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In my Highschool a not completed equaled 0 and affected your overall grade the same way a 0 would its just a different word
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Where I live in Canada, it's standard for every teacher to give 0 to people who don't hand in. In fact I've never had a teacher that doesn't give zeros. They have it on everything you sign at the start of the year and every teacher warns you about it before doing stuff, and when you get your slips for mid term and things it tells you how many zeros you have.
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The school should have just outlawed the 100 point scale and moved to a 5 point scale. It would have fixed the problem that probably see, and no one would have been the wiser. You can still give kids 0s, but since 0 /= 0 they would have gotten what they wanted.
The whole to give 0s or not isn't a coddling issue, it is a mathematical one.
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My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students.
This trend includes:
- Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach.
Here are some of my personal observations on the matter:
- Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach.
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Seriously? Ever since I can remember if you didnt hand in your work you got a zero, end of story. Shit like this is the reason there are tons of kids in college now who cant do algebra.
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United States24569 Posts
On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach.
The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before.
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I completely support the guy.
I work part time as a college instructor, and I've gotten far too many students who are shocked when they fail a class because they didn't turn in any homework.
I feel the need to point out that I'm not a super demanding instructor either. I will remind them that deadlines are coming up, I will give extensions if they have a legitimate reason they need them, and I do accept late work up to a point (though at a slight grade penalty). Despite that, I have had quite a few students who just decide not to turn anything in at all and then go to administration and complain that I am picking on them when they fail.
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+ Show Spoiler +On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach.
I think I'm in love.
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On June 03 2012 01:47 sereniity wrote:
As I go to school myself I find this a very interesting subject, a question I often bring up is "Are your grades a reflection of your knowledge/skill, or your work put into the class?"
Basically, I feel that even if my english is good enough for grade A, I cannot achieve it unless I come to almost every class and do every piece of homework, even if I get very high scores on my tests. Is this right or wrong?
In my own perfect world, a grade would reflect how a good a certain student is at said subject, not how much time dedicated into it. After all, when I'm looking for a job, my grades should show how good I am at said thing, not how nice I was in class. Just because I didn't come to every English class doesn't mean I wont come to work every day. I know a guy in my english class who is terrible at english, yet he's given grade C. The only reason for that is because he did his homework and was nice to the teacher.
Me on the other hand, had a grudge with the teacher (along with the rest of the class) and I've been having constant meetings with the principal to get ourselves a new teacher (she has a terrible attitude and constantly mocks us, has an aura of prestige as if we're crap and she's the best, yet she can't even spell the word boulder).
Anyway, back on topic, I'm getting an E this year because I basically haven't come to many of her lessons (I have about 60% attendance rate). I did however get a B on my final exams (called 'Nationella Proven' in Sweden).
Maybe this was abit off-topic, I got abit carried away :D...
I agree that knowledge of the subject should trump effort but usually the two go hand in hand. However, when you have a truly good command of the subject matter, the work is easier. This is a true story from when I was at school:
I walked in to one of my first GCSE English classes and turned in an essay on Romeo & Juliet that was 3 pages long, the rest of my class turned in their papers, which were much longer, too. My teacher, by the name of Mrs Dobbs, stopped ,me and said "this is only three pages long, I asked for a two thousand word essay" I replied "I didn't need two thousand words, I needed five hundred and seventy two" (don't remember the exact value but you get the idea). She looked at me with that look teachers give you when they think you are being a smart arse and said "I can tell you already that you have failed this assignment" to which I replied "Read it, if anyone else in this class shows a better understanding of the subject material in their essay, then I will re-write my essay and waffle on for an extra fifteen hundred words, if they don't then I will expect an A*" ('A*' is the highest GCSE grade). After reading my essay, I was given an A*.
That story probably sounds like I was a cocky twat, and I was. The part I don't tell at the start is that I went to stage school from the age of 6 and that I had been studying Shakespeare for many years, my understanding of the subject matter came from many hours of reading, studying and being told I was wrong. The simple fact is that if you are gifted in a subject, getting a high grade is easy and you should enjoy being in the lessons. I never spent more than an hour per night doing homework and got top grades in English, Science, Music, Drama and Maths. I got Okay grades in Geography, French and Home Economics because I wasn't very good at the, didn't enjoy them and had to work harder if I wanted a good grade.
