Last year, in my very open minded Modern World class, we did a project called "the Trevian Manifesto" in which were allowed to attack New Trier's approach from all angles. Don't get me wrong, I think many aspects of New Trier are well-thought out and good, however, it was easily one of the most entertaining assignments I've ever had.
One of the main topics my partner and I touched upon was grading, and GPA's. This came up today in class: what is the purpose of a GPA? Humans love numbers, so lets throw some numbers that will somehow signify how smart someone is. What a bad idea. I know for a fact that everyone learns in a different way. For me, it's getting involved in the class through participation and active note-taking. But what about the people for whom fitting into to the educational norm is not the best way to learn? For instance, in my family friend's college course, the students were supposed to turn in their class notebook for a grade at the end of each semester. He was a completely auditory learner, and therefore it made little sense to write anything down from him. He turned in a notebook with a few scribbles and a couple formulas, and yet had done extremely well on all the tests.
So if teachers don't grade based on GPA's, homework, tests, and checking off everytime you raise your hand, how can they grade? What is the best style of grading? Clearly, teachers don't have time for more than one system, so what's the compromise? And what can New Trier do to change their current methods?
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I completely agree with you that assigning someone a number does not show how smart they are at all. Like Mr. O'Connor said, I've had a lot of classes where I got a good grade, but I didn't learn anything. And I've also had classes where I learned a ton, but didn't get a good grade. Someone once asked me why grades even matter. Shouldn't you just want to learn. I said that in theory, knowledge should be the ultimate goal, not the grade, but in reality, that's just not how life is organized. Colleges don't care if you learned a lot, they care about the grade. That's why IGSS is such a great idea because in that program, it is simply about the hunt for knowledge. But in reality that's just not how things are.
ReplyDeleteI did the same assignment last year- did you have Mrs. Logan? It was a really fun idea and I loved working on it. However I only somewhat agree with your opinion. I do think it is very important for teachers at NT to make at least a part of the grade based on effort, however to me it is necessary to have part of the grade be about the content learned. What makes this a difficult topic is that colleges, like Zoe said, need a grade. But until colleges make a grading transition, maybe a combination of these two things would be the best solution? This way teachers at NT who normally grade based on the amount of content a student learns won't have to make enormous changes to their grading system, and students have a fairer way of being evaluated.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but I also feel like grades are a necessary evil. Not for classes like ours, where everyone for the most part is here to learn, but for students who have no desire to learn. As my Biology teacher Mr. Goodspeed told us, when he was a student in high school biology, his goal was to pass the class. He had no desire to learn, but he had to pay attention and learn just enough to get a 70% in the class. So grades serve as a motivator for less-motivated students, even though they are a hassle for students who are actually trying to learn, as so are a necessary evil
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