Taking Back Teaching: A Forgotten History

They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within.
–Leonard Cohen

The model of education from its earliest times was one of mentorship, starting with hunter-gatherers taking their children out on the hunt 100,000 years ago, all the way up to the teaching methods employed at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson. The teacher and the students got to know one another. They interacted constantly throughout the day. The teacher knew each child, had a clear vision of each child’s understanding of the coursework, and worked with each child (or encouraged them to work with each other) until the teacher was satisfied each child understood the material … or was hopelessly incapable of being educated. Because this latter was virtually an admission of failure on the part of the teacher, it happened rarely.

When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher. Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them.

This is how things went from 98,000 BC to roughly 1800 AD. Then came William Farish.

Source: Thom Hartmann*, Complete Guide to ADHD, quoted on Pathfinder Academy’s “Why Doesn’t Your School Give Grades?” (cached version)

I surfed into the above article while reading Charlie A. Roy’s “Grades, Grades and More Grades!” post on his Souly Catholic HS blog. (Theologically, Charlie and I couldn’t be more opposed; humanly, I feel very close to him, enjoying his thoughts and writings, and our dialogues. There’s something about that I like very much.)

The Hartmann excerpt seems to answer a question about which Doug Noon, Jennifer Orr, and I tweeted several weeks ago, as the above screenshot shows: What are the origins and history of grading in modern education?

If Hartmann’s research is correct, the bad smell of grading comes from its rotten historical roots: grading was invented by one William Farish, a lazy teacher who invented grading in order to increase his class size, decrease the necessity for teachers to have real relationships with their students, and fatten his income. Hartmann explains (emphases added):

Around the turn of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was going full-bore. Piece-work payments were becoming increasingly popular, and many schools were beginning to pay teachers based on the number of students they had, as opposed to a flat salary.

William Farish was a tutor at Cambridge University in England in 1792, and, other than his single contribution to the subsequent devastation of generations of schoolchildren, is otherwise undistinguished and unknown by most people.

Getting to know his students, one may suppose, was too much trouble for Farish. It meant work, interacting and participating daily with each child. It meant paying attention to their needs, to their understanding, to their styles of learning. It meant there was a limit on the number of students he could thus get to know, and therefore a limit on how much money he could earn.

So Farish came up with a method of teaching which would allow him to process more students in a shorter period of time. He invented grades. (The grading system had originated earlier in the factories, as a way of determining if the shoes, for example, made on the assembly line were “up to grade.” It was used as a benchmark to determine if the workers should be paid, and if the shoes could be sold.)

Grades did not make students smarter. In fact, they had the opposite effect: they made it harder for those children to succeed whose style of learning didn’t match the didactic, auditory form of lecture-teaching Farish used.

Grades didn’t give students deeper insights into their topics of study. Instead, grades forced children to memorize by rote only those details necessary to pass the tests, without regard to true comprehension of the subject matter.

Grades didn’t encourage critical thinking or insight skills, didn’t promote questioning minds. Such behaviors are useless in the graded classroom, and within a few generations were considered so irrelevant that today they’re no longer listed among the goals of public education.

Grades didn’t stimulate the students, or share with them a contagious love for the subject being studied. The opposite happened, in fact, as the normative effect of grades acted as a muffling blanket to any eruptions of enthusiasm, any attempts to dig deeper into a topic, any discursions into larger significance or practical application of content.

What grades did do, however, was increase the salary of William Farish, while, at the same time, lowering his workload and reducing the hours he needed to spend in the classroom. He no longer needed to burrow into his students’ minds to know if they understood a topic: his grading system would do it for him. And it would do it just as efficiently for twenty children as it would for two hundred.

Farish brought grades to the classroom, and the transformation was both sudden and startling: a revolution as rapid and overwhelming as the Industrial Revolution from which it had sprung. Within a generation, the lecture-hall/classroom shifted from a place where one heard the occasional speech by a famous thinker to the place of ordinary daily instruction.

While grades didn’t help students a bit - and, in fact, had the now well-known effect of “dumbing down” entire nations - they vastly simplified the work of teachers and schools. So they spread across Europe and to America with startling speed, arriving here in the early 1800s.

