In polls recorded every three years by Gallup Incorporated, a global performance-management consulting company, it is shown that American’s approval of public schools has never been higher than 45% since 1988. The most recent poll in 2012 shows that approval of schools has reached its lowest point yet at 29%. Among all the publications against public schools, John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School” stands out as a call for an incredibly drastic change. “Against School” argues that the American school system is so distorted it needs to be completely abandoned. Gatto believes since George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln did not have go to a compulsory school, so neither should the children of the current age.
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Students have become accustomed to associating themselves and their value as a student with their grades. The writer and teacher Alfie Kohn, noticed when teaching at a high school that some kids suffered existential vertigo when they were no longer graded. At early ages students are pitted against each other to earn the highest grade. This ruins the environment, making school a modern day coliseum with adolescent gladiators. It also makes it hard for the teacher to develop a positive relationship with the students. Yet these grades don’t show us what the student is capable of or where the student actually needs help. Grades are an aspect of school that is harming the learning of children and their experience at …show more content…
Grades are simply an easy way for us to quantify a student’s academic progress. This makes it easy to track over the years the student’s intelligence and assign their respective role. There are two traditional forms of grading, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced. With norm-referenced grading, a.k.a. grading on a bell curve, students are measured against each other. This filters out a few students for the few jobs in a certain field. Norm-referenced grading is commonly used in areas such as medical school exams and the BAR exam for aspiring lawyers. Criterion-referenced grading is the traditional letter grade system used in the United States public schools. This type of system often puts high-stakes on tests, which hold carry significant weight in a student’s grade and future options. Researchers have found the more focused on getting good grades, the more likely they will cheat, even if they believe it is wrong (Kohn 241). When a test holds some significant importance to the student there is incentive to cheat. Copying off of another student or paying them to take the test in your place in order to stay on the basketball team or go to the college of choice, these are common motives of the cheating that is a bi-product of high stakes testing. When a student cheats they are hindering the progression of their knowledge, so a system that creates cheaters hurts learning. Finally, elementary and
Students have become accustomed to associating themselves and their value as a student with their grades. The writer and teacher Alfie Kohn, noticed when teaching at a high school that some kids suffered existential vertigo when they were no longer graded. At early ages students are pitted against each other to earn the highest grade. This ruins the environment, making school a modern day coliseum with adolescent gladiators. It also makes it hard for the teacher to develop a positive relationship with the students. Yet these grades don’t show us what the student is capable of or where the student actually needs help. Grades are an aspect of school that is harming the learning of children and their experience at …show more content…
Grades are simply an easy way for us to quantify a student’s academic progress. This makes it easy to track over the years the student’s intelligence and assign their respective role. There are two traditional forms of grading, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced. With norm-referenced grading, a.k.a. grading on a bell curve, students are measured against each other. This filters out a few students for the few jobs in a certain field. Norm-referenced grading is commonly used in areas such as medical school exams and the BAR exam for aspiring lawyers. Criterion-referenced grading is the traditional letter grade system used in the United States public schools. This type of system often puts high-stakes on tests, which hold carry significant weight in a student’s grade and future options. Researchers have found the more focused on getting good grades, the more likely they will cheat, even if they believe it is wrong (Kohn 241). When a test holds some significant importance to the student there is incentive to cheat. Copying off of another student or paying them to take the test in your place in order to stay on the basketball team or go to the college of choice, these are common motives of the cheating that is a bi-product of high stakes testing. When a student cheats they are hindering the progression of their knowledge, so a system that creates cheaters hurts learning. Finally, elementary and