When you actually take your exams, whether your teacher likes you or not is irrelevant as your coursework and exams are marked by someone who has never met you. Your grade is down to how well you cover the subject material or how many questions you answer correctly and that is the way it should be.
If two equally gifted scientists perform a study on the same thing, one does it in two weeks and the other does it over five years, which do you imagine would get better, more verifiable results? You get out what you put in, working hard at school means you can work less hard later in life. Good grades open doors, just having a university degree opens many more because it shows you can dedicate yourself to something and stick with it. In an ideal world there would be ways for students gifted at exams to have their mark based solely on exams and those who are good at essays and coursework to be graded only on those, but we don't live in a perfect world.
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if you dont hand in your work, you get a zero.
more than that, you deserve a zero. no work, no credit.
a grade has to be objective. if a kid feels bad because of it, let the parents/guidance counselor console them. if a teacher has reason to suspect that there are extenuating circumstances, almost all will work with the students.
the real solution to this is to go year-round and run school 9-5 giving kids lots of time for P.E., socializing, studying and doing homework rather than the joke of a schedule we use now.
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On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before.
Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same.
I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants.
I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them.
You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0?
Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift.
Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death?
EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph.
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United States24569 Posts
On June 04 2012 07:22 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before. Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same. I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants. I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them. You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0? Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift. Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death? EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph.
There are two things I agree with. The first is that I screwed up and should have said 'deaf' when I said 'death'. The second is that this is subjective and we are presenting opinions, etc..
The key thing I disagree with is that I presented arguments with flawed premises (I'm not talking about other people who I generally agree with here... just myself). It certainly is possible something I said is wrong but you haven't addressed me specifically with your most recent post, so I'm going with "I haven't presented arguments with flawed premises."
The rest of your post mostly shows that you don't actually understand what my position is (or are not talking about me). I'm also not trying to be condescending towards TL in particular with what I said in the post you quoted; I'm talking about a major problem that exists in most/all people.
edit: I'm curious how you would determine who is and is not an expert on this topic.
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The school's policy is not to give out zeroes. The teacher gave out zeroes, and was warned against continuing in this behavior. Teacher continues to hand out zeroes. Teacher gets suspended. This all sounds right and proper to me.
I don't, therefore, understand defending the teacher as much. The school's policy is certainly debatable, but for this teacher to pointedly ignore this policy and continue to do as he pleased was clearly not the right call.
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United States24569 Posts
On June 04 2012 08:27 GeneralStan wrote:
The school's policy is not to give out zeroes. The teacher gave out zeroes, and was warned against continuing in this behavior. Teacher continues to hand out zeroes. Teacher gets suspended. This all sounds right and proper to me.
I don't, therefore, understand defending the teacher as much. The school's policy is certainly debatable, but for this teacher to pointedly ignore this policy and continue to do as he pleased was clearly not the right call.
If the school's new policy was "every sentence a teacher says to the class has to start with the word 'jellyfish'" and a quality veteran of 30+ years wanted to keep structuring his sentences the non-ridiculous way that always works, then people would come to his defense despite him being insubordinate.
The case in the OP is much less severe, but it's the same idea.
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On June 04 2012 07:22 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before. Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same. I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants. I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them. You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0? Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift. Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death? EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph.
I just want to address the point that a kid who has produced zero content and has earned a zero. It is important to consider which zero you are giving, and what the true impact of giving that zero really is. 1st off, 0 on a 5 point scale and 0 on a 100% percent scale are not the same. Secondly, studies have shown that when you give kids 0s, deserved in the teacher's eyes or not, most kids do not see it as a sign to improve or a lesson learned, but a reason to no longer care. Giving one kid a 0 can in some ways punish all of the students, not just the one kid.
I understand why people want to question experts, but (and this may not be you) I never understand why people can not accept that the experts very often do know more. I'm not saying I am an expert either.
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On June 04 2012 08:17 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 07:22 Ghostcom wrote:On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before. Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same. I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants. I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them. You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0? Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift. Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death? EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph. There are two things I agree with. The first is that I screwed up and should have said 'deaf' when I said 'death'. The second is that this is subjective and we are presenting opinions, etc.. The key thing I disagree with is that I presented arguments with flawed premises (I'm not talking about other people who I generally agree with here... just myself). It certainly is possible something I said is wrong but you haven't addressed me specifically with your most recent post, so I'm going with "I haven't presented arguments with flawed premises." The rest of your post mostly shows that you don't actually understand what my position is (or are not talking about me). I'm also not trying to be condescending towards TL in particular with what I said in the post you quoted; I'm talking about a major problem that exists in most/all people. edit: I'm curious how you would determine who is and is not an expert on this topic.
