Culturally, there's a real issue in the way we relate to achievement, failure, and personal worth.
The idea that a failure of performance does not constitute a lack of individual worth (e.g. "an F on a test does not make you a bad person," which I would argue is generally true) is useful, but I think a lot of people then make a faulty logical leap from "I can fail and still be okay" to "because I'm okay, my performance doesn't matter."
We should recognize effort, and nurture it, but we also have to teach people to be accountable, to set/work toward/achieve goals, etc. In an ideal world, as an educator, if someone comes to me and says "I'm working so hard but not getting the result I want," would be an opportunity to see what that effort looks like and try to doctor it and make it more effective.
Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't open to that kind of thing. It's not the sort of thing that gets taught properly, either to educators or to students. Mentoring is hard, takes a lot of energy, and many teachers are overworked as it is. In short, I think the system fails because it's understaffed, standards for educators are out of whack, and the pay (especially in primary education) is laughable.
Plus, because of grade inflation, a prof who enforces C-as-default can be terrifying to students for all the wrong reasons. These people are outliers and grade on a different scale. For students, just from a pragmatic standpoint, that's very hard to cope with because of the chilling effect it has on a person's lifetime prospects. The sad thing is that it isn't the professor's fault, and a fair grade isn't the problem. Grade inflation is the problem.
Earnestness is good. Effort is good. Achievement is good. But if we're going to reward people, we need to be very clear what we're rewarding them for, and why.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 04:43 pm (UTC)Culturally, there's a real issue in the way we relate to achievement, failure, and personal worth.
The idea that a failure of performance does not constitute a lack of individual worth (e.g. "an F on a test does not make you a bad person," which I would argue is generally true) is useful, but I think a lot of people then make a faulty logical leap from "I can fail and still be okay" to "because I'm okay, my performance doesn't matter."
We should recognize effort, and nurture it, but we also have to teach people to be accountable, to set/work toward/achieve goals, etc. In an ideal world, as an educator, if someone comes to me and says "I'm working so hard but not getting the result I want," would be an opportunity to see what that effort looks like and try to doctor it and make it more effective.
Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't open to that kind of thing. It's not the sort of thing that gets taught properly, either to educators or to students. Mentoring is hard, takes a lot of energy, and many teachers are overworked as it is. In short, I think the system fails because it's understaffed, standards for educators are out of whack, and the pay (especially in primary education) is laughable.
Plus, because of grade inflation, a prof who enforces C-as-default can be terrifying to students for all the wrong reasons. These people are outliers and grade on a different scale. For students, just from a pragmatic standpoint, that's very hard to cope with because of the chilling effect it has on a person's lifetime prospects. The sad thing is that it isn't the professor's fault, and a fair grade isn't the problem. Grade inflation is the problem.
Earnestness is good. Effort is good. Achievement is good. But if we're going to reward people, we need to be very clear what we're rewarding them for, and why.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 05:42 pm (UTC)