Honor Roll Ruled Unfair

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http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/canadi ... 00429.html

Another victory for the "Everyone gets a trophy crowd." :/

These are my thoughts:

This makes me sad. I always thought the honor roll was something special, something to strive for. I didn't make it every semester, but when I didn't, I was disappointed in myself and wanted to do better. Why are we not instead encouraging children to try harder? I am scared for the generation of kids growing up today, I am scared for what my kids (when I have them) will experience going to school. Not everyone can win a trophy, not everyone can be good at everything. We all have unique strengths and weaknesses and part of life is about finding a way to use those strengths.

Don't like a school's approach to education? Then don't enrol your children there.

This is one school, in a very large school district. One of the great advantages of large districts is that they can provide different learning environments to support different learners.

I don't plan on it; but it's an example of an alarming trend.

A trend that goes something like this:

"Fairness means making everybody feel 'special' by allowing no one to feel any more 'special' than anyone else."
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"Fairness means making everybody wealthy by allowing no one to be any more wealthy than anyone else."

I suppose they also want to get rid of the SATs and just give everyone an equal chance at getting into certain colleges, regardless of how hard they actually worked. Then not grade them at all in college to avoid making them feel inadequate, and just give them their degree, no matter how little they actually did to earn it. After that, they could move on to some job where they can just do nothing all day and still get paid. Then, someday in the distant future, while they're lying on their deathbed, they can look back and think about how special they were, just like everyone else.

I'm not alarmed at all.

Decades ago I went to a high school which gave no awards of any type: no honor roll, no athletic trophies, nothing. The educational premise was that awards distracted from the true purpose of education which was to get knowledge and skills into our heads. That was a different premise than the one in this article, but it caused no damage. By removing the competitive aspect, we really did focus more on the acquisition of knowledge and skills rather than on who was ahead of who.

I read a number of the comments to the article and noticed a theme. Many people worried that without the competitive aspect of honor roll, students wouldn't be inspired to put in academic effort. There is the assumption that accolades are the only reason kids will study. I think that is a damaging assumption and I'm glad my school didn't buy into it. My high school instilled in me the idea that the reason you attend class and study is so that you will gain knowledge and skills. They gave no prizes for anything and nobody ever complained about that. It just wasn't on the radar. The mindset that they taught me has been invaluable all my adult life. Doing things so that they will be done- not so that I'll get a prize- is the greatest motivator I have ever learned.

This principal had a completely different reason for his decision. But if he does away with all prizes across the board he may accidentally find himself with a high school as good as the one I went to- where the purpose of studying is to learn things.

edited to add: my high school did give grades. The purpose of the grades was to track how well or poorly you were learning something. That was all they were for. That's all they should be for. The focus was always skill and knowledge acquisition- not on how you were doing compared to everybody else.

Exactly Janissy. Why can't education and knowledge just be its own reward? I say the people who are complaining about this article are the pot calling the kettle black.

We are becoming Idiotcracy.

Well, life is not fair! Welcome to the real world my friend.

How are we calling the kettle black?

Education is it's own reward but why not inspire and reward greatness?

Because you guys see something as inherently unfair! At the same time you guys accept that life is unfair. Isn't this a part of life being unfair and something that we must accept as the unfairness of life? It is inconsistent. Hence, you guys are calling the kettle black.



Why can't the love of learning be its own inspiration? Why do you feel the need to have an extrinsic reward system instead of it being intrinsic? Jannisy is right on this. To me, the principle is doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. Learning should be about obtaining knowledge, wisdom and skills not as a competitive activity. This should be the strive. This is what I believe is one of the things that is wrong with America.

I don't like the principle's view either. In learning and education, one is going to make mistakes and fail. There will be some students who will better at some subjects than others. This I do accept is a fact of life. You can't hide this fact and some students will struggle more than others in certain areas. The thrill for me at least is not to out do the other person but finally grasp the subject and finally have a profound understanding of it. This gives me my rush, gives me my life and my very soul. It is that very moment and the process to get there is the true reward.

For me, when I was able to master programming concepts and the process I had to go through doing it was a rush for me. It exhilarated me. For me, competition and this self-esteem nonsense is a mind killer. All of this competition is suffocating for me. Think of Beethoven's 9th Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3217H8JppI

Why not? Because the reward doesn't actually inspire greatness. It inspires trying to do whatever it takes to get the reward- which is not the same thing as learning.

I realize the world gives Nobel prizes, Olympic medals, Oscars etc. but that seems to have a different effect. It may be because the things rewarded are optional achievments rather than mandatory knowledge. Competitiveness is natural but I think the arena matters. When a body of knowledge and a set of skills need to be learned, offering a reward for those who get the best grades learning them doesn't seem to actually inspire the greatest depth of actually learning them.

Alfie Kohn wrote a book on that, Punished By Rewards.


As I wrote in a post upthread, I went to a high school that didn't give awards. The focus was entirely on acquiring the mandatory body of knowledge and skills and supplementing it with whatever knowledge and skills the student found most interesting. All schools have a balance of required and elective courses so my school was no different in that. What was different was that in removing the reward incentive, the focus stayed on the skills and knowledge and the internal reward that came from learning them. This meant that students chose electives based on what they were most interested to learn, not based on what seemed like the "easiest" course for them to plump up their GPA or coast through.

I didn't need to be rewarded for doing well in biology class. I honestly found biology interesting (and it is now my profession). As I look back, I am grateful that no reward was dangled in front of me for "achieving" in biology class (or elsewhere). Such a reward would have distracted me from how inherently intersting I found the material. It wouldn't make me hate it, but it would make the knowledge come in second- even if a close second- to the reward. Because then my focus would switch to how I was good at biology rather than the biology itself.

There were other kids who disliked biology. They learned just enough to satisfy state requirements. Then they poured themselves into what they actually like- drama, english literature, auto repair, computer programming, what have you. And they really poured themselves into those things- not because they were given a reward for doing well in them but because that was what their interest was.

The premise of Kohn's book is not that rewards make those who don't get a reward feel bad (which is the principal's premise) but rather that they get in the way of true education. I hope the principal reads Kohn's book. Then he will see that there is a much better reason for removing honor roll (and other rewards). Just as perfect attendance rewards inspire students to come in when they are sick (to the detriment of all), rewards for education achievements inspire students to do whatever it takes to get the reward- not the education, to the detriment of all.

I got an excellent high school education in part because I got no extrinsic reward at all for getting that education. I got the diploma. I got the knowledge. And that was the best thing ever.

Yes Jannisy, you're right. Children are buying Ritalin off of the streets so they can do these cram sessions.

I don't have any pedagogical training, so I'm speaking as a layperson here.

But it seems to me that it is a fool's game to try and create a single education system that is going to be able to be all things to all learners. Even if you are designing your curriculum, evaluation and advancement systems to match 80% of learners (and I'd be astonished if you could reach that level), you are still deliberately dropping the other 20% from coverage.

It seems to me vastly superior to place responsibility for curriculum, evaluation and advancement to the lowest practical level. Teachers and principals are, I suggest, in a much better position than administrators within school districts or ministries of education to address the individual learning needs of the students in their classrooms.