Without grades, the assembly-line-classroom would not be possible. With grades, whole categories of children were discovered who didn’t fit onto the conveyer belt, providing an entire new realm of employment for’ adults who would diagnose, treat, and remediate these newly-discovered “learning disabled” children.

Responsibility for the success of learning shifted from teachers to students: when kids failed, it was their own fault, because they obviously had a defect or disorder of some sort.

A process of sorting and discarding the misfits began (just like in the shoe factory) which, to this day, rewards the “standard” and wounds the “different.”

William Farish gained, but something precious was lost to generations of students thereafter: the mentored learning experience.

Stop and think about all of this.

We’re so aghast at “the pointlessness,” as Jen puts it, of grading, that we don’t step back for a wider view of grading’s evil twin: over-sized classrooms. We’ve become so accustomed to the historical accident of large-scale factory schools that we take it as “second nature,” not contingent and therefore changeable artifice, that teachers are expected to adequately educate one or two hundred students each week. So complete is our acceptance of factory schooling, we consider classes of twenty “small” when, I would argue, even twenty students for an hour is a recipe for poor learning - come on, do the math: one teacher teaching twenty students for an hour equals three minutes of individual attention maximum. Multiply that “small class” by the typical five-class schedule, and you have one teacher expected to somehow know and mentor 100 individuals through daily and weekly learning.

I said much the same thing in the comment I left on Charlie’s post:

It’s eye-opening that the whole purpose of grades was to increase class size so teachers could earn more by “teaching” more students at a time.

To me, class size is the other damnable impediment to effective teaching-and-learning. As an acquaintance in California shared with me recently: “1 teacher, 30 students: You do the math.” It’s impossible to effectively teach more than a handful of students - I’d say five to ten - and grading doesn’t solve the problem.

We need to expand the “radical” critique beyond Kohn’s anti-grade crusade to include an anti-large class size campaign as well.

Large class sizes plus the GPA game transforms students into grade-junkies, and teachers into mere graders. My evidence: I’ve had about 50 students ask to meet to discuss their grade this year, and how they can raise it. I’ve had three ask to meet to discuss how to write better, read poetry better, or otherwise “learn from teacher.” My take-away: they see me as a grade-giver, and school as an instrument for getting them into college, not a place to learn.

In a second comment responding to Charlie’s attempt to “wrap [his] mind around what the typical high school experience would look like without grades,” I added this:

[Y]our cry for “help” seems hopeless because you say you’re trying to envision a “typical high school experience without grades.”

Any high school without grades is not typical, right? And any high school with teacher-student ratios below 1:10 also atypical.

So to me, the problem is that typical high schools can’t work. But the Kohn article you link to suggests otherwise.

This all connects to the decision I announced yesterday to “stop working for schools so I can teach.” Some of the comments I’ve received suggest that people have defined schools as a necessary ingredient in the definition of “teaching,” and I can’t say loudly enough that that is an historical error of the largest proportions: as Hartmann states above, teachers from Socrates and Buddha to Jesus and Abelard to modern times - until that damned William Farish invented grades - were occupied with the job of helping a manageable number of learners learn to think and do through human interaction, not through grading.

Things are so bad now that we call professional graders “teachers,” when the two couldn’t be farther apart. Another comment, this time from my “Saying Goodbye” post yesterday, in response to Vejraska, who (dubiously, I say in unfeigned humility) lamented, “Another outstanding force in the arena of formal teaching leaves, and may I say that the educational system will blink and move on, while many kids will miss out on something so special.” I replied:

The students will blink and move on too. And the loss is not great - I work at the most expensive school in Korea, for the very privileged only, so it’s not like I was playing a noble role as a life-saver for the needy, the way public schoolteachers do.

I like your phrasing, though, of the loss being to “formal education.” It made me latch onto the opposite - informal education - as a decent working title for what education has always been when it was good, and before grades came onto the scene 210 years ago and ruined everything.

