As we prepare to enter the holidays, burdened by complaints from students upset about getting an A instead of an A+ and whining about grades instead of wanting to talk about what they might have learned, I thought this article by Ralph Hexter, president of Hampshire College, in Inside Higher Education provides a bigger perspective.
Here are some excerpts:
“Much of what lies behind our current economic train-wreck stems from short-sightedness — focus on short-term goals and gains — and near-sightedness — seeking to maximize one vector without regard for context in which that vector has value to begin with.”
Hexter discusses how higher education has, perhaps, missed the boat in educating students rather than simply perpetuating a race for high grades and credentials.
“The system we use to grade students doesn’t just mirror this scale of values. It blesses and promotes it. Even as the admissions officers of our most prestigious colleges and universities claim to seek “well-rounded students,” they are choosing among students who have already learned to play the high-score-and-grades game in high school. Most colleges and universities do not question what students and their parents want of them: Enough seats in the “right” majors so they can get their passport to a professional school. How? By wracking up the same string of A’s during their undergraduate years as they did before. Little time for experimentation, for taking risks — where the only “loss” might be a less than perfect transcript. If they don’t get into the right graduate or professional program they might not get the credential that is the ticket to a job where they can reap larger profits more quickly than those who went before them, in the same fields. Because, the assumption is, those fields will always be profitable.”
Hexter then describes the doing away with grades at his institution.
“This philosophy undergirds Hampshire’s whole system of education. Instead of choosing among pre-set majors — predetermined fields with established questions — each student crafts a unique educational plan of work that must be approved by two professors. Each student submits a portfolio to show that she or he has achieved the agreed-upon goals, and faculty evaluate the totality of each student’s accomplishments. Our students come to know that the first step in learning is defining the question and setting it in context. Even more: To take responsibility for deciding which questions to ask, quite often of a status quo that seems unassailable, and then by means of study, research, interrogation, and creative reflection, to reframe the question in light of changing circumstances.”
I need to search for something like this. I am tired of students pre-occupied with grades and credentials who miss the point that they are here to learn something. Radical experimentation is in order.
The article is “The Economic Collapse and Educational Values” and is at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/12/18/hexter.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
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4 comments:
"Hexter discusses how higher education has, perhaps, missed the boat in educating students rather than simply perpetuating a race for high grades and credentials."
As a parent, I've seen this "race" present as early as middle school when kids in public schools are discreetly divided up by some teachers. Education in most public schools today must teach to quotas & standardized tests, not to any educational value always. The kids whose parents can hire private "coaches" as early as junior high school, continue on like this while most fall through the system or face an uphill climb for education. Socio-economic differences was an issue which was addressed in the early 1970s at Pittsburgh by educator K. Leroy Irvis with Act 101 programs. Not necessarily a minority program however based on socio-economic factors for kids who are capable and bright but need support through admissions, academic support and some financial assistance too.
Educators know these issues already--as graduate schools still want to be competitive, is making a GRE score or a GPA of 3.5-4.0 so important as a cut off for scholarships or as any real indicator of potential for academic success?
There is a surge right now in applications not to Ivy league type schools anymore, but rather to community colleges.
How do you measure academic promise? Lord knows many of us on search committees don't care about a new graduates GPA or GRE score, yet students must worry about it for other reasons--getting in the door, maintaining it for employer reimbursements, or for scholarship cut offs.
When I first applied to graduate programs several years ago, one school administrator said to me on the phone that he didn't even open my file after 3 mths because he put my folder in a pile of GRE scores that were laughable. In high school, I took the SAT exam years ago too, had no idea even what it was, and I heard the same joke when I reached undergraduate college, what kind of an SAT score is that? I did well in high school but never knew what an SAT exam even was for. Today wealthy families can hire private coaches from the Princeton Review for their kids on the higher socio economic ladder,sure to make sure Johny or Mary get into all the right programs with all the right recommendation letters too, while a spiralling percentage still continue to drop out in public high schools.
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are some of the highest cities with attrition rates. The lucky few who survive American public high schools deserve that educational support. The atmosphere is built up that way from elementary school today, and an interesting question might also be why there is a surge in parents who homeschool their children today up into high school levels.
I get students like this all the time too, they don't even know how to put their names on an assignment in graduate school, or feel they have to do *anything*, many of them are getting their free tuition reimbursed from the university since they work there, and *expect* that you return the *favor*. Say what? Those ones really stop me in my tracks.
Radical is not always a bad word.
I wanted to note 2 short points on what i posted earlier:
"When I first applied to graduate programs several years ago, one school administrator said to me on the phone that he didn't even open my file after 3 mths because he put my folder in a pile of GRE scores that were laughable. In high school, I took the SAT exam years ago too, had no idea even what it was, and I heard the same joke when I reached undergraduate college, what kind of an SAT score is that? I did well in high school but never knew what an SAT exam even was for. "
1. This was not at this school, but another school I had applied to, that had put my folder in the 'other' i.e. low GRE score pile/wait list pile.
2. Also, let me add that went to a small liberal arts/humanities focused 4 year state college (not in PA) which was an excellent small university, and was unique and "radical" as you suggest in your original post, by not having any grading system aside from Pass/Fail-- However, each student from first years up to seniors, received a Pass Fail mark, but also with a 1 page evaluation written up by the faculty member. Senior students also completed a very involved thesis in order to graduate-this was at the undergrad level. It worked well, and still turns out many strong graduates who went on to graduate programs several of my friends entered medical school from there as well even with pass fail scores but high GRE scores.
Many smaller 4 year schools offer such types of "experimentation" or innovative type programs.
Chatham did away with GRE scores required for admission about a year ago and is a growing trend because of what educators know doesn't always indicate successful outcomes.
sorry I meant to say SAT scores for admission , not GRE scores.
"Chatham did away with GRE scores required for admission about a year ago and is a growing trend because of what educators know doesn't always indicate successful outcomes."
related piece of interest to educational values etc
still posted on todays (12/29) view of the Chronicle website at:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i31/31a03701.htm
From the issue dated April 11, 2008
"So Much for the Information Age"
"Today's college students have tuned out the world, and it's partly our fault"
By TED GUP
"I teach a seminar called "Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge." I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition." "Not one hand went up."
[excerpt]
..."It is time to once again make current events an essential part of the curriculum. Families and schools must instill in students the habit of following what is happening in the world. A global economy will have little use for a country whose people are so self-absorbed that they know nothing of their own nation's present or past, much less the world's. There is a fundamental difference between shouldering the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship — engagement, participation, debate — and merely inhabiting the land...."
[excerpt]
..."The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."
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