literacy. In order to improve literacy in the school they divided children into cohorts based on their reading level. Could we do this we other subjects as well? Could we divide students based on their strengths and weaknesses instead of their age?
Think about teaching math to a class of thirty students who are at all different levels of competency. Some students are gifted, some are multiple grade levels behind, and the rest of the students are at every level in between. Grouping students by age means that teachers will constantly struggle to enrich some while giving remedial help to others. It means some students will be bored and disengaged because they are beyond the material and some students will be frustrated and give up completely because their needs are not being met. But what if we could group these students by ability? What if every student was engaged at their level? This is the most efficient path to the zone of proximal development.
What about the other kind of grade? You know those numerical representations of our understanding and achievement. What purpose do they really serve? Our current system uses grades as a form of motivation. Students cheat themselves to get good grades. They steal, copy, and cram to get those all important numbers. And why wouldn't they? They've been told their entire life that their future depends on them working hard and getting those good grades. It's a lie. Their future depends on learning.
Grades do not motivate students to learn. They are concerned only with the number they get not what they've actually learned. The student who crams before a test and gets a good grade will not remember the content in a month, nor will the student who cheated. These are extrinsic motivators and they are useless beyond a superficial effect. We need intrinsic motivators. We need students to care about learning.
Question tradition. Question the system. We can do better.
I'll ask you again, why do we have grades?
Robinson cites the industrial revolution as the origin of our education system. He compares schools to factories and criticizes grouping children by age, as if we are primarily concerned with their production date. Today at the literacy fair, Dean Hawkins the Prinicipal of Wilson Middle School, discussed how his school took an unorthodox approach to teaching literacy. In order to improve literacy in the school they divided children into cohorts based on their reading level. Could we do this we other subjects as well? Could we divide students based on their strengths and weaknesses instead of their age?
Think about teaching math to a class of thirty students who are at all different levels of competency. Some students are gifted, some are multiple grade levels behind, and the rest of the students are at every level in between. Grouping students by age means that teachers will constantly struggle to enrich some while giving remedial help to others. It means some students will be bored and disengaged because they are beyond the material and some students will be frustrated and give up completely because their needs are not being met. But what if we could group these students by ability? What if every student was engaged at their level? This is the most efficient path to the zone of proximal development.
What about the other kind of grade? You know those numerical representations of our understanding and achievement. What purpose do they really serve? Our current system uses grades as a form of motivation. Students cheat themselves to get good grades. They steal, copy, and cram to get those all important numbers. And why wouldn't they? They've been told their entire life that their future depends on them working hard and getting those good grades. It's a lie. Their future depends on learning.
Grades do not motivate students to learn. They are concerned only with the number they get not what they've actually learned. The student who crams before a test and gets a good grade will not remember the content in a month, nor will the student who cheated. These are extrinsic motivators and they are useless beyond a superficial effect. We need intrinsic motivators. We need students to care about learning.
Question tradition. Question the system. We can do better.
I'll ask you again, why do we have grades?