A symptom

Deirdre Bailey

A child gets a zero. This is sad statement no matter the story. They're failing. They're fighting the system. They're lazy. They're disengaged. They're "entitled". They "don't care". They're crying for attention.

I have no idea of the specifics surrounding the situation in Edmonton and while I have been reflecting on the possibilities personally, to date I have refrained from participating in the conversation because I have not felt that my evolving opinion is educated enough. But tonight is my tipping point. Not because I now know enough about the specifics, but because I have an overwhelming feeling in my gut that the resulting conversations have been about the wrong things.

CBC talkback has been flooded with callers adamant that children need to be "taught a lesson", to 'fail' (they mean numerically) early in life so they can learn from their mistakes. Facebook has been streaming with everyone's two cents on the "ridiculousness" of a "no-zero" policy and classic political rhetoric advocating that we hold kids 'accountable' by slapping those zeroes on the top of their papers. Family and friends have brought up the "real world" argument. "How will they learn how to keep a job in the real world if they don't learn that you have to do what is expected when you're asked?"

There are a few things that no one has been asking.

What are grades for? What is school for? Why are some of our children 'failing'?

To those arguing that zeroes "teach them a lesson," I would urge you to consider that there is so much more to teaching and learning than quantitative communication. Real learning is intimate personal reflection that comes from lived experience, engagement in practice, and an evolution in thinking. Learning cannot be 'done' to the learner by posting a zero next to their name.

To those arguing that zeroes ensure children 'fail early,' failure is a lack of success. The word implies that something has been attempted. Zeroes are not failed attempts. There was no work here. No effort perhaps, but where then, is the lesson? No work, no pay? No work, no reward? Do we believe that rewards or pay are what should motivate our youth? (see Dan Pink) If so, some of them continue to cry loudly that they do not care for either of these. What's up with those kids? No diploma for them unless they 'play the game?'

On accountability, the definition of which is connected to 'requiring justification, explanation, and responsibility for actions;' is this genuinely possible without conversation? What might that conversation look like? Would a recurring conversation or an impersonal zero be more likely to hold kids accountable for the work they do? And then there is the question again of whether we genuinely believe that our education system should be reduced to indoctrinating the masses into our post-industrial, hierarchical social system.

The real world argument though, is my favourite, because it comes up constantly and often as the trump card. It is the one I have most often struggled with, because everybody's right; our society is rewards based and "jobs won't pay you for work you don't do." But as of recently, I can counter this argument; because I no longer work for the money - I have found my passion and it has changed everything (see Sir Ken Robinson). Often, I work well over 40 hours a week and some days I can't sleep and I am genuinely inspired on a daily basis. You could pay me 10 times as much to work in a different sector, but I wouldn't be nearly as productive because I wouldn't love it. So here's my trump card: if passion is the ultimate motivator, and education could be restructured to better inspire children to find their passion, would zeroes even come into play? I repeat a question asked by Philadelphia school principal Chris Lehmann, "should schools model the world as it is, or as it should be?"

If our goal is to develop creativity, inspire passion, or even raise the standards for rational thought and useful decision making; then our schools fail most of our citizens. At the start of this year, Amy and I had a conversation with our students about what defines 'great work.' These 9 year olds, four year veterans of our present education system, unanimously defined 'great work' as "doing what the teacher asks." At some point in these children's lives, some of them might come to understand that great work is not always necessarily exactly what a teacher asks for. Someone along the way might inspire them to think for themselves and some of them will take a good look at the world and resolve to "do what has to be done" (read: comply) to get through the system, while others will resist. Of those resistors, some might get a zero for work they do not do. If or when they do, the conversation should not be about whether or not they deserve that zero, rather, the conversation should be about whether an education system that dishes these out is one from which we can build the best version of our future.

