[etni] Honesty and Grades

From: "David R. Herz" <drh16@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:29:46 +0200
As far as I am concerned, giving grades is about the most dishonest,
destructive and discouraging thing a teacher can do.  We (I should say you,
I am lawyering now, finally) learn about reliability and validity and have
rubrics and checklists and curricula and other teaching crap thrown at us,
but these have nothing to do with teaching.
 

I received an e-mail yesterday from the daughter of a friend.  The daughter
was inviting us, in English, to a surprise anniversary party for her
parents.  The English was pretty bad, and I was really tempted to correct
it, but I was able to stop and ask myself "What did she do right?"  She was
actually being incredibly courageous sending an English e-mail to me.
Grades are almost never about this.  They are much more what did the person
not do wrong, or can the person spit back what she just learned, or did the
person do what I asked, and they are all based on arbitrary judgments by
people in a position of power.  Why would we expect any human being to
respond constructively to this scheme?

 

I have a friend, a religious Jew who found learning the little Arabic she
knew to be a much more enjoyable experience than learning Hebrew.  It was
because it was done informally with the merchants she used to visit in the
Arab villages that she could still visit before "peace" came.  Grades kill
the enjoyment.  They make it about a number.  The number is always
arbitrary.  In the hands of some, the institution of grading verges on
abuse.

 

If we want to truly honor a commitment to our students, we should all just
give hundreds and then start teaching.  Let's take away the stress, and
encourage our students to just go out and enjoy a poem, or listen to an old
protest song and ponder the historical context, or write a letter to try to
stop an execution, or blog to the English-speaking world, or - my favorite -
ask interesting questions, in any language.

 

But most of us, and I count the members of this list as the few who are
actually think and are concerned, will dismiss what I say as they are thrown
to concerns about evaluation, feedback, motivation and sorting.  Grades are
crude devices at best, and in many cases run counter to our purposes as
teachers.

 

If we were truly willing to honor our students and our selves, we would
stand for none of it, and we would certainly refuse to be graders for any of
the Ministry's purposes.  Then maybe, we would have a chance to educate, and
would avoid all the nasty recrimination ab initio.

 

Yours truly,

 

David R. Herz

drherz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

www.educatingisrael.com

Bet Rimon

052-579-1859

 



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[etni] Honesty and Grades

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