I Will Bother to Shift

September 30, 2010
“. . . there are three predictable effects when students are led to focus on bringing home better report cards: They tend to become less interested in the learning itself, to think in a more superficial fashion, and to prefer the easiest possible task. But who is going to bother rethinking the value of rating students with letters or numbers – or the value of the specific tasks involved, like memorizing facts for a test or filling out worksheets, that determine who gets which grades — if the goal is just “success,” and that’s equated with getting an A?” - Alfie Kohn

I apologized to several students this week for training them to care about the grade and not the learning. We’ve set them up- we SAY we want them to be intrinsically motivated yet insist on measuring them based on how many facts, words, details, they can cram in to their brains (often stored in short term memory) and spit out for us in a contrived, disconnected way. We’ve made the lowest order thinking skill our highest priority. The fact is, if knowledge is the goal, we’re out of a job. They can get knowledge sitting at home in their pajamas.