Based off of her own life experiences with her son, Mary Sherry - writer
of "In Praise of the F Word" - believes that threatening a
student with a notion of failure is a “positive teaching tool.” A little scare
from her son’s teacher motivated Sherry into thinking that such a theory would
be a negative reinforcement, and would eventually cause students to succeed and
work harder in school.
“If you want to do well in life
you have to go to college”,
“If you want to go to college
your G.P.A has to be a 4.0.” This is the type of motivation high schoolers and
some middle schoolers receive from teachers, parents, relatives, and maybe even
their parent’s co-workers. This idea that the grade you receive in this one
class determines the course of your future is a scary reality, and eventually
becomes the main goal and the only thing that needs to be completed for some
students. This “motivation” deters our focus from actually caring about what we
are learning and instead just worrying about what grade we will receive in the
end.
Sherry makes this clam that students are handed meaningless diplomas
because we are poorly educated. Which makes me question, why would you fail a
student if they were poorly educated. Learning works two ways from the
information taught and how the information was received.
Although the motive to threaten a student with the idea of flunking worked
on her son, does not mean it will work on every student. The mantra of “you
need to have this type of G.P.A. in order to succeed,” is what throws students
off because we are motivated to accomplish one thing and one thing only… having
a 4.0 G.P.A.
You've made an excellent point that a GPA is mostly what people care about in school these days. There are ways of getting a good GPA without actually deserving it, whether by cheating, for example, or just being an excellent crammer. Flunking people may not have the desired effect, if they do not desire to become better. If you flunk someone who doesn't care, odds are that they might just drop out of school all together to avoid being the odd one out in classes - they'd have little to no chance out in the world, knowing as little as they might.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree when you say all people care about now is a GPA. Especially in high school, where students are just worried about passing and not learning the material. Flunking students may have an effect on some students, and others it may not have an effect at all, it just all depends on what type of student the teachers are dealing with.
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