Giving a student a zero teaches them a lesson

Here is some of the common sense around giving kids zeroes that doesn't make a lot of sense and is far too common.

Giving a kid a zero teaches them a lesson.

Yes, zeroes do teach lessons, but they are not the lessons you might be thinking. 

When we say things like "teach them a lesson" or "hold them accountable" it's important to note that these phrases mean nothing more than "punish children". Punishment teaches an important lesson: 

You can get your way with people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. 

One problem with this strategy is that the more you use power to control someone the less real influence you will have on their lives. As a parent and an educator, the prospect of reducing my influence with my children and students is unacceptable. 

This is why I've come to believe that children should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. To do this, we need to move away from a "doing things to" children mindset and move towards a "working with children" mindset. If done properly, this means that teachers are less like judges-in-waiting who have an adversarial relationship with kids to being more like a safe and caring ally.

We need to move away from thinking "when kids do something bad, we must do something bad to them" and move towards "we have a problem here; how are we going to solve it together?"

It takes courage not to punish students with zeroes, and it takes real effort to see problems as an opportunity for the teacher to teach and the student to learn. If a child doesn't know how to read, we teach them how to read, and yet when a child doesn't hand things in on time or behave, we punish them. See the difference?

To those who support the use of zeroes, I ask this: "After you've assigned all those zeroes and things are still no better, then what?"

Zeroes motivate kids.

Yes, zeroes motivate kids -- they motivate them to quit.

Assigning students zeroes to make them accountable works well on bumper stickers and it allows many teachers to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, assigning zeroes marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy and from quality. (I stole this from Senator Paul Wellstone)

Failing students, fails them more than they could ever fail us. When children come to school well-behaved and academically inclined, it makes a teacher's job easier; and when they don't, it makes a teacher's job more important. We can give a child a zero or we can help them learn -- but we can't do both.

When children have trouble learning this should be seen not as a problem with the child, but a problem for the curriculum to solve. The practice of assigning grades (including zeroes) prevents this from ever happening.

If a student does nothing, they should get nothing.

The children who are the hardest to like and the hardest to teach, need us the most. Those who support giving students zeroes will say that we've got a choice: Either we hold kids accountable by giving them a zero or we let them get away with bloody murder. False dichotomies make choosing easy. If these were truly our only two choices, I might even choose giving zeroes over anarchy. Thankfully, social promotion and grade retention are not our only two choices. The alternative is to properly support children so they can learn.

On the surface, all this discussion about no zeroes appears to be about grading and credit. But it's not. What we really need to talk about are the long-term goals we have for our children.

When we stop and think about our long-term goals for our children we say we want them to be caring, competent, responsible, ethical, empathetic, happy and intelligent. We also want our children to be intrinsically motivated to learn. 

Yes, we want to make sure that we have high standards for our future drivers, welders, pilots, doctors, and engineers - both for their safety and ours. But we also want drivers, welders, doctors and engineers who are passionate and caring about what they do for its own sake. 

Grades, including zeroes, are at best unhelpful and at worst harmful in pursuing our long term goals. I have as much of a problem with assigning a student a zero, as I do with assigning them any other grade, including 100%.

The case against grades may be an inconvenient truth that we can no longer ignore.

Let me explain.

You see, I could not care less how motivated my children or students are. What I care about is how they are motivated. Motivation is not this single entity that you either have a lot or little of. There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated than you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something or not do something based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. There's a big difference between a teacher who teaches because she wants to artfully guide children to becoming better people, and the teacher who teaches for the summer holidays. And there's a big difference between a student who completes an assignment because they want to learn and a student who completes an assignment because they don't want to get a zero.

But that's not even the catchy part - the real catch is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. When you pry on a student's extrinsic motivation by bribing them with high grades or threatening them with a zero, you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for whatever it is you want them to do shrivels.

Do you want your doctor to be a grade grubber or someone who actually cares about their profession and you? What's scary is that grading can often make these two kinds of people indistinguishable. We should be truly outraged that most members of our species have come to believe that collecting As is the whole point of school.

Here's an example from my own teaching career.

I was teaching grade 8 science, and we were learning about life. We were examining animal cells, plant cells, human body systems, diseases and anything else the students felt like learning about. With my guidance, they have a lot of autonomy and choice in selecting what they want to learn.

Some students were learning about Leukaemia while others learned about the organelles that make up the cell. Sarah approached me and asked if she could do a poster project showing what she can learn about breast cancer. I said, "that's up to you."

She began her research and poster during class, and come lunch she asked me if she could work on her project during lunch hour. Again, I said, "that's up to you."

As she continued to glue new information on her poster, she turned to me and asked something very peculiar. "Mr. Bower, will I get an A on this?"

This was very odd because it was March, which means she hadn't received a grade from me on any project for six months. (Other than the report card, I never grade students)

Another student overheard Sarah's question and replied, "Why are you asking Mr. Bower that? You know nothing is for grades!"

I too looked at her in confusion and said, "Why are you asking me if your project will get an A? You know I won't grade it."

I asked, "Why are you doing this poster?"

She looked perplexed and said, "I want to get an A."

I had her to stop working on her poster and asked, "Sarah, why are you really doing this poster?"

She stopped and looked at me. She started to tear up a little, and said, "my aunty has breast cancer."

I was moved by her honesty and sincerity. It was very clear to me that she cared deeply for her aunty. I said, "Sarah, I couldn't think of a better reason for you to do this poster project. You do this poster and share it with your aunty."

Two days later, Sarah and her mom came in for student-led portfolios. I started to share this story with Sarah's mom when she started to cry. Then Sarah cried. I didn't cry, but I was close. Her mom shared with me that Sarah was reading more at home and showed more interest in learning than in past years.

Honestly, I can not think of a better reason for Sarah to learn about breast cancer. And yet, if I graded students, this whole experience might have ended when she said she was doing this poster to get an A. Another teacher might have smiled and thought to themselves good for you, Sarah. You are such a good little student.

Can you see how ultimately distracting grades can be? They run interference on our motivation and learning all the time. We owe it to our students and our own learning to abolish grading as much as we possibly can so all students can find more authentic reasons to learn.

If you give grades, and your students are uninterested or disengaged, might it be because they are searching for a more intrinsically motivating reason to give-a-shit? It's easy to blame the kids, but it takes more than a little guts to look at our own practices and make changes to how we have done things for so long.

I could use grades to artificially induce my student's learning, but to be honest, I'd rather help them find a real reason to learn. Grades seem so utterly uninspiring compared to Sarah's reasoning.

Some people might respond to this story with, "well that's nice for Sarah, but she was already coming to school and wanted to learn. I have children or students who do neither." To this I say, "you're right, but giving zeroes to students who have either mentally or physically dropped out of school won't help. If giving zeroes to the children who are the hardest to educate worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Since teaching Sarah in a conventional middle school, I have moved on to teaching in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. Guess how many children come to my program with a love for school. Not many. Too many of these children find themselves on school's discard pile. They've had a steady diet of zeroes for years. I find it sadly ironic that people who support assigning zeroes to children do so by claiming it's for the children it hurts the most.

Until we stop selling 'more of the same' as a daring departure from what we've always done, the status quo will continue to gain more and more momentum. Real change will require school to look a lot less like school - and to do that would require a whole lot less zeroes.