Today is saturday and my topic is a brief deviation from the bible to other stuff i have been reading most recently. today i cover "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and the worthiness of letter grades in school. i read chapter 16 of this book per the suggestion of one of my history students. she suckered me into it by first asking me what i think of grading and the "institution of education." i gave her a quick, two-fold response: 1. grades should inspire fear/motivation for the student to improve their work, and 2. grades also provide the "system" with a way of evaluating performance; standards, in other words. well, Student then asked me to read chapter 16 in the book and see what i think. below are my thoughts.
phaedrus seems to be the main subject of the text and chpt 16 deals with his frustration with his students, or, more acutely, the academic environment in which his students have been placed. he struggles with the notion that grades create an achievement-based pursuit. this endeavor is artificial, says phaedrus, because it conditions students (people) to "work for the grade rather than for the knowledge the grade was supposed to represent." so he teaches for an entire quarter and completely does away with grades. he hypothesizes that we go through the system trying to keep our head above water, we get spit out into some job we're capable of doing but is kind of stifling and personally unchallenging (e.g. auto mechanic), work like a cog for about 5 years before discovering how much we enjoy the thought of actually creating better engines instead of just working on the same problematic pistons of the current model, and finally return to the educational institution to learn about mechanical engineering. but this time we return because we truly want to learn. we pay good money, we demand much from our teachers, and we get good grades by default, but they don't matter anyway because our learning justifies our attendance. in fact, we are so excited about the subject that we take electrical engineering and physics as well just so we can keep ahead of the competition. so phaedrus tries this concept on his classes for one quarter. as you can imagine, the A students are ticked and the low C through F students are confused as to what's going on and don't really trust the idea or phaedrus. well, that's about the summary of it. for more specifics, you'll just have to read the chapter.
anyway, brilliant. i love it. i think it's a great idea and i don't think it's idealistic. i also don't think it's anything too original. grades have been a controversy for ages. also, statements before that talk about how originality occurs in spite of instruction, not because of it ring familiar. there are, however, a couple of points that need to be clarified though, in my opinion. first, it's important to note that this story takes place in college. grades are a much more malleable item in college because the only entity the student is accountable to is herself. professors do not have to deal with state standards, no-child-left-behind standards, parents, or the myriad other bureaucratic masters to which lower education must succumb. universities certainly have their standards, to be sure, but there is no doubt that high school is a much different story. i rack my brain trying to think of a scenario in which no grades in high school would work out, but any idea keeps getting crushed by the reality that all 14-year olds and most 18-year olds (in fact many 20-year olds) aren't ready to accept the responsibility of earning -- and i mean truly earning -- their education. phaedrus' solution to that question is to "outwait them." that is probably my favorite part of the text, but as an inexperienced high school teacher, i have yet to be convinced that waiting 9 weeks, or 18 weeks, or even a full 36 weeks is long enough for a high school student to flail around without a goal before designing their own and succeeding. perhaps i could find a retired high school teacher who has seen it happen before. i also like it when phaedrus says that the purpose of abolishing grades is to turn the mule into a free man. how great would it be to spend your life doing something you really enjoyed and wanted to continue to learn more about, like the earlier example of the auto-mechanic-turned-mechanical-engineer? that sounds freeing to me. the bottom line (you know a cynical statement always follows the words "bottom line") however, is that as much as it would be great to treat everyone like an adult searching for their purpose in life, high school students by and large are not adults. no offense. if it's any consolation, neither are a lot of 26-year olds.
my second reservation about this theory is that it doesn't fully appreciate the many other things that factor into our lives. to be fair, phaedrus does acknowledge this in a couple of areas: primarily on page 246 and again at the end of the chapter where he admits that his results are not scientific because there are too many uncontrollable variables. more simply put, the facts of life often supersede an interest in pursuing what we really want to pursue academically, intellectually, or vocationally. in other words, we often make decisions that place more value on things like paying rent, providing for our families, deciding to become a parent, taking a vacation, pursuing spiritual matters, developing relationships, and things like that. our abilities, time, and resources are scarce and we can only devote so much of them to all the things that we like. do you think people enjoy working in a stupid job? no, but circumstances require it; and some circumstances even require working at a stupid job through age 65. other things are held to a greater value than finding one's life-work.
my third and final thought about the idea of knowledge-motivation vs. grade-motivation stems from my belief that there are people out there that just want to get by. sometimes working at a factory unloading packages sounds great to me so long as it means it pays my bills and allows me to sit on my couch and read or watch tv when i come home. i honestly believe there are people out there who aren't out to develop a better engine, write a good song, discover the cure for cancer, or resolve the federal deficit. maybe that's called contentment. at this point i would like to insert an Office Space quote, but there are just too many that apply.
well, that's about all i have to say about chapter 16 of "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance." for a fascinating-but-quick look at alternative education styles, i highly recommend out this article. oddly enough, it's a nice day out and i am planning on doing some maintenance on my own motorcycle. i also have an inclination to go out and buy Office Space. i need to see that again. what a great movie. and the reference on the last page to Reed College makes me want to reread "blue like jazz." ah, donald miller.
abuch out.
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