I was actually asking a legitimate question - sayings are (imo) one of the harder things to learn when it comes to a foreign language, thank you very much for clearing it up.
My post was mostly a response to Warble, I guess I could've made that clearer by quoting him and you seperately. My apologies. As far as I've been able to gather you would much rather look at the entirety of the students situation (I think you made an example with a kid who had his mother shot/beaten up right?) than just outright failing them. This is obviously a good position to have as a teacher, but it is one that you actually seem to share with the teacher in case - he DID provide options for the students to avoid the zero, but they didn't take them. I guess where you and I (and the teacher in this case as a third part - I don't think he acted correctly due to bureaucratic reasons) differ are where to draw the line and how hard the consequences should be. This is a question of belief and experience with how students react which will obviously be different with you being from the states, and me being from Denmark.
And I'll gladly make up what constitutes an expert if you define in what context. The overall answer is that it is unlikely for any single person to hold the title as it will require knowledge within fields such as psychology, pedagogy, teaching methods, social science and multiple others. You could argue that a teacher (luckily) fulfills most of these roles, but neglecting the experience of people who have been through an education themselves would be foolish. In medicine we have a saying that the patient is the expert on his/her own body, and I dare say there is some truth in it, even if transferred to another field like discussing education.
EDIT:
To the poster above: How much leniency should we provide? The student obviously lacks the work ethic (which is part of the hidden curriculum at any level of school) to fulfill the assignment. Giving him a N/A and not count the missing assignments at the end of a year would lead to someone doing a 100% the first time and then just not do any more (exaggerated, but you get the point). Furthermore you have to realize it is a competition out there. Those with the highest grades get into the best schools. Artificially inflating the scale due to not giving out zeroes, because it is demotivational effectively punishes all of those who did their homework.
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On June 04 2012 08:56 Trezeguet wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 07:22 Ghostcom wrote:On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before. Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same. I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants. I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them. You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0? Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift. Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death? EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph. I just want to address the point that a kid who has produced zero content and has earned a zero. It is important to consider which zero you are giving, and what the true impact of giving that zero really is. 1st off, 0 on a 5 point scale and 0 on a 100% percent scale are not the same. Secondly, studies have shown that when you give kids 0s, deserved in the teacher's eyes or not, most kids do not see it as a sign to improve or a lesson learned, but a reason to no longer care. Giving one kid a 0 can in some ways punish all of the students, not just the one kid. I understand why people want to question experts, but (and this may not be you) I never understand why people can not accept that the experts very often do know more. I'm not saying I am an expert either.
Not sure what the difference between 0 out of 5, and 0% is. To me, I always translate it into a percentage in my head.
The main thing here, to me, is that I am too honest. I would never game the system. If I get 100% on each of my assignments, and another student gets 100% on half their assignments and don't hand in the other half, we would get the same mark. How is this fair? How would this encourage other students to do their work?
Not sure about what studies happened, but in one of the links I posted, the teacher in this case said that one of his students transferred from a no-zero class into his class. In the other class, he finished ~50% of his assignments. However, after he transferred into his class, the student finished 100% of his assignments. This sounds interesting to me, and sounds to me maybe further studies should be done.
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From my perspective grades in highschool shouldnt be handled too serious and you shouldnt hand out zeros if it is not for a good educational reason. Kids are kids and sometimes they need a while to develop their potential.
I was a really bad student in highschool. No idea if it was hormones during puberty or just a lack of motivation but I did nothing for school and was really bad. In my final year I was close to failing my A-level exams (Abitur), thank god I had a teacher who was willing to overlook some mistakes I made. It saved me.
Later in college I found the motivation to study. I am close to finishing law-school today and I am really successful. Worked in several big firms and even published some papers.
For this discussion: Please remember, the primary goal of school isnt to give out grades or to judge your skill and work, the primary goal of school is to educate every single child. Not giving out zeros can be a good and working educational concept.
