So I decided grades were bunk
Mar 24, 2009 Homeschooling
I think in fifth grade I decided it, which is the grade I started getting homework. (Homework started in fourth grade but I skipped fourth grade. This was the olden days. Now homework apparently starts in kindergarten, which is stupid.)
Before fifth grade it was clear to me that grades had to do with smartness. The smartest kids got O’s (for outstanding) and the less smart kids got S’s (for satisfactory) or U’s (for — you guessed it — unsatisfactory). In our house, we kids generally got O’s although I used to get S’s for spelling. But I didn’t much care about spelling so I didn’t much care about getting an S every quarter. I cared more about writing and so during spelling tests I would write my teacher a poem on the other half of the paper. She liked the poems a lot so even when she gently chastised me about spelling, I didn’t worry about it.
In fifth grade, I started getting homework but I didn’t start doing homework. Not really. Not unless it was interesting. At first I’d come home and get my math done right away or answer those incredibly boring questions at the end of our reading assignment but after awhile I figured out that it was more fun to live dangerously. I started racing myself to see how much time I could leave between the homework assignment and the due date. I started doing it during breakfast. And then on the bus. And finally I’d scramble through it just as my teacher would say, “Please take out your homework and pass it forward.” I’d be racing the swish of the papers moving up the aisles while the teacher stopped in front of each line of desks, closer and closer to the one I was in, scribbling down my paper.
Or she’d go around the room having us each demonstrate a math problem on our homework and I could count ahead and see which one I’d have to do and I’d just do that one. Or I’d write my answers to the questions while we discussed the story before turning our papers in.
I won a city-wide writing contest for the 1980 Hilliard Fourth of July Parade theme competition with “Liberty is America’s Rainbow” by brainstorming on the bus ride in that morning, thereby proving to me that doing things last minute was not only exciting but also rewarding. (I also doomed myself to rainbow gifts from my family for the next five years, which is just punishment for my laziness.)
My grades didn’t change. Except for my inability to move up into high math, I was doing just fine with lots of O’s on my report card. I was especially good at writing last minute. Writing had always been my thing and I could get away with murder as long as it required an essay at the end. (As a note: Writing accolades in school are something I’ve had to overcome as an adult writer — I’ll blog on that another time.) I realized that writing well shielded me from certain expectations. It was a little like being invisible because I could get away with things just because everyone expected me to be a good writer and those expectations greased the way before me. (I ran into my fifth grade teacher in my early twenties and she told me she still uses my poetry folder when she’s teaching her classes, which made me somehow uncomfortable. Maybe how a formerly child star might feel going on an audition for a grown-up role and having people gush about their sitcom work at three.)
Anyway. School was easy for me and I got good grades without effort. Meanwhile, my friend Maria was struggling in school and her grades reflected that. She certainly worked harder than I did but the teacher yelled at her for being lazy. I mean, I’m sitting there, scribbling my way through last night’s homework and Maria is getting lectured on neatness for turning in an eraser-burned, tear-stained story she worked on all night.
I started thinking that grades were just as often a reflection on the teacher as on the student because it was clear to me that my teacher was failing Maria and not the other way around. I knew how hard Maria worked — how could my teacher be missing it? I also knew how hard I WASN’T working and was nothing but grateful that my teacher was missing THAT!
Sixth grade was more of the same and by then I felt incapable of doing homework or studying, which is why I started failing French. By then I didn’t care. I have no idea what my GPA was in high school — I want to say that it was a C-average but it might have been a B-average — because I checked out completely, only doing the work that suited me and continuing my last minute personal challenge. I wrote my junior thesis in the study hall before it was due. I continued to do my math on my knees while the teacher was collecting it. I left my schoolbooks in my locker just in case I might be tempted to do my homework at home.
I saw it as a form of civil disobedience.
