cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Dima Bushkov
There is a huge story in Edmonton right now regarding a teacher who was suspended for going against board policy and giving zeros to students in his class. I have been asked my thoughts about the situation by many friends both outside and inside education. To honestly comment on the situation I would have to know a lot more about the situation as well as the policy. There is often more to a story than what is reported in the paper.
This has not stopped people from giving their opinions though.
As I will not talk about the situation specifically because I do not know enough about it, I have however have discussed my beliefs on awards before and how they are detrimental to the culture of a school. I was inspired a lot by the book Drive as well as this video on motivation by Dan Pink (you should really watch it). The term “real world” keeps coming up in my conversations, but what I have seen over and over again is that if you want to make schools or organizations great, culture is the most important attribute. A great culture will usually lead to great results. Organizations solely focused on “performance” usually isolate people and create negative cultures where it is “win at all costs” mentality.
Just stop and think of what you consider “real world” and then think of what you would want as “best world”. If kids are too build our future, why are we continuously focusing on our past?
For example, Robert Sutton in his book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss”, talks about how the top performer in the “Men’s Wearhouse” company was fired and sales for the organization went up 30% almost immediately. The top performer was not someone who was working with others, but was focused on this “win at all costs” mindset. How often do we contradict ourselves with our words in actions? We often say that collaboration is something that is vital to be successful in our world today, yet we continue to believe that focusing on individual awards and achievements is what motivates people.
Personally, I work better when people know about who I am and that I feel valued. I do not need an award but I do need to feel that my work is appreciated. That is when I am more likely to go the extra mile. This is not done by marks or awards but simple words here and there. Recognition is important but it does not need to be in front of a packed audience.
With all that being said, I thought about this “No Zero” policy created by Edmonton Public Schools and how it has become highly criticized by others. I am not sure how I feel either way because again, I have only seen what I have read in the paper. Here are some questions that I started thinking about.
When was the “old system” knocking it out of the park? Was there a time that any of us remember where kids were 100% successful because there were fearful of getting a zero? I know I had friends when I went to school who didn’t care about anything that was happening in class and didn’t really care about getting a zero. We also had students who dropped out of school when I was a kid. We often glorify schools from the time we went and long for the glory days yet were things so amazing at that time that we need to go back? Success at that time in high school was seemingly measured by whether you went into a post-secondary program and by that standard, our schools would have failed. Although there are many things that are great in schools, we still need to work to get better.
The United States has a school system that has been continuously dropping in world rankings, yet their policies seem to be “performance” focused as opposed to “learning” focused. Reading “Drive” by Dan Pink, he talks about the difference between performance and learning goals. A performance goal would be similar to having students wanting to receive an “A” in french where a learning goal would be a student wanting to become fluent in the language. Many students are smart enough that they know how to meet the objectives of a rubric and still not grow much in their learning. A master teacher sets the goals based on learning not on receiving a grade. Focusing in on the “learning” goal still gets the performance but probably at a higher rate. Great teachers do this.
Whatever your beliefs are on this topic, it is good that the conversation is being had because I think the conversation on education really needs to come to the forefront in our country. I believe however that if we continue to have the same system for our kids that we had, something is wrong. I will end with a quote by Albert Einstein (kind of a smart guy) where he said the following:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
