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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
18. Freedom
to Fail, the Right to Succeed
Call
it what you will, 'bell curving' or 'marks inflation' or 'social
passing', or even 'maintaining a certain flexibility with regard
to evaluation', an A is not necessarily an A.
True,
the more students fail, the more apt they are to drop out, and the
fewer students a school has, the less money it gets. But to lie
to students about the quality of their work in order to get more
money is to use them. Furthermore, if the students who fail did
quit (and perhaps they should - institutionalized education, academic
education, is not the be-all and end-all for everyone, and those
who say it is are probably just trying to save their jobs), well,
the institution may not need the money. So what's the problem? A
'money for the sake of money' mentality is the problem. (Unless
of course that money would benefit other students, those who don't
quit; but then it's X's benefit gained at Y's expense.)
And
true, the greater the number of failures, the worse the teacher
or the school looks. But, well, looks can be deceiving. In an ideal
world, student success does reflect teacher/school competence
- but ours is not an ideal world. Students in increasing numbers
don't bother to show up for class on a regular basis; nor do they
bother to do the assigned homework. Oh, but 'if your class was really
interesting, they'd show up' and 'if your assignments were really
relevant, they'd do them.' Excuse me, but let's not delude ourselves
- teachers are seldom that important in a student's life. I have,
as a student, on occasion skipped class, and it was never
the teacher's fault - I would've skipped whatever class I had at
that time on that day. And I have, as a student, on occasion gone
to class unprepared, and again, it was never the teacher's
fault - probably I hadn't done the work for any of my classes that
day or that week.
And
then there's this argument: a pass boosts the students' confidence,
their self-esteem, their social development. Yes, it's good for
students to have self-esteem, but at some point our schools must
change from being Wellness Centres to being Educational Institutions:
if I need surgery, I wouldn't want a surgeon whose professors considered
self-esteem when grading. Further, students need a healthy
self-esteem - not a fake one. And, unless they're very young, they
usually know the difference - they can smell a gift, an inflated
mark, from two desks away. And if they don't know it's a gift, a
lie, at the time, they'll find out five years later - and then they'll
really be pissed, and may not survive the blow (for what inner resources
will they have, once they know any confidence they thought they
had was fake).
If
we respect our students, we'll tell them when they've made a mistake,
when they've done it wrong, when it's just not good enough. We don't
have to be brutal about it. And we certainly don't have to be terminal
about it: few failures are irrevocable; in fact, most mistakes are
opportunities to learn - knowing how to do it wrong often sharpens
knowing how to do it right. Notwithstanding that, no course should
be un-passable for the student with the necessary prerequisites,
who attends every class, and who completes the assigned practice.
Which
leads to what makes bell curving, in particular, invalid: it's based
on the faulty premise that effort and ability are distributed within
a class according to a certain stable pattern. I don't know whether
this was ever the case, but it sure doesn't seem to be the case
now: it seems half of my students are academically unprepared
for the course they signed up for and half are attitudinally
unprepared for any course.
The
other problem with bell curving is that it makes grades completely
relative. If an A just means that you're better than most of the
others in the class, then why bother with grades at all - why not
just use ranks? In fact, why bother with standards at all?
When the grades are relative, a B can't mean 'clear and competent
grasp of the course material,' it can only mean 'clearer and more
competent than a C,' which is 'better than a D,' which is 'better
than an F', which is, um, 'worse than a D' - can you spell 'circular'?
Perhaps
the biggest problem with marks fixing is this: if students know
they'll pass anyway, most will be less apt to bother going to class
and doing the work. This feeds a vicious cycle: the marks are fixed
so they don't do the work so the marks have to be fixed.
No,
the biggest problem is this: if students don't have the freedom
to fail, they'll probably never experience success. And I mean true
success - genuine understanding of the material or mastery of the
skills, after genuine effort. Surely students have that right. But
in a system in which it's impossible to fail, it's also impossible
to succeed.
.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated early-July 2002
Previous
polemics
17.
16.
15.
14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
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