I was annoyed with the over-achievers in school. If they were smart enough to kick ass on the honor roll, couldn’t they throw a little of that critical thinking on over to the school system? I’d march myself into the guidance counselor’s office or confront the principal — didn’t they see what was going on? How the system failed kids like my friend W. who was so smart and doing so poorly?
You know, it’s to the administrators’ credit that they didn’t smash me like the angry little bug I was. As I’m typing blithely along here I suddenly have to stop and think of them. They were nice people — certainly nice to me anyway and very sympathetic. I don’t know. Maybe they agreed that the system didn’t work for me because they never argued with me about it. They’d just listen to me rant. And when my mom approached the school about letting me graduate early? Everyone agreed it was a good idea — for all of us.
So. Noah gets grades in his virtual school and now I finally — finally! — see the point. Even in college it seemed like a game, racing myself to get on the Dean’s List. I was a little more disciplined but not much. Ask Brett about my midnight cram sessions and turning my papers in at the last possible moment. (I still work best on deadline.) But now I see the way grades are supposed to work because in virtual school they’re pretty neutral. We use K12 and Noah really only has two subjects he has to do — GUM, which stands for grammar something something and Math. He has to prove mastery, which is eighty percent or more. Here, grades are objective — either you know the stuff or you don’t. You can take tests a million and one times if you want and you can also skip all the busy work and go straight to the exam. You’re just working to mastery and the only person you’re competing with is yourself.
I can tell him that grades are a neutral measure of what you know and what you need to learn and mean it because it’s true. They’re a tool, I tell him, to keep track of your progress.
I still don’t like K12 because I’m an unschooler at heart but I’m happy the grading system doesn’t make my head spin off.
I don’t know why I’m thinking this or why I started to write it or where I hoped it was going. I just sat down and this is what came out. I still think grades are bunk. And I still see homeschooling as a little bit of private civil disobedience.
(If you want to read a middle-grade reader that is far less judgmental than this post but raises many of the same concerns in a much more measured, thoughtful, and reasonable way, check out Andrew Clements’s book The Report Card. Noah and I both loved it.)
Tags: grades, unschool, virtual school
Don’t argue with me
Sep 24, 2008 Homeschooling
The only good reason for playing games with babies is because we love them, and delight in playing these games with them and sharing in their delight with them — not because we want someday to get them into college. It is our delight in the baby and the games that makes the game fun, and worthwhile and useful for the baby. Take away the delight, and put in its place some cold-hearted calculation about future IQ and SAT scores and we kill the game, for ourselves and the baby. If we go on for long in this spirit the babies will soon refuse to play — or if they do, play only in the spirit of school, i.e., because they think we’ll be disappointed or angry if they don’t…
from Boing Boing’s review of How Children Learn (thanks Kris!)
See, this is why I don’t do stuff with an eye to teaching. I did at the beginning, with Noah. I’d play games and make note (this is math! this is grammar! this is science!) but I don’t anymore. Because they learn it. They do. At least my kid did and I think the little one will, too. And when it’s time for more formal learning — if it’s time and every kid is different — there is room for that, too. All of it happens in the rhythm that works for YOUR child and YOUR family. That’s unschooling.
Recently I heard Kristen say “I’m not homeschooling for excellenence,” which makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. (It could be our battle cry! “We homeschool for mediocrity!” Except we don’t — it just sounds funny.) So if I’m not homeschooling for excellence (these are the Well-Trained Mind people, the ones who are thinking about Ivy League spelling bee winners and I like these people but we are of a different unschooling ilk) then what am I homeschooling for?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I guess I’m homeschooling for confident, comfortable competence. Homeschooling for joy. For relationships. For family. For love. For creativity. For the experience and not the results. Ivy League? Sure, if you want. Trade school? That works, too.
During our crisis of the last month (financial, that — thanks to an ill-timed trip and very late checks and a client who just stopped paying, which arrived in a perfect storm over the summer that depleted our emergency funds) I felt fiercely defensive of our choice to homeschool because yes, if we’d send the kids away we wouldn’t be on such monetarily shaky grounds. (Although on average I make what I’d make with a “real” job but see, it’s on average, which is why Brett is now working to make up for those months when the Bell Curve isn’t working for us and to build that emergency fund back up.)
