Grading distorts and bastardizes our love for learning

When I share that I assess my students everyday without ever needing to grade, I tend to get some very odd reactions. Because most people grow up with grading, many of us have been led to believe that learning and grading are synonymous. It's as if that because we know where there's smoke their's fire, we (wrongly) extrapolate that where there are grades there's learning.

It's more than a little ironic that many assume grading and learning to be synonyms, while others see them for what they really are -- antonyms.

So why is this?

In her post titled Distorted Vision: Knowing your own culture in order to know others, Sondra Thiederman puts it this way:

It is as if each of us is a fish in a fish bowl. The fish swims around inside the bowl and is surrounded by water and glass. The fish is unaware of the water and the glass and, most important, does not realize that those two substances distort the accuracy with which he sees the outside world. Our culture is like that water and glass. We see the world through a distorted screen created by our deeply and often subconsciously-held values and beliefs.

While a fish isn't aware of the glass and water, people immersed in school can't recognize how grading distorts and bastardizes our love for learning. Like a fish immersed in water, we are drowning in grading, and for the most part, we don't even know it.

Seth Godin tells this story in his book Linchpin:

A guy is riding in the first-class cabin of a train in Spain and to his delight, he notices that he's sitting next to Pablo Picasso. Gathering up his courage, he turns to the master and says, "Senior Picasso, you are a great artist, but why is your art, all modern art, so screwed up? Why don't you paint reality instead of these distortions?" 

Picasso hesitates for a moment and asks, "So what do you think reality looks like?" 

The man grabs his wallet and pulls out a picture of his wife. "Here, like this. It's my wife."

Picasso takes the photograph, looks at it and grins. "Really? She's very small. And flat, too."

We've immersed ourselves so much in grading that we can't even recognize that they are imaginary. Similar to how a photograph makes us small and flat, grades reduce learning to a mere symbol -- an A or 67% -- but neither the photograph or the grade can paint reality. They are only as real as constructs can be real - which isn't very much. When compared to a real person or real learning, both the photo and the grade are fraudulent fabrications. It may be convenient for us to pretend these fabrications are real but that doesn't make them so.

And until we come up for air and see grades for what they really are, small and flat, we will continue to experience learning as nothing more than a means to an end that most students can't wait to be rid of.

The Folly of Chasing perfect

I want to make the case that perfect is not only unattainable, but it is not even a desirable outcome because it is ultimately a sabateur of learning.

As a classroom teacher, I can attest to the debilitating effects of success. Someone who has a healthy and resilient attitude towards failure can learn a lot from their mistakes, while sometimes, ironically, it is our successes that can be paralyzing. I say paralyzing because if the point of school or work is to show how good you are, and you achieve that success, why would you risk making changes to your winning recipe?

The truth is successful people know that yesterday's solutions rarely solve tomorrow's problems; because of this, successful people are always creating and recreating themeselves. But does this creating and recreating mean that these successful people are striving for perfection?

Perfection is a dangerous thing to pursue. There is a big difference between focusing on improvement and growth rather than focusing on showing off or not looking dumb.

In Linchpin, Seth Godin examines how the pursuit of perfect is too often bastardized into mistake avoidance:

How many of your coworkers spend all day in search of perfect? 

Or, more accurately, spend all day trying to avoid making a mistake? 

These are very different things. Defect-free is what people are often in search of. Meeting spec. Blameless.

We've been trained since first grade to avoid mistakes. The goal of any test, after all, is to get 100 percent. No mistakes. Get nothing wrong and you get an A, right?

 Read someone's resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploites and one typo. Which are you going to mention first?

We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect.

So why are we surprised  that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect?

The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of a Public Speaker offers his thoughts on avoiding perfection when he practices his public speaking skills:

And when I say I practice, I mean I stand up at my desk, imagine an audience around me, and present exactly as if it were the real thing. If I plan to do something in the presentation, I practice it. But I don't practice to make perfect, and I don't memorize. If I did either, I'd sound like a robot, or worse, like a person trying very hard to say things in an exact, specific, and entirely unnatural style, which people can spot a mile away. My intent is simply to know my material so well that I'm very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.

Even as a professional speaker, Berkun can rationalize how perfection is not only something unworthy of striving for, but it isn't even desirable. Godin might say Berkun's artfulness could be found in his ability to inspire wisdom by weaving a witty tale . And yet, there would be something wholly and entirely inaccurate with saying Burken's speaking skills are 'perfect'.

Let me be clear, I'm not calling him perfect or imperfect - I don't mean to judge at all - rather, I am saying the term perfect is a fraudulant fabrication that serves no purpose when describing someone's knowledge, skills or attitudes.