Informal education - “Let’s talk about your writing.” “Let’s talk about history.” “What do you think about This or That? Why?” Socratic. Mentoring. Apprenticing. Talking. Trying this and that. Playing. No bells, no grades. Knowing each other for more than 9-month terms - because so much is only ready to be learned when the class comes to an end.

On and on.

Thanks again, all. I’m excited to try teaching for real, unadministered. When your students (or their parents) can fire you for unsatisfactory work, think of the improved service you’ll give. And double that, when you think of being able to choose your students, and fire them for similar breach of learning. Awesome prospects.

In closing, for now, I’ll add a huge irony: here in Korea, parents long ago demonstrated their loss of faith in mass education factory classrooms by sending their children to night and weekend schools for more individualized learning in smaller classrooms. Schoolteachers are literally considered less important than after-school tutors when it comes to their children’s learning. These tutors do not fill out report cards and gradebooks, but they do teach their students with dedication in these private classes.

The irony? I don’t blame the parents. They’ve done the math too. Small classes with real teacher-student interaction are surely more effective than large class sizes beyond the school-teacher’s means to intimately connect with.

This may anger a lot of people, but I’m outside the box enough to expect that: I think the parents are right, though I decry the over-scheduling of their children with these extra classes. In the past, I complained that parents should drop the night and weekend classes for their children, and let the day school do its job. Now, though? I think the opposite. It’s the 40-hour day-school week that seems the bigger waste of time.

And we have that revolutionary grading and too-large classroom charlatan, William Farish, to blame. Him, and the schools that adopted his method in order to create more business by bloating education with more paying students than they could ever classically teach.

So for the record: I’m not leaving teaching; I’m leaving schooling.

—

*Thom, if you read this, I’m definitely ordering your book. And your radio show looks golden.

41 Comments

At June 10, 2008, Doug Noon wrote:

They grade lumber, also.

Grading in school is an imposition of power, and since schooling is compulsory the ethics of how it’s carried out are a concern that I’m becoming increasingly conscious of. What we choose to grade, and against which set of values we hold things for evaluation are issues that most people, especially students and parents, don’t think too much about.

I had an Ed professor in my undergraduate teacher training who didn’t give us any grades all semester. He wrote comments on our papers and projects. Guess what? Many students were unhappy. They WANTED to be graded. I learned a lot from that experience.

Grades are the beginning of all kinds of twisted trouble. Getting rid of them isn’t really an option. But that doesn’t prevent us from using them creatively.

Doug Noons last blog post..None of the Above
At June 10, 2008, robertogreco wrote:

Thanks for sharing the Hartmann article. You’re probably already familiar with John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education, but just in case, the full contents are online and Chris O’Donnell has a nice summary.

Then there are these two pieces that explore spending on schools and wonder where all the money is going (since it isn’t making its way to teachers), but they also get me thinking about how that could affect class size as well.

I also like much of this op-ed which is critical of our society’s values and lifestyles using homeschool families as a comparison. Of course, that immediately leads me to the topic of unschooling undefined.

Oh, and regarding grading - I know you’ve lived in Oregon and might return some day, but regardless, take a look at Reed College’s grading policy.
At June 10, 2008, Harold Shaw wrote:

Amen - Brother - the numbers do not lie…but test scores do.

Harold Shaws last blog post..Into the wild: AdSense for feeds
At June 10, 2008, Wade Hopkin wrote:

As a biology guy, I have long known that a lot of the modern ‘fad’ diets out there (south beach, zone, etc) actually work quite well as they mimic the paleolithic diet consumed by those old hunter-gather cultures. The particular blend of nutrients available to humans with the technology of 30,000 years ago represents what natural selection has ‘designed’ our species to healthily consume. Deviations in diet lead to obesity, diabeties and circulatory problems.

I wonder if the educational system is the institutional equivalent of an overweight diabetic?
At June 10, 2008, Sheryl A. McCoy wrote:

Yes, I agree. Grading is demeaning and turns humans in to inputs, controllable, nonhuman materials that can be thrown away if they poorly grade.

For instance, in the United States of America, why else would we spend exorbitant sums to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people who are worth more as prisoners than they were as students? It seems to me that people have denied their independence and now live in fear. Some will pay more to protect themselves from some criminal, who SHOULD have been educated in a way that they would see no need to be criminals. Others want to BE the criminal, so they will have more worth.

I would like to recommend that people will be amazed and possibly shocked if they were to read, Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock”, a related reading.

Thanks for this well researched post. I appreciate the resources and references.

Sheryl A. McCoys last blog post..Technology in Stone
At June 10, 2008, diane wrote:

Clay,

I have found that, without exception, any student (K-12) with whom I have contact 1 to 1 is fun to interact with and glad of my attention. Some amazing conversations have taken place, and the students seem more willing to ask for help with classwork or projects.

Without a major educational overhaul and mandates from the highest levels, the tutor/mentor model you describe will never happen in the U.S. The additional number of teachers required would be staggering, the cost astronomical.

I hope you are able to realize your vision of “humanized” informal teaching. I only wish this type of education were available to more of the world’s children.

dianes last blog post..Most Hateful of All Things: Adult Bullying
At June 10, 2008, Dawn wrote:

You’re submitting this to the carnival of homeschooling, right?

People ask me, a homeschooling mom, if I test my kids. The underlying idea is that by administering a test I’ll interpret it like spilled goat intestines, assign it a grade and then know how my kids are performing.

Ah ha.

No. I just ask my kids questions. Seems to work.

Dawns last blog post..I Now Love Facebook
At June 10, 2008, Dawn wrote:

[This is an absolute must read. Over at Beyond School, CBurell has a fantastic post that details the history of large classes and the grading of children...]
At June 10, 2008, Gilbert Halcrow wrote:

For whom the bell curve tolls - grading determines our place in the great factory of life? Just as the factory model (in economy) started to crunch under the limits of western human efficiency - along came the Japanese, technology, the hyper-Ford assembly line and corporate collectivism - in education this thinking feed into nationalisation of curriculum and performance based funding approaches. The exam factory also feed ‘monetarist’ economics policy as well maintaining a large pool of un/semi-skilled workers, to keep labour cheap.

Grading, large class sizes, disproportional funding models, more money spent on prisons than schools, content driven curriculum, learning technology used to do digitally what we’ve always done - when will the madness stop?

When the economic imperative shifts - there will be no revolution (the media is too good at numbing the disenfranchised) there will be an evolution. When the economics of creativity, collaboration, altruism - become valued along side competition and efficiency of production process (physical and social).

It is not an either/or argument here grading (valuing) will and should stay. What is assessed and how it is assessed needs to change - but done as part of a dialogue; as in quality Assessment for Learning then ‘grading’ is vital and often motivating.

Even in the constraints of our content driven exam factories that we offer alternative practice, convince colleagues (one conversation at a time) who wish to be convinced and slowly win this battle.

Understanding the history of grading is essential to how we deconstruct the authority it holds in our current system and how we get on with the very serious job of advocating alternatives that are accepted by others, valid and sustainable.

Thank you to Roy and Clay for your input on this - it is fantastic.
At June 10, 2008, Claire wrote:

Clay, I hear where you’re coming from with the idea that classes should be smaller, teachers should spend more time with students, and it should be more about discussions and mastery and way way less about grading.

But I’m feeling a little uneasy about Farish. Perhaps it is because in Hartmann’s article the line “Getting to know his students, one may suppose, was too much trouble for Farish.” just seems a little sarcastic. Or this line, also from Hartmann “In other words, we need to go back to the system that worked so well for thousands of years before Farish decided to become history’s most famous lazy teacher.” It’s really bothered me and I’ve spent way too much time tonight trying to find more info on Farish The quote on Farish that comes up over and over again is from Neil Postman in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology where he says, “… first instance of grading students’ papers occurred at Cambridge University in 1792 at the suggestion of a tutor named William Farish. 3 No one knows much about William Farish; not more than a handful have ever heard of him.” I wish I had a copy of Postman’s book so I could check out his sources, and I wish I had a copy of Hartmann’s book so I could check out his. If any of your readers have more info on Farish I’d love to hear about it. Anyhow, I’m not a big fan of grading, but I can’t help thinking that Farish isn’t getting a fair shake by Hartmann.