But I love our homeschool family and what’s more I believe in our homeschool family. I sit out on the front porch drinking coffee and doing Madison’s hair, chatting with Noah and hear the kids on the school playground across the way and I feel positively gleeful that we’ve kept it up this long. Noah is thinking about high school these days, thus his decision to keep on with a very truncated version of the virtual school. But Madison? Oh she is homeschooled! She will tell you, “I homeschool preschool.” And she spends her days spinning.
(Now I’m saying don’t argue with me but really I mean I won’t argue with you. Most of my homeschool posts end up being homeschooling debates and I’m too busy for it today. You can comment critically but likely I won’t comment back not because I’m insutled or angry with you but because I have so much on my plate today that I don’t have time. I think it’s swell if your kid is doing absolutely awesome in school and I sympathize if he or she is not. Only I don’t get why some people who love school — or at least love their kids’ school experiences — are so anxious to dismiss mine. I have yet to go to a schooled parent’s blog and tell them why homeschooling is better or argue with them about why school is worse yet most of my homeschool posts do indeed bring this out in folks. Which is why I rarely write about it anymore. But you are welcome to read my archives to read more about why I do it, how I’ve struggled and how I’ve responded to past criticism.)
(Also, this post? Which is apparently showing up in the Related Posts below? Noah didn’t flunk fifth grade because it turns out no one cares about the busy work as long as they can show “mastery.” He finished the year out ahead of his level on everything but math. He passed all the standardized tests with flying colors except, again, math, which he passed with muted colors. And he was reading at a tenth grade level midyear with a vocabulary to match so who knows where he is now but clearly he is FINE. So there naysayers!)
Tags: education, high school, holt, homeschool, Homeschooling, Madison, Noah, preschool, unschool, unschooling
Madison is still a guppy
Jul 7, 2008 work work work
No surprise there — we knew she wasn’t ready to be whatever comes next (tadpole?) but Noah, who was jealous of the end-of-class Gushers given by the teacher, was trying to make her think she flunked. This from the formerly unschooled kid. See, I told you that virtual school was ruining him!
Speaking of ruining him — or rather his LIFE — we decided to give up cable FINALLY. I’ve felt guilty the whole time we had it but I’d be lying to say I’m not going to miss it. But so much of what we watch is available on the computer and we just figured out how to hook Brett’s laptop up to the television. Besides which we’re all watching too much anyway. When we broke it to Noah he began to gnash his teeth and tear his hair, poor dear. Life is hard in the big city.
Today I’m going to work on theming our new biz site after I get my regular work done. Hoping to debut it soon but we’re taking it slow and this time I’m walking Brett through some of the things so he won’t feel so left out and frustrated. We’re talking about what other aspects of the biz he’d like to take on besides the paperwork. Working with him is a challenge, frankly, because our communication styles are pretty different. Like he’s detail oriented and I’m “get-the-big-idea-and-move-on” oriented. And he’s a worrier and I don’t like to focus on worries because they sometimes catch me with their evil little purple claws and keep me stagnant. (Caution is one thing — chronic worry is another.) Plus I’m generally more optimistic, which would surprise everyone who knew me when I was a gloomy teen but there you go. Sometimes people change.
Oh and changing the subject entirely — since upgrading to Firefox 3, I’ve lost all my scroll bars. Very frustrating. I can still scroll but I can’t see the scroll bar. Firefox 3, to me, is like Wordpress 2.5 — perhaps released too soon seeing as how bug-filled it is. (I hear the beta of Wordpress 2.6 is out. I’m salivating for it because I haven’t learned my lesson about wordpress upgrades yet.)
Tags: Brett, firefox, frustrated, Madison, Noah, swim lessons, swimming, unschool, upgrade, virtual school, wordpress, wordpress 2.5
