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That is patently absurd. Without knowing your absolute numbers it's very difficult to tell if you are improving or not and if so at what rate. It's also both u

That is patently absurd. Without knowing your absolute numbers it's very difficult to tell if you are improving or not and if so at what rate. It's also both unfair and dishonest to pretend that students who have spent more time training or have greater natural aptitude perform similarly to students who do not.

detaro 5y ago
Not sure how you got from "not grading" to "not knowing numbers". Do you care more about "got 15s faster between start and end of year" or "grade C at start and end"? Not grading != no feedback. The source article explicitly makes that distinction.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  The author doesn't exactly describe her method but says "No, I answered, because I really won’t have put a grade on it." Which makes me think she's not putting numbers on things - she has, in other words, thrown out her stopwatch. Getting faster or writing better papers are both good results. Importantly, you can only know them if you are taking objective measurements. If you aren't, you will struggle to know if your methods and changes are improvements or degradations. Fittingly, the article suffers from the same relativistic malaise the author inflicts on her students. The article doesn't explain objectively why not grading is good. Instead, it's subjective feelings, preferences, and beliefs. Maybe this is a good change, I doubt it, but we haven't seen any evidence in this article.
julianeon 5y ago
It's not at all clear or obvious that giving higher grades to someone with higher natural aptitude, in gym class, is "unfair." It seems mostly wrong to me. Example: I start gym class and run a course of arbitrary length, my best effort. It takes me 60s. After working very hard over the semester, I lower that down to 45. You can even physically see I'm in better shape, but that's as low as I can go, during that semester. Meanwhile some other kid starts at 44s, literally holds back, and 'improves' at the end (no real change) to 40. They pretty much don't work at it; where they finish is the same place they started. Should they get a higher grade than I do? If we're grading by how hard the students applied themselves to what the teacher taught them, the bigger improvement deserves a bigger reward. It's not obvious that "A for effort" is the wrong answer here.
aaomidi 5y ago
Literally no one cares if I'm improving or not. Gym teachers pushed me away from exercising for years and it's taken therapy and unlearning to get rid of my fear with working out. YOU DON'T NEED TO MEASURE HOW GOOD I RUN. This toxic view point that everything should be a competition and grading needs to die the fuck out. Gym is supposed to be a fun place for students to move their bodies and interact with their peers in a different capacity. People who want to go do this more professionally should have the opportunity and the right gym teachers to encourage them there. But grading me because I didn't run a certain distance in a certain time is absurd and damaging and emotionally humiliating. Shit that I wouldn't want to subject an adult to, let alone a kid.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  You should care if you are improving. Your talents and abilities are the ones being improved. In general, especially outside of school, I think you're right that people don't really care if you're improving. Imagine being a professional essayist writing bad essays - you wouldn't build a readership on the strength of "Well last year I was way worse!" You build a readership, in part, by writing well - not relative to how you used to write, but writing well enough that people want to read. Most things are like this. People generally want quality, they want their doctor to be good, not just better than he was last year. I'd rather have a good doctor who had decayed from great than a bad doctor who had improved from terrible. You want your employees or the people you interact with to be objectively good. Pretending like objective measurements don't matter is an approach for school that is at odds with life.

detaro 5y ago

Not sure how you got from "not grading" to "not knowing numbers". Do you care more about "got 15s faster between start and end of year" or "grade C at start and end"? Not grading != no feedback. The source article explicitly makes that distinction.

ALittleLight 5y ago
The author doesn't exactly describe her method but says "No, I answered, because I really won’t have put a grade on it." Which makes me think she's not putting numbers on things - she has, in other words, thrown out her stopwatch. Getting faster or writing better papers are both good results. Importantly, you can only know them if you are taking objective measurements. If you aren't, you will struggle to know if your methods and changes are improvements or degradations. Fittingly, the article suffers from the same relativistic malaise the author inflicts on her students. The article doesn't explain objectively why not grading is good. Instead, it's subjective feelings, preferences, and beliefs. Maybe this is a good change, I doubt it, but we haven't seen any evidence in this article.

julianeon 5y ago

It's not at all clear or obvious that giving higher grades to someone with higher natural aptitude, in gym class, is "unfair." It seems mostly wrong to me. Example: I start gym class and run a course of arbitrary length, my best effort. It takes me 60s. After working very hard over the semester, I lower that down to 45. You can even physically see I'm in better shape, but that's as low as I can go, during that semester. Meanwhile some other kid starts at 44s, literally holds back, and 'improves' at the end (no real change) to 40. They pretty much don't work at it; where they finish is the same place they started. Should they get a higher grade than I do? If we're grading by how hard the students applied themselves to what the teacher taught them, the bigger improvement deserves a bigger reward. It's not obvious that "A for effort" is the wrong answer here.

aaomidi 5y ago

Literally no one cares if I'm improving or not. Gym teachers pushed me away from exercising for years and it's taken therapy and unlearning to get rid of my fear with working out. YOU DON'T NEED TO MEASURE HOW GOOD I RUN. This toxic view point that everything should be a competition and grading needs to die the fuck out. Gym is supposed to be a fun place for students to move their bodies and interact with their peers in a different capacity. People who want to go do this more professionally should have the opportunity and the right gym teachers to encourage them there. But grading me because I didn't run a certain distance in a certain time is absurd and damaging and emotionally humiliating. Shit that I wouldn't want to subject an adult to, let alone a kid.

ALittleLight 5y ago
You should care if you are improving. Your talents and abilities are the ones being improved. In general, especially outside of school, I think you're right that people don't really care if you're improving. Imagine being a professional essayist writing bad essays - you wouldn't build a readership on the strength of "Well last year I was way worse!" You build a readership, in part, by writing well - not relative to how you used to write, but writing well enough that people want to read. Most things are like this. People generally want quality, they want their doctor to be good, not just better than he was last year. I'd rather have a good doctor who had decayed from great than a bad doctor who had improved from terrible. You want your employees or the people you interact with to be objectively good. Pretending like objective measurements don't matter is an approach for school that is at odds with life.