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On June 04 2012 09:10 wunsun wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2012 08:56 Trezeguet wrote:On June 04 2012 07:22 Ghostcom wrote:On June 04 2012 01:22 micronesia wrote:On June 04 2012 00:46 Warble wrote:+ Show Spoiler +My impression from reading through this thread is in line with a disturbing trend I have noticed in the larger society: that people seem to favour taking a harder line with high school students. This trend includes: - Stricter assignment guidelines, such as giving zero for late submissions, to "prepare students for the real world."
- Squeezing more topics into a curriculum already bursting at the seams because "this is an important subject."
- Adopting a rigid one-size fits all approach.
The first one is most prevalent in this thread, but I suspect that many zero advocates fit with the other items - since they're all the result of a singular hard line approach. Here are some of my personal observations on the matter: - Although the overall suicide rates for Western countries have generally decreased in the past half century, youth suicide rates have generally gone up - for example, they are roughly double what they were in 1960 in the USA. I consider youth those aged 12-25, i.e. high school through college and early stages of employment. This indicates that youth are under increasing pressure without adequate support. Quick Google reference (I'm sure you can find more): http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
- We're basically talking about young people here.
- As adults, it's easy to forget how hard life is as a youth. As a well-to-do youth, it can be difficult to understand how hard life can be for those living in less fortunate circumstances. If you look back on your own youth, you will wonder why some of those problems ever seemed like such a big deal. And since your current emotional resources, plus the benefit of distance and time, means you're seeing a much reduced version of those problems. As humans, we have a hard time truly empathising - even with our past selves.
- Teenagers are often in the uncomfortable position where they have many responsibilities but little power/few rights. I think this is a vastly underrated point. A problem when you have the power to affect the outcome feels very different to a problem that you feel powerless over.
- My personal experience: life got easier as I grew older. College was way easier than high school. Work was way easier than college. Why? Because although I had more responsibilities, I had more resources at my disposal. I had more emotional tools, I actually had money, I had more friends, I was free to choose my friends, I could choose my job - I chose to be there. Compare this to a typical student's high school experience: there's no choice (most students see the alternative as a life of poverty), the social environment is a minefield, no choice over peers or teachers, no power to negotiate the terms of assignments, the rules seem arbitrary and make no sense, the stakes seem high.
- Going from above, the trend seems to be: colleges take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in the work place. High schools take a hard zero approach because that's the conditions in college and, later on, in the work place. The outcome? High school students - who are still children - are now forced to operate under the same conditions as adults, who have many more resources to draw from. The kicker? I found college to be much more flexible than high school, and I found the work places I've been in to be much more flexible than college.
- The zero advocates seem to be focused on installing an environment that replicates the "real world" (as they see it in their minds) but are overlooking that the school's function should be teaching students the skills to cope and function with these responsibilities. If the aim is to teach this skill, then if a student is slow to pick up on this skill, then is it appropriate to punish them by preventing them from studying an unrelated subject? In other words - should students who have mastered mid level maths be prevented from studying high level maths if they're good at maths but slow in learning to cope with these "real world" conditions and be forced to retake mid level maths? If so, what is the point in forcing them to retake mid level maths when they have mastered it and are ready to move onto high level maths?
- The teacher in the OP is a zero advocate who disagreed with his school's no-zero policy - and he felt he had the power to do something about it. It ended somewhat badly for him, but he felt that he had the power. And he's going for the appeal. How many students are likely to feel this level of empowerment? How many would feel they can actually appeal a decision made by an authority?
- Many students these days have part-time jobs. They know what it's like in the real world.
- I prefer an approach that focuses on outcomes, and the zero advocate approach's aim seems to be to punish. What's the point of punishing? Consider the reasons why a student might not hand up an assignment - is giving them a hard zero going to improve any of those outcomes over approaching them to find out what's wrong? The hard zero approach might make sense when evaluating performance in the real world, but a school's primary function is to educate, and evaluating a student's performance is an auxiliary function that is subservient to the primary function. The hard zero approach messes up these priorities.
- This cuts to the zero advocates' argument that high school should be preparing students for the real world. They're just completely different environments with different things at stake - and enforcing stricter rules just doesn't contribute to any student's development.
- Most of the work assigned by teachers are so divorced from a student's ability to apply the skills/knowledge in the real world. This point is important for those advocating the hard zero approach as getting students used to the real world - because how can you advocate a "real world" approach in that manner, but ignore the contradiction that schools fail to adopt the real world approach in another manner?
