Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -1
As a Teacher, would withholding grades from my students create, in the end, a better education? When I was a teenager, my dad persuaded me to read one of his favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Much of it I did not understand, but it was nonetheless interesting, or at least interesting enough. Years later, when I became a teacher, I revisited a particular part of the book that I felt was relevant for my students to read as a homework assignment on their very first night of school. The selection began with an experiment centered around a question. “Would withholding grades create, in the end, a better education?” This particular selection generated a lively debate and numerous questions that we, as a class, wrestled with. Questions such as: Can a teacher truly give an impartial grade? Can you get an ”A” in a class and have learned relatively nothing? Does this happen more often than not? Do you focus on managing your classes/grades/time rather than on learning content and or skills? If grades were withheld, would that equate to a better education? Learn for the sake of…? You would receive a grade at the end of the semester, and you would get ample feedback on papers, projects, assignments, and MC tests, but you would not receive the actual grade or percentage on specific assignments, nor would you be aware of your current grade in the class.
I offered several scenarios to them: If I gave you an “A” for this class right now and it was carved in stone, I could not change it, how many of you would show up for class tomorrow? A few hands were raised. (2nd day of class – students attempting to curry a little favor) I continued, What if your Chemistry class was killing you and you could spend some extra time preparing for your upcoming chemistry exam or project? You’ve already got an “A” in history, and your limited bandwidth, at this time, would be better focused on your Chemistry class rather than on History. Additionally, some of your friends meet in the cafeteria at the same time your History class meets, and you’ve already got an “A”. Eventually, you would abandon your History class, focusing on other areas. Put another way, if going into the final exam, you’ve got a 94% in your History class and an 88% in your Chemistry class, which class lays claim to the largest portion of your study time? Final exams bring the ever-present student question: What do I need on the final exam to get the next highest grade or keep my current grade? What’s the lowest score I can get on the final and still get… the grade I want? This mindset, though understandable, is not conducive to student achievement, effort, or success. I would also add that this plays out throughout the semester. Coast in the classes you already have “A’s” in, turn in adequate work, just enough to maintain your “A”. But, if you didn’t know you had a 94% and were running scared, I’d get your best effort.
If grades were withheld, might the students focus on learning the material out of habit or fear, or maybe even interest? It seems most students and parents are interested in the final grade for the class or the grade on the exam, not what the student had or had not learned, garnered, or applied. Ultimately, do grades cover up the failure to teach? We actually had a teacher years ago who was not invited back for the next year. ½ way through the 2nd semester, he showed movies and gave everybody an “A”. The parents, of their own accord, called in with glowing reports of this young teacher. Their kid had never gotten an “A” before, and this teacher should be honored and recognized for his exceptional teaching. One of the biggest temptations for teachers is to give good grades even if they are unearned. The students love you, but more surprisingly, so do the parents.
Soon, we began to question the very nature and effectiveness of compulsory education: good or bad? Is education inevitable? If not standardized public education, then the school of hard knocks? Should imagination be cultivated and assessed in high school? If so, how? Students who struggle with creative writing or art or generating a hypothesis or a thesis or verbally defending that thesis, are they just essentially not creative? Are they just inherently lazy, too quick to give up, or less intelligent? Ultimately, as a student, are you taught to mimic your teacher to achieve a good grade? ½ of 13 = 6.5 – Is this the only correct answer? Is there any other way to show this answer outside of a decimal or fraction? Can your turn of mind see another possible answer? Think outside of the box. Be creative? What if I were to tell you the answer is also 4 and also 8? (I’ll provide the answers in next week’s post) Can you see freshly for yourself?
In the reading, the author talked of a “seriously disciplined, hard-working, but extremely dull with no spark of creativity” student. Is this true of most serious students? Many of my AP students struggled to defend their thoughts/theses verbally and had difficulty thinking on their feet or creating connections outside the textbook answers; however, when asked to dissect the next chapter in outline form and have it on my desk tomorrow, they had no difficulties. Do the teachers model this type of behavior – Serious, disciplined, hard-working, but extremely dull with no spark of creativity? If so, is it because the teachers had tried to repeat things they had already decided to say, thus lacking spontaneity/creativity? Ultimately, is this why school is so boring? Is it possible to create a lesson that allows real-time development and evolution? A lesson that grows out of the unique inquiry from the students. (Teaching without a net) – I know what I want to teach – the facts, the concepts, the objectives, and applications – the “Why”. Learning in a classroom of teenagers isn’t easy and never guaranteed – some students may have stayed up all night or just broken up with their girlfriend/boyfriend or just failed a test in their previous class. Thus, the challenges of teaching teenagers and teaching dull conformity to hateful students isn’t what most teachers want to do. Could a teacher get engaged learning by offering an environment that challenges and pushes the students to learn “for the love of it” – (teachers’ greatest weapon), not for the grade? And if so, wouldn’t that be wonderful? The students would look forward to class because…
The last question for the day’s discussion was, Why did I have you read this? This often garnered some interesting discussion threads. What is the purpose of high school? Is it just for the grade? If grades were the only real desired outcome, what about the curriculum? Who decides what is important enough to get into the curriculum? Outside of basic survival skills, what is truly necessary? Algebraic functions? Robert E Lee’s horse’s name? Why should we learn any of this when we can just google it? How do we learn? Can everyone really get an “A” if they want to? My class was always full of self-professed brilliant underachievers. They often assured me that if they really wanted to, they could get an “A”. I often took issue with this insistence. Muttering something about work ethic being a skill, muscle memory, and a brain they had not pushed since 4th grade. In closing, I offered a final thought – when was the last time that they had turned something in that they had been extremely proud of? Something that they produced that was of real value, that they created and edited, something that they never would have forgotten to put their name on. Something that they could stand behind, throw their shoulder back and exclaim “this is good”. Many of my students, after they had weighed and measured themselves, had found themselves lacking.
The experiment in the text was set in a fictitious University with a professor who withheld grades. As the professor explained the system and his rationale, the student’s reaction was overwhelmingly negative. After the shock wore off a little, the following few weeks panned out as follows: the A students were angry but already had established a work ethic, so they fell into normalized patterns. The B/C students missed early assignments and produced sloppy work. The C/D students missed class. 3-4 weeks in, the A students nervously began turning in superb work. The B/C students began improving their work. The C/D/F students showed up for class to see what was going on. At mid-semester The A students lost their nervousness and became friendly participants, an uncommon characteristic that changed the entire class experience. The B/C students were in a panic and turned in excellent work. The D/F students turned in satisfactory work. In the final weeks, the B/C students had joined the A’s in friendly classroom discussions, and the D/F’s sat in a frozen panic. At the culmination of the class, the student evaluations were replete with the following explanations, “you couldn’t beat the system – you figured out you were going to fail and then go ahead and did what you could” – this allowed the students to relax, and in that environment the content became more interesting because the focus had shifted from the grade to the material. At the end of the course, the professor collected student evaluations of the class structure. 54 were opposed, 37 for, and 9 neutral. However, if you were to break it down by grade dispersion. The A’s were 2 to 1 in favor, the B/C’s were 50/50, and the D/F’s were unanimously opposed.
When I was an undergraduate at BYU, I had a professor who did something a little like this. It was an upper-division writing class, and we were instructed never to put our names on the papers we turned in. We were given a letter by the department secretary that we affixed to our work. The professor would grade the papers without knowing who it was connected to. Thus, every paper we wrote would be evaluated on its merits alone. Every paper had to be your best effort. Interesting how that played upon our thoughts as we both planned and executed our homework.
