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I attended an academic hell-hole when I went to high-school. Any students who did well were targeted and bullied. When teachers handed-out tests, they always went from highest to lowest grade. I was finally "conditioned" to make lower grades so that I wouldn't get targeted. Gotta love the public school system .
Fortunately, that didn't carry-over into college, and no one in my family will ever be subjected to the public school rat race in the future.
As long as students go through any kind of learning process and they do this in a collective environment - I do not think labels should be emphasized and made public, not even in college. There's no gain in that, other than yes, ego boost - which is never a real gain for the individual or society.
A student who gave a stellar performance knows he is doing well because the teacher told him so privately. How is it useful to have the knowledge that he is doing super rubbed in the face of those who are doing less super?
My sister was a sub-mediocre student until late in high school when she woke up to the reality of life. With the help of a super nice tutor who helped her out as a friend, not as a paid service provider - she took off, was admitted into a very competitive university program, and she is now a published researcher, Phd, the jazz.
All the way through most of high-school she would have been labeled as one of the "dummies". Based on grades, class participation, motivation, etc - she WAS one of the dummies.
Some students are late or very late bloomers and it is wrong to paint them into a "dummy" corner simply based on previous evidence.
How about avoiding public labels or actions that lead to informal public labeling, and just informing the students of their grade discreetly, and encouraging them to reach for much better?
I used to defend the "encourage the competitive spirit" view but I later learned that the power of negative labels can be both very strong and very deleterious. By contrast, the positive labels are more likely to encourage a sense of entitlement rather than to fire up the desire to work even harder and do even better. I see it in my oldest - a student with a school-granted "gifted" label on his forehead.
Motivation is minimal and he is anything but a driven, hard-worker. He likes to frou-frou through homework, get it over with fast and then move on to play. You would think a gifted child who generally does very well on tests would want to eat academics on bread and do a lot more on his own. Oh well, he doesn't - unless it's something assigned.
The "I am already smart" syndrome is more likely to prevail than the "I am smart hence I need to work even harder and reach for my maximum potential".
Generally speaking, ego boosting is not a good idea.
I completely agree with the above post by Syracusa. It is unnecessary , and serves no worthwhile purpose, to make grades public. I'm also against "award ceremonies" in K-12 for the same reason.
They did away with that years ago. They are now all in the same class. Even in the "honors" classes. They said the honor kids might "inspire" the lesser performing kids to do better. I wish it was separated as you stated!
This was not true at my kids' junior high and high school. The kids are all separated by class level and ability. Kids in "honors geometry" are in a completely different classroom that kids in Formal Geometry or a kid in Geometry Concepts.
I'm also against "award ceremonies" in K-12 for the same reason.
Does that include athletic awards? For grade 12, should there be no announcements of academic or athletic scholarships that graduates have earned or the colleges and universities kids will be attending after they graduate? Have a kid with a perfect SAT and not acknowledge that? No mention of Merit Scholarship winners? No valedictorian? (Yes, there should be one; there should not be twenty kids with perfect GPAs and there should be other factors that can objectively winnow down those with the same GPA to one valedictorian and a salutatorian).
In other words, there should be no rewards for excelling at all?
Teachers in my oldest's classes like to announce who got 98-100 on tests when passing out graded tests back to the students. When they give out the test scores lower than 98, they don't say anything. Then when they get to the failing graded tests, the kids are reminded, "Don't forget, you need to attend blah blah to retake this test." So they are letting other kids know who passed and who failed.
Do you agree with that?
Edited to add, I am purposely not posting which of the three camp my kid falls under. I am curious what people think first before telling my oldest's story when she asked the teacher about this.
I like what my 8th grade history teacher did. After the first six week grading period, he rearranged the class seats. The 1st seat in the 1st row went to the person with the highest average, second seat to the second highest, and so on to the last seat in the last row, which went to the lowest grade in the class. It really motivated you to study!
Last edited by villageidiot1; 01-15-2015 at 07:42 PM..
Does that include athletic awards? For grade 12, should there be no announcements of academic or athletic scholarships that graduates have earned or the colleges and universities kids will be attending after they graduate? Have a kid with a perfect SAT and not acknowledge that? No mention of Merit Scholarship winners? No valedictorian? (Yes, there should be one; there should not be twenty kids with perfect GPAs and there should be other factors that can objectively winnow down those with the same GPA to one valedictorian and a salutatorian).
In other words, there should be no rewards for excelling at all?
Graduation vs. labeling students all throughout their period of study.
Two different things.
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