It is always troublesome to witness how the living, cultivated detail of deepening understandings is inevitably occluded in an overly technical and methodological obsession with quantitative outcomes of the work. Just as children are not flat, anonymous, trainable beings, neither are they measurable entities. While I have no idea of the context for this zero, I fundamentally object to the conversation turning to how grades should serve as anything more than some antiquated form of incentive for better decision-making in future learning endeavours. Real learning needs no compensation, real learning sells itself.

The future belongs to those who can see past the number...

Deirdre Bailey

Report cards equal debate. So should anything that requires reflecting hundreds of hours worth of conversation, research, invention and developing ability in a number. Imagine asking a parent to describe (or rate?) their child with one number. Wouldn't it depend on the day?... On their activity? On their level of interest? On the task and their experience with it? I can't convince myself that a parent who has watched their child grow, smile, learn to crawl and speak for the first time, wants their ability or potential to be reduced to a single number... To what end?

Who then, is the number for? The child? Is it intended to motivate them? To reward them? To "prepare them for the future?" Daniel Pink suggests in his latest book, Drive, that the best use of money as a motivator is to pay adults enough to "take if off of the table" as an issue. For children, school grades are what come in life before money. Historically and theoretically, they serve the same purpose. But do we honestly believe that we can motivate students by assigning them a number every 3 months? "You're a 3 Billy... but with more work, you could be a 4." Does 13 year old Billy honestly care if he's a 4? Is he genuinely likely to engage more in learning for a 4 on the piece of paper we hand him in January? More likely to discover his passion? To create? To understand even? Recent research and innovation in the business world increasingly suggest that when tasks require creative conceptual thinking, rewards don't work. Sure, if you give a group of people an algorithm to apply and a bonus for speed, bonuses will make a difference, but not if we're looking for innovation or invention. Would we rather our children apply procedural knowledge with speed, or think deeply and redefine conventional assumptions? We have all had goosebumps listening to someone sing, reading an incredible novel or watching an extraordinarily skilled athlete perform? Do we honestly believe that their success was a direct result of, motivated or inspired by a quantitative assessment?

Arguably, sport is an industry in which we are on the cutting edge of "producing results" and "achieving success." In fact, spend twenty minutes listening to highlights and analysis on a Sunday afternoon football post game show and you'll be amazed at how many synonyms for results and success you'll hear.  Athletics is as outcome-oriented as our society can get: you win or you don't. You do not get a special mention for hard work: "second place = first loser." Yet, four-time Olympic speed-skating medalist Kristina Groves was interviewed by Duff Gibson on her evolving motivation and what ultimately resulted in her first world championship, and she specifically identifies the turning point in her career as the moment where she stopped identifying 'the number beside her name' as an evaluation of her achievement. She includes the observation:

"The funny thing about it... is that I can remember standing on the podium and not giving a crap about the medal. I can, to this day, tell you exactly how I felt in that race. And that, was when I was like 'Oh my God I hit that feeling!' That's what I want in my races, and that's what leads to good performance." 
(3.48 min)

In his TED talk, Daniel Pink offers a perfect analogy on how we might motivate adults in the workforce. We can either approach them with "If you do something cool... I'll give you $2,500," or we can try "you probably want to do something cool, let me just get out of your way." The latter capitalizes on what we are coming to understand about education in so many ways. First, we assume that kids will do well if they can. Second, we understand that providing them with some autonomy to undertake self-directed learning is of key importance in constructing an engaging learning space.

The revolution in education is slowly recognizing that cultivating 21st century thinkers leaves no space for assigning kids numbers as a way of assessing or improving their learning process. It will no doubt prove challenging to convince present social bureaucracy that numeric data will provide little to no help in painting a clear picture of what our future citizens are capable of - this system has been privileged for years. It will be infinitely more time consuming to rely on conversation and interaction to convey student success and needs, however, there is no way that numbers can, in any case, give us the complete picture. We need a future in which people do not associate success or achievement with a quantitative figure but engage in conversation, debate and collaboration about their growth through the process of learning. It is the only way to build the best version of a better world.