• Home Page
  • About this website
  • Biography
  • Dr. B's Notes
  • Contact
Richard S. Beam

263 Thoughts on School Starting

9/6/2023

0 Comments

 
If school hasn’t yet started where you live yet, I strongly suspect that it will be starting in the next few days.  If you are in a position where this has no impact on your life, I am reasonably confident that you are one of relatively few people in the country.  Whether such a position is to be desired, would seem to be a highly individual matter, so I won’t even try to comment upon that.  Still, for most of us, there is, has been, or is about to be something of a significant impact on our lives.  In my case, it got me considering some of the stuff in my files which I consider to be “education related.”  That’s a fairly loose category, but contains a reasonably large amount of material, so I figured I could get a blog post out of it.  Anyway, here goes….

My suspicion for a long time has been that when many (most?) people think about school, their thoughts tend to focus on two things: tests and grades (obviously).  It has seemed to me for many years that education was supposed to be about acquiring information and the tools to process that information effectively.  But, obsessed with scores, ranking, and, generally, being competitive, etc., as our society is, it appears that for many people the most important aspect of “education” is the grade “given.”  NOTE: grades are supposed to be earned by the student and simply assigned by the instructor (see below), but common parlance is that the teacher “gives” the student a grade, thereby completely denying any possible actual value it might have as a ranking and/or competitive tool, since a gift cannot possibly have any comparative value.  But, people do insist on their little myths, don’t they?  Anyway, here are a few things from my files which have some relation to grades and grading which might generate a chuckle, or two, as this school year gets into full swing.

Having been a teacher for many years, as well as being the son and grandson of teachers and the son of an elementary school librarian, I am quite sympathetic to the challenges all teachers face in trying to deal with testing and grading.  It’s quite easy to create difficulties and/or complications without any reason to think that you are doing so, as in this case of a very simple, basic elementary math problem:

          Teacher: "If I gave you 2 cats and another 2 cats and another 2, how many would you
                           have?”

          Johnny:    “Seven."
          Teacher: "No, listen carefully... If I gave you two cats, and another two cats and another
                           two, how many would you have?"

          Johnny:     "Seven."
          Teacher: "Let me put it to you differently. If I gave you two apples, and another two
                         apples and another two, how many would you have?"

          Johnny: "Six."
          Teacher: "Good. Now if I gave you two cats, and another two cats and another two,
                         how many would you have?"

          Johnny: "Seven!"
          Teacher: "Johnny, where in the heck do you get seven from?!"
          Johnny: "Because I've already got a freaking cat!

The problem, of course, is that, despite what some folks would like to believe, teachers are NOT incapable of error because they can’t possibly have a complete handle on ALL possibly relevant information at all times.  This means that they can (gasp!) make a mistake!  Here’s a simple one as an example:
Picture
Now, many people would say that this teacher simply must have been over-tired and/or distracted.  That wouldn’t surprise me one bit, as it probably happens more often than most people would like to admit.  Here’s another example:
Picture
Actually, the test is a bit harder than you might think, Teach.  The dog MIGHT actually be “Lying,” as in “lying down.”  After all, “laying” refers to “placing something,” so unless you picked up the dog and placed it in this position (possible, I suppose, but unlikely) the dog is actually “lying.”

​
Such things have been known to “get” to teachers after some years, which just MIGHT explain THIS math problem (and the student’s response).
Picture
Tests, of course, lead to grades, a subject of considerable annoyance to students, but only when the grade assigned is lower than the one desired (which is frequent).  For example,
Picture
Even when the grade can be justified to the student’s satisfaction (a rare case), that doesn’t mean that all students are willing to accept that a grade lower than desired can be considered acceptable, at least without some sort of protest.
Picture
Over the years, this has caused many sorts of conflicts between faculty (at all levels) and some students (and even their parents).  The reality is, of course that awarding a high grade simply because one claims to have “tried hard” is as valueless (and pointless) as the practice of assigning low grades early in the course “as an incentive.”  My suspicion, based on conversations with college friends who noticed this “incentive” pattern from some of their teachers, is that it served as more of a DISincentive to actually work harder, once the pattern was recognized.

I confess to a particular fondness for this Doonesbury strip from a good many years ago which touches quite boldly on some of the thinking about grading at the time.
Picture
My experience would lead me to suggest that this professor is probably correct, actual achievement will, for the most part, serve one better than ego-stroking empty praise in the long run.  I suppose that inherited wealth and “showmanship” may work for a few, but, if you wish to discuss actual showmanship, I remember watching Pete Seeger, wearing a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, walk into an auditorium carrying his banjo and 12-string, setting the12-string down and having a “cold” audience singing 4 part harmony in less than a minute.  I’d suggest that that is the sign of a true “showman.”  No hype, no fireworks, no buildup, just someone who had learned (and earned) the right to command an audience and did it without making a big deal if it.

I guess that, in the long run, it all boils down to --
Picture
See you in a couple of weeks,
​

🖖🏼 LLAP,

Dr. B
​

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” 
                                                                                        — Nelson Mandela
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic; capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”                                                               ― Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows           
“Not everything which can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”                                        
                                                                                        — from a sign in Albert Einstein’s office
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Just personal comments about things which interest me (and might interest others).

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly