I participate occasionally in discussions on LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, and Reddit, usually when I have an amygdala spike after reading someone’s question or response. It helps me calm down.
This convo happened this morning:
Question (posted by someone else): Isn’t it absurd, that a teacher can punish a student for their own failure with bad grades?
Answer (posted by me):
I love this question because it challenges widely-held assumptions and beliefs about what education is and should be.
The following questions expose some of these:
Why are students graded at all? How does that help them become better learners?
Why do we use the word "teacher"? Doesn't that put the focus on someone other than the child?
An independent child may not want to learn what other people (administrators, teachers, government) want them to, and would prefer to learn something else. How well does the current approach promote the goal to have children learn how to learn and be independent?
A bad grade implies not understanding something or being able to communicate that understanding. Is that always the student's fault? Or is that the failure of the system to generate an environment conducive to learning at each student's pace?
Mistakes result in bad grades and are thus punished.
How then shall we encourage children to take appropriate risks and celebrate and learn from mistakes instead of being punished for them?
Our "educational" system is broken and needs new thinking. This question gets us closer to at least asking better questions.
Reply (by someone else):
Does personal responsibility enter into your equation?
My reply:
On whose part? I assume you mean the student's. As children grow, one of the important things they learn is the benefits that accrue from taking personal responsibility, and another is how to achieve it.
A hidden assumption behind your question is that everyone has (or should have) the same definition for personal responsibility.
Like it or not, that's not the case. E.g., some kids value scoring well in tests, while others don't. Getting a bad grade doesn't necessarily mean the child is "not taking responsibility."
Another hidden assumption behind your question is that, even assuming everyone shares the same definition, either they have personal responsibility or they don't (which is a fixed mindset view) or they only learn it by being graded. There are other possibilities.
My personal responsibility is to value truth over ego and actively search for and eliminate my biases. I think the world would be a better place if more people defined it that way. But I wouldn't impose my definition on anyone but me.
Thanks for listening :)