I'll also note that I am responding to the general zero advocate approaches posed in this thread, and not necessarily that teacher's specific approach. The unfortunate thing is that posts like yours and mine mostly fall on death ears because the topic is "education" which everyone is an expert in since they've been students before. Because you 2 are experts yourself? What you present is an opinion with arguably flawed premises, which is fine, because what everyone else is presenting (and can present) is the same. I think the trend you are misreading as being tougher on the students is in fact a trend towards stop softening up on students - because catering, and carrying them through isn't helping them, but the equivalent to pissing in the pants. I think EVERYONE can agree that failing students is a bad thing, but what you call are horrifying trend is that the "zero advocates" have discovered that letting students pass on who doesn't know the curriculum or has the workethic to prove that they know it is in fact worse than failing them. You are also missing WHY "zero advocates" are arguing for a zero: It is because the person has produced ZERO content. Despite multiple options in form of turning it in late, doing another assignment, taking a test to correct their mistake. If you read the OP the teacher is present at school after hours 3 days a week. His office door is open for all students and alternate solutions can be found to ensure they don't get the 0%. With these possibilities, how can you possibly argue for anything but a 0? Using suicide statistics as a claim to argue that pressure from highschool is too much is somewhat of an intellectual fallacy - at the same time youth alcoholism and smoking has gone down - historically 2 activities connected with alleviating stress, yet we both know that the reason for this probably isn't due to homework/workburden going down, but rather a cultural shift. Also, as an aside - isn't the saying called falling on deaf ears and not death? EDIT: corrected a wrong wording in the suicide paragraph. I just want to address the point that a kid who has produced zero content and has earned a zero. It is important to consider which zero you are giving, and what the true impact of giving that zero really is. 1st off, 0 on a 5 point scale and 0 on a 100% percent scale are not the same. Secondly, studies have shown that when you give kids 0s, deserved in the teacher's eyes or not, most kids do not see it as a sign to improve or a lesson learned, but a reason to no longer care. Giving one kid a 0 can in some ways punish all of the students, not just the one kid. I understand why people want to question experts, but (and this may not be you) I never understand why people can not accept that the experts very often do know more. I'm not saying I am an expert either. Not sure what the difference between 0 out of 5, and 0% is. To me, I always translate it into a percentage in my head. The main thing here, to me, is that I am too honest. I would never game the system. If I get 100% on each of my assignments, and another student gets 100% on half their assignments and don't hand in the other half, we would get the same mark. How is this fair? How would this encourage other students to do their work? Not sure about what studies happened, but in one of the links I posted, the teacher in this case said that one of his students transferred from a no-zero class into his class. In the other class, he finished ~50% of his assignments. However, after he transferred into his class, the student finished 100% of his assignments. This sounds interesting to me, and sounds to me maybe further studies should be done.
There have been many studies, that's part of the thing. As far as how much work the kid did in a class, so much of that can be chalked up to quality of teaching. It could very well be that this teacher is really good, and thus kids do more work for him. Also, on a typical 4 point grading scale, flunking accounts for the bottom 20%, where as in the 100% scale, it accounts for 60%.
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On June 04 2012 09:16 esperanto wrote:
From my perspective grades in highschool shouldnt be handled too serious and you shouldnt hand out zeros if it is not for a good educational reason. Kids are kids and sometimes they need a while to develop their potential.
I was a really bad student in highschool. No idea if it was hormones during puberty or just a lack of motivation but I did nothing for school and was really bad. In my final year I was close to failing my A-level exams (Abitur), thank god I had a teacher who was willing to overlook some mistakes I made. It saved me.
Later in college I found the motivation to study. I am close to finishing law-school today and I am really successful. Worked in several big firms and even published some papers.
For this discussion: Please remember, the primary goal of school isnt to give out grades or to judge your skill and work, the primary goal of school is to educate every single child. Not giving out zeros can be a good and working educational concept.
I had a biology teacher who failed everyone but 3 when he handed out the first grades in the gymnasium. The class ended up having the highest average in the country when the exam came. Were people pissed at him? Sure. Did it motivate them to work? Yes. Handing out 40% for not doing stuff (or N/A and thus not counting) can be even more demotivational, if not for the student getting it, then for the students putting in work, than a 0%.
EDIT: I'm going to bed now, I'll read this thread again tomorrow and try to respond, if I fail to respond to everyone, my apologies in advance.
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EPT
