Wow. This makes so much sense, it’s scary…
Filed Under (Work) by Laura Smith on 06-02-2010
I just subscribed to Seth Godin’s blog, after reading about it on Scott McCleod’s blog:
“Seth Godin wrote today that:
People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”
I think another big reason is that most people spent at least 12 years of their life being deeply socialized in the “just tell me what to do” model.We know that schools strongly emphasize compliance in the name of order and discipline. We know that the fact-regurgitation model that still dominates schooling mostly leads to the student mentality of “Just tell me what to do to get a B,” rather than “Inspire me to follow my passions and interests and learn more about this on my own.” We shouldn’t be surprised when our graduates take that mentality with them into higher education and/or the workplace.”
This flips education on its ear. That’s what schools are all about: The grades. The tests.How would our students perform if they were not bound by grades? What would they achieve if they were not limited by percentages? If “I got an A plus!” was not the measure of their success?
Interesting! I work in a PYP school where the emphasis is on inquiry. Our aim is to establish a culture of thinking and we are moving away from the ‘tell me what to do’ model. That’s the kids… There are plenty of staff who still have that attitude though!
I love reading Seth’s Blog, it is a daily source of inspiration and new thinking. This one hits especially close to home, doesn’t it? In my ideal school, there would be no grade levels or letter grades. The focus would be on learning and growth and not on meeting some predetermined bar of success. I think that a lot of students would surprise us with where they go with learning if we weren’t imposing artificial limits for them. How do we do this in the current system with grades, percentages, and tests?
For those of us who have been part of education for nearly all of our lives, this is really something to think about, isn’t it. Learning because we want to learn, not because we have to. It shouldn’t be a surprise when employers hear “just tell me what you want me to do.” Districts ask the state – tell us what we need to do to rank higher – states ask the federal government – tell us what to do to receive federal funding – and the federal government…..well…..
Funny, I blogged about that very Seth Godin post the other day myself. And in our weekend leadership team meeting yesterday we talked at length about that idea of inspiring young people to find, and follow a passion.
You are right about the tension between those ideas and the grade driven judgment in schools. There is a definite need for a sea-change in the way we assess, and in determining WHAT we assess. The problem is that no-one seems to have come up with an effective answer to how we quantifiably assess things like thinking skills and personal attributes… and the reason they can’t is probably because those very skills and attributes are set in opposition to notions of making everything quantifiable. So a Catch 22? Perhaps.
Perhaps the way forward is for schools to have the nerve and the belief that if they build cultures, systems and a curriculum that focuses primarily on those skills and attributes, then the ‘grades’ will take care of themselves. It’s quite a leap of faith, but one that I think is necessary.
Great Post. Students are too concerned with the grade and not the learning. I often hear, “How many points is this worth?” after passing out an assignment. I usually respond with, “A billion. You should do the assignment because you will learn, not because you deem the point value worth the effort.” They are usually annoyed, but it illustrates the point you make. Students want to know where the hoop is so they can jump through it. It’s not their fault though. They were trained at a very young age to reach for those grades.
I’ve started an experiment where students will create all of their assessments for 10 weeks. Check it out and tell me what you think.
- @TheNerdyTeacher