Dear college and university administrators, department chairs, and professors,
In my fourth semester of college, I took an evening class with seven other students. “I have to grade on a curve,” the professor said on the first day. “It’s department policy. Be prepared for difficult tests, because it’s the only way the curve matters.”
With eight people, relative grading would be brutal and we knew it. The classroom quickly turned dog-eat-dog. We had no study groups, no collaboration. I didn’t know anyone’s name. My mantra on every assignment and every test was “I just have to do better than seven other people and I’ll get an A.” The tests ended up being hard enough that the curve did matter; our scores were spread, and I felt like I had deserved the grade I got.
But here’s my question: What was the purpose? Why was my professor forced to make the class so difficult just to have score differentiation among eight students? Did brutal competition and ulcer-inducing tests really improve the quality of my learning? Of my classmates’ learning?
It could be argued (though not here) that the roots of modern public education are in the Enlightenment, that period of time where rational methods were praised above all else. Knowledge was respected and shared in the public sphere. In salons, people would band together to discuss ideas, facts, and current events. Learning was a collaborative event and education was about what you knew.
What changed in education? It became less about knowing things for the sake of knowing them and more about shuttling students through school. One of my classmates, Jackson, mentioned in a comment that it’s been difficult to adjust to education strategies that ask him to think differently. And it’s understandable. Most of us have been raised on scantron sheets and index cards. Sir Ken Robinson, education reformer, compares modern education to a factory. Maybe in the 20th century, we weren’t sure how to handle culture at scale. Maybe we looked at mass production and hey, it worked for a lot of other things. Maybe when more people started going to school, our culture turned to one of credentialism. Maybe we started worrying more about evaluating students than teaching them.
But here’s my question: What was the purpose? Why was my professor forced to make the class so difficult just to have score differentiation among eight students? Did brutal competition and ulcer-inducing tests really improve the quality of my learning? Of my classmates’ learning?
It could be argued (though not here) that the roots of modern public education are in the Enlightenment, that period of time where rational methods were praised above all else. Knowledge was respected and shared in the public sphere. In salons, people would band together to discuss ideas, facts, and current events. Learning was a collaborative event and education was about what you knew.
What changed in education? It became less about knowing things for the sake of knowing them and more about shuttling students through school. One of my classmates, Jackson, mentioned in a comment that it’s been difficult to adjust to education strategies that ask him to think differently. And it’s understandable. Most of us have been raised on scantron sheets and index cards. Sir Ken Robinson, education reformer, compares modern education to a factory. Maybe in the 20th century, we weren’t sure how to handle culture at scale. Maybe we looked at mass production and hey, it worked for a lot of other things. Maybe when more people started going to school, our culture turned to one of credentialism. Maybe we started worrying more about evaluating students than teaching them.
Whatever the cause, the result of our current education system is joyless knowledge and passionless learning. It’s more about evaluation than knowledge; it’s more about comparison than proficiency. Gone are the days when being able to bring forth knowledge in sprezzaturistic flashes was more impressive than being able to say you have a 4.0 GPA.
With as factory-like as school already is, it gets worse when we students are graded on a curve. We’re pitted against one another and our goal is just to do better than the next student. This incentivizes being unhelpful and even leading others astray. So, what’s the purpose?
If the real, true purpose of college is to learn, then perhaps we shouldn’t turn learning into a blood sport.
There is so much wrong with our current education system that it’s hard to know what to fix. But maybe there’s something you can do. Maybe you can bring a little life back into the system simply by ending the competition. I read an article by Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, about how he stopped relative grading in his classes. He asked, “Would students be better off if they saw classmates as people who had their back, rather than as people who might stab them in the back?”
I respectfully submit that yes, we would.
End relative grading and let us have that chance.
--Mary B
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
I found your line about not knowing anyone’s name to be particularly poignant. In a class that size, it would have been effortless to learn everyone’s name if any effort had been made, so that really effectively demonstrated how unfriendly the relative grading made your learning environment. The reference to a third historical theme, that is, your reference to sprezzatura, felt a little forced, but we had a lot of things to try to fit into a very limited word count, so believe me, I have a lot of empathy for that struggle. I am interested in your thoughts on the rise of universality and individuality in our Digital Age and how that is influencing our educational system. Do you see a natural change to our educational system coming, or do you think we’re too stuck in our ways? Specifically, do you think the focus on people as individuals and everyone being different that our generation in particular has grown up with will effect change in American education for our children or perhaps our grandchildren?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I have almost no critiques about this post—you did such a fantastic job of making this focused on a specific goal and on appealing to history to back it up. And you’ve got some excellent turns of phrase that draw attention to your point—‘turning learning into a blood sport’, ‘raised on scantron sheets’. I’d be interested to hear about your thoughts about the way digital resources have affected the education system—the way Prof Burton tried to make slack so central to this course, for example, or the online math classes my mom teaches.
ReplyDeleteYou made some great points that I have thought about myself. I feel that competition can be a great learning tool. I know that for me, there have been times when competition has made me more invested in my learning. I think acknowledging this would have made your blog post stronger. However, I agree with you that if we use this tool too much, bad things happen. To base an entire semester’s grade on competition is to overuse the tool – especially in the digital age where networks and collaboration are king. I think it would be more beneficial to help people practice working in a team than to work on tearing each other apart. Most of us don’t need much practice doing that to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI think the only critique I have would have been for you to have addressed the counter argument that gives these types of testing and scoring the credibility they have for their use. Also potentially providing a specifically stated solution (though I believe it is inferred that the solution would be to stop this way of grading students) would have made it more persuasive. Also, if you gave a solution deeper than just stopping that could have made it more persuasive as well. Though I agree with you a hundred percent, especially because this advocates for the rat race mindset which is extremely unhealthy. Also it communicates to students that there is no room for error. That is contrary to everything learning stands for. I mean take Thomas Edison into account. How many times did he fail before the light bulb came to be? I think your topic is also made very poignant because almost everyone has a personal experience with this and those who don't are extremely lucky. Proving that this is a real issue and should be discussed further.
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