Focusing on perfection cheapens learning and forces us to think in linear terms. As if there were two endpoints - the start and the end - and if we just do our homework, and study for the test, we will one day cross the learning finish line. Thinking in this way takes educational phrases such as "life-long learning" and turns them into punch lines.

If we really believe in "life-long learning" then we have to think of learning as an asymptote rather than something linear. We have to model learning as a journey rather than a destination; however, it's hard to convince kids to focus on their learning rather than their achievement as long as teachers act like giant grade spewing Pez dispensers.

In his book The School Our Children Deserve and article The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement, Alfie Kohn offers this indictment of overemphasizing achievement and 'perfection':

No one succeeds all the time, and no one can learn very effectively without making mistakes and bumping up against his or her limits. It’s important, therefore, to encourage a healthy and resilient attitude toward failure. As a rule, that is exactly what students tend to have if their main goal is to learn: When they do something incorrectly, they see the result as useful information. They figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.


Not so for the kids who believe (often because they have been explicitly told) that the point is to succeed--or even to do better than everyone else. They seem to be fine as long as they are succeeding, but as soon as they hit a bump they may regard themselves as failures and act as though they’re helpless to do anything about it. Even a momentary stumble can seem to cancel out all their past successes. When the point isn’t to figure things out but to prove how good you are, it’s often hard to cope with being less than good.

Consider the student who becomes frantic when he gets a 92 instead of his usual 100. We usually see this as a problem with the individual and conclude that such students are just too hard on themselves. But the "what I’m doing" versus "how well I’m doing" distinction can give us a new lens through which to see what is going on here. It may be the systemic demand for high achievement that led him to become debilitated when he failed, even if the failure is only relative.

The important point isn’t what level of performance qualifies as failure (a 92 versus a 40, say). It’s the perceived pressure not to fail, which can have a particularly harmful impact on high-achieving and high-ability students. Thus, to reassure such a student that "a 92 is still very good" or that we’re sure he’ll "do better next time" doesn’t just miss the point; it makes things worse by underscoring yet again that the point of school isn’t to explore ideas, it’s to triumph.

The day's of selling perfection through grading as education's snake-oil has run its course. We have to stop selling learning as this thing we can measure on a scale from zero to one-hundred. It's not a letter or a check mark. It can't be bar-graphed or averaged; rather it might be said that proficiency is sitting on top of a mountain while expertise is chasing the horizon.

Because the consequences of overemphasizing achievement and pursuing perfection are too costly to endure, we have to see perfection for what it really is - a fraudulant fabrication that serves no purpose in encouraging students to focus on their learning.

Whose Agenda do you follow?

When I speak to educators about assessment, we inevitably discuss grading. I experience a number of different responses, but I am pleased to say that most educators I speak to recognize the short-comings of grades. They understand that reducing real learning to a symbol like a number or grade rarely if ever provides an accurate, authentic depiction of that real learning.

And yet, I am very saddened to say that these same teachers share with me that they feel like they have to grade. Typically, they point to their administrators, or school district, or government as the external force that is placing pressure on them to grade.

Seth Godin speaks quite strongly about this kind of situation in his book Linchpin:

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn't lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?

I am disheartened by the idea that the teaching profession feels like we must accept this necessary evil. There is something very immoral and unethical about believing any evil to be necessary.

If grading is not your agenda, and you feel like it is not leading you where you or your students want to go, why are you doing it?

The obvious answer is that teachers want to remain employed.

Fair enough.

I agree that you can make more of a difference by remaining inside the system, rather than from the outside looking in; however, what are you doing to make a difference? What are you doing to be subversive towards grading?

Are you sure you need to grade as much as you do? Even if you have to give a grade on a report card, where does it say you have to have a collection of grades to come up with a grade? And if it does say this some where, are you grading as little as necessary?

Do you have to give a final exam? Where does it say you have to count it on the report card? If it's a provincial or state-wide standardized test, where does it say you have to count it on the report card, or that you have to grade it at all?

Do you have to average averages to come up with an average?

How often do you talk about grades? Is it only on report card day? Why is it more than that?

If no one is saying you have to do these things you feel uncomfortable doing, then why are you doing them?

And if someone is saying you have to do these things, then what are you doing to make change? Before you answer, ask yourself two things - if not you, then who? and if not now, then when?

Be the change?

We must be the change that we wish to see in the world.

Ghandi authored these words some time ago, but they have not lost an ounce of their meaning. I share Ghandi's words with anyone who expresses pessimism or cynicism towards change.

Yes change can be frustrating. For me, I can at times feel frustrated with other's inability to push for progressive educational reform. I am not a stranger to colleagues who say thing like 'change comes from the top' or 'I'm just a teacher-what can I do?' or 'That's never going to change'.

