RSSGrading Woes and Growing Pains
May 16th, 2007 | By Eric Hoefler | Category: Education/LiteracyFor many students, the last month of school is a time of new understanding: the poor choices of the last eight months really do add up. This is the time many students come looking for “extra credit” or some other way to change their grades.
Recently, in West Virginia, a student sued for a grade change, but the judge claimed he had no authority to order it. He also said schools have a legitimate role to play in teaching “responsibility, time-management skills, accountability, and the importance of deadlines and discipline.”
I struggle with this idea, at least in regard to the junior and senior level students I teach. I agree that the judge’s list is valid and important, but I’m not sure it’s my job to teach it. The girl bringing the lawsuit received an “F” on a project because she handed it in a day late. That kind of punitive act is where I grow conflicted. I can see the argument that deadlines are important, and that in “the real world” employees get fired for missing them. However, the work I’m asking students to do is, I believe, useful and valid work that’s worth doing. If I refuse to give credit for it, even if it’s late, aren’t I undermining its validity, at least in the mind of the students?
In another case, an administrator overturned grades of some seniors, claiming the teachers hadn’t given due notice to parents about the seniors’ possible failure. Our school requires that we contact parents at the beginning of the last grading period if any senior is in danger of failing. I suppose I’m fine with this requirement, but to swing back to the other side of the fence: shouldn’t seniors be expected to be responsible for their own performance? They are eighteen, after all. Throughout history, the turn from childhood to adulthood has traditionally occurred at twelve years of age. In most of Europe, fourteen is considered the age of maturity. It seems in America, though, we keep “kids” trapped in an adolescent refusal of adulthood all the way through college. Even then, some return home to continue their adolescence a few more years.
I believe my primary responsibilities are to help students read a variety of texts critically and analytically, to express themselves effectively in writing and speech, and to think carefully and question closely. I also hope to inspire appreciation, awareness, curiosity, and a bit of wonder. I do stress the need for discipline in any worthwhile study, but it’s the discipline of scholarly research or careful thinking. Obedience, time-management, accountability, and the importance of deadlines, on the other hand, don’t seem to be mine to instill, particularly in seventeen and eighteen-year-old students. That so many think it is my responsibility seems to me a symptom of a larger problem: the increasing demand on schools to be surrogate parents, physicians, and psychologists. Or do I have my job description wrong?
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I think it has, unfairly, fallen on the teachers’ shoulders to be surrogate parents, especially when it comes to doling out the lessons of personal responsibility. But I had a thought on this: what it you remove the intent behind what you do and just keep things as they are for structure’s sake? That is, you have a set deadline for a project, a student misses that project and therefore must face the consequences, whatever they may be*; there would be no intent to teach responsibility in preparation for the “real world”, only asking the student to obey the rules as they are set down. Perhaps, as a side benefit, they would then learn to obey deadlines/rules[?]. I know intent is intangible, I know it can’t be seen, but if it is taken away, couldn’t then some of the stress of what is (often incorrectly) perceived as the schools’ responsibilities also be lessened? Couldn’t the “fight” between students and teachers/administrators (aka “the man”) also be somewhat diminished if the students felt less under pressure to learn responsibility because the schools are telling them to? I suppose an analogy would be participating in an organized sport - you have rules by which you play the game to achieve your goal (winning); if you don’t play by those rules, you are penalized, no two ways about it… that’s just how it is. No intent, just rules.
*I am not advocating this kind of approach; actually, I agree with you on validating work done, even if it is late (and ONE DAY!? Come on [see, even I don't wholly agree with my diatribe])!). I’m just curious as to how schools’ “responsibilities” to teach could be perceived by outsiders if intent and expectation (by parents) are removed. Your thoughts?