Most recently, I over heard some one say that a teacher can't make change in their school district while still being employed as a teacher.

So, who should I be employed by to make change in my school district. And if this was true, what does that say about the leadership of the school district?

Excuses are like eye-brows - everyone has them. The choice isn't whether you can or can't; rather the choice is whether you want to or not.

Seth Godin's book Linchpin leaves stinging criticism of those who place a premium on obedience. To the employees, Godin says:

If you want a job where it's okay to follow the rules, don't be surprised if you get a job where following the rules is all you get to do. If you want a jobe where the people who work for you do exactly what they're told, don't be surprised if you boss expects precisely the same thing from you...

If you want a job where you do more than follow instructions, don't be surprised if you get asked to do things they never taught you in school.

If you want a job where you take intellectual risks all day long, don't be surprised if your insights get you promoted.

To the employers, Godin explains:

Would your organization be more successful if your employees were more obedient?

Or, consider for a second: would you be more successful if your employees were more artistic, motivated, aware, passionate, and genuine?

You can't have both, of course.

It's time we ended this facade. Employers don't really want mindless compliant employees, nor do employees want to be so. It's time teachers took back their professionalism and be the change we want to see in education.

Because if not us, then who? And if not now, then when?

Pink, Godin, Kohn and asymptotes

Dan Pink and Seth Godin both refer to asymptotes in their books Drive and Linchpin.


I found myself agreeing with Seth Godin when he wrote, "asymptotes are sort of boring." But my tune quickly changed after reading both Dan Pink's book Drive and Godin's Linchpin. I found myself oddly fascinated with how they used analytic geometery to show how learning mastery can be achieved.


Essentially, asymptotes occur when you have a line that forever approaches a point but never gets there.



Pink explains in his book Drive:

This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really close to it... The mastery asymptote is a source of frustration. Why reach for something you can never fully attain? But it's also a source of allure. Why not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.

I love how Pink shows the cons of pursuing mastery is at the same time the very reason mastery is so appealing.



Godin takes a slightly different perspective on the pursuit of mastery in his book Linchpin:

Ten percent of applications to Harvard are from people who got a perfect score on their SATs. Approximately the same number are from people who were ranked first in their class. Of course, it's impossible to rank higher than first and impossible to get an 820, and yet more than a thousand in each group are rejected by Harvard every year. Perfection, apparently, is not sufficient. 

We have a lot of bean counters in our world. They are busy little people who love to count stuff - and in education, these bean counters love to add up grades. In doing so they wrap themselves in a blanket of grades. Keep in mind though that this blanket is wholy and entirely fabricated. 

Grades are a man-made attempt at counting something that you can't count - mastery of learning. How many students are duped into thinking that the pursuit of that A or 100% is the asymptote they should be striving for?

We set kids up for failure when we use grades to guide students as they pursue mastery, because they encourage students to think of learning mastery as linear, as opposed to an asymptote.

When students come to see the pursuit of mastery as a destination, rather than a journey, they can't understand how anyone could be attracted to something that is so elusive and so frustrating.

Alfie Kohn explains how research has come to differentiate between students who have a 'learning orientation' and a 'grades orientation'.

Did you notice what I labelled the y-axis? Can you see how the objective of an asymptote changes depending on whether you put learning or grades on your y-axis?

This is exactly why I become so bothered when I see educators become distracted by attempting to define and standardize what constitutes as an A or 90%, when the real problem is that grades, by their very nature, undermine learning and mastery.

For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.

Indoctrination

I am reading Seth Godin's new book Linchpin, and I am loving it. I can see why Time writes, "It's easy to see why people pay to hear what he has to say." Godin's message carries a cunningly subversive tone. He reads like a 'stick it to the man' instruction manual - and I love it!

One of Linchpin's chapters is titled Indoctrination: How we got here. Godin summarizes the chapter:

The scam is that just about everything you were taught in school and by the media was an invented myth, a fable designed to prep you to be a compliant worker in the local factory. School exists for a reason, but that reason might not be what you think it is.

Can you think of the mindless busy work that you had to do in school? Can you remember those fill in the blank worksheets and bubble shading scantrons? Remember sitting in your desk, facing forward while you learned in isolation?

Well, the gig is up.

It's time we schooled school and end this facade.

We need to make some dramatic changes to education. And we can start right now by listening to some of these ideas.

Aaron Eyler suggests we flip our curriculum.

Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves suggest we move beyond the distractions of the Third way and graduate onto The Fourth Way.

Alfie Kohn and Daniel Pink suggest we halt the Punished by Rewards and focus on developing the intrinsic Drive that is in all of us.

I'd write more, but I have to go to school to make a difference with my students.