I also wonder what education would look like without larger class sizes and without a grading system. Pre-Farish, my impression, correct me if I’m wrong, was that only the wealthy and emerging middle class could afford tutors/teachers for their children. Apprenticeships were available for some of the working classes, while many toiled in menial labour. Surely the industrial education model has some merits? Has it not played a role in the democratization of society? I guess this is my way of saying what Diane did above, “I hope you are able to realize your vision of “humanized” informal teaching. I only wish this type of education were available to more of the world’s children.”

As always, thanks for a thought provoking post and the opportunity for discussion.
At June 10, 2008, Carl Anderson wrote:

If grades are mandatory in schools and the teacher’s primary role in school is of grader then does the computer’s ability to calculate and record grades make teachers unnecessary? Doesn’t the curriculum developer or the textbook editor have more to do with educating our students than teachers under this system? This notion troubles me because I know it is largely true.

Carl Andersons last blog post..Did You Ever Wonder?
At June 10, 2008, Nigel wrote:

I’m fairly new to this blog so apologies if I’m covering old ground. Have you looked at how much grades and formal qualifications are an reason for people to study. I ask this in context of education “business models” and why people are prepared to pay a premium for an ivy league qualification.

See http://rbsnews.tumblr.com/post/18120422/is-it-worth-it

Nigels last blog post..Disruptive Innovation in Education
At June 10, 2008, Inger Grøndal wrote:

“Things are so bad now that we call professional graders “teachers,” when the two couldn’t be farther apart.”

- I did a casestudy with a highschool class 5 years ago, the teacher trying to be both the teacher and the grader, and the students failing to see that she tried to be both. They thought of her as the grader. What I will propose as one step in the right direction, although not the revolution needed, is freeing the teacher of grading and let her do the teaching. If someone needs grades or measurement (i.e. university or others for submitting students), well, let them do the grading. Let the students and pupils learn for the sake of learning and not for the sake of grades.
At June 11, 2008, Adrienne wrote:

Hi Clay,

While I agree with a lot of what you’ve said here, at times I think you’re being rather harsh. (For example, putting all the blame on one man, Mr. Farish? Have you done enough research to find out if it wasn’t a movement of educators and not a single man’s fault? Something tells me that history did not change at one man’s whim.)

Yes, grading can be detrimental. Actually, most of the time it is. And yes, it is related to large class sizes. But I’m not sure that removing grading altogether (or shrinking class sizes) eliminates the problem completely.

Gilbert’s comment here:

It is not an either/or argument here grading (valuing) will and should stay. What is assessed and how it is assessed needs to change - but done as part of a dialogue; as in quality Assessment for Learning then ‘grading’ is vital and often motivating.

… makes a LOT of sense to me, and I do think that this philosophy has some the answer for modern education. I have posted on this myself and feel that the whole kit and caboodle of assessment in general needs to change. While I often fantasize about teaching and learning without assessment, I know it is necessary because it provides feedback about learning and growth.

The problem is this “grading” numbers conundrum you are discussing here. Firstly — let it be known, loud and clear: THERE IS NOT A SINGLE, BE-ALL, END-ALL WAY TO ARRIVE AT ASSESSMENT GRADES. I do think some teachers forget this, because we get so wound up in whatever system we are currently in. Some methods are better than others. I think the problem in some American and British systems (and yes, I have taught in both) is that the grades are based on tests / exams / essays — that is, final and quantitative results, rather than the multitude of other assessment options available. Why can’t anecdotal remarks translate into a grade? Why can’t a conversation? Or a journal? (Do you get my drift?)

The problem also has to do with those pesky little numbers. MYP Assessment philosophy is rather progressive compared to many other systems, but at the end of the day I still have to put a number on a report card. I can’t tell you how many times I have told my students that one day I am going to change the grading scale and substitute numbers for random symbols. I.e., the number doesn’t mean anything, but the descriptors next to it, those tell you something.

The best example of a grading scale I ever saw was when I was a long-term substitute teacher in a 5th grade classroom (my first year of teaching). The “scale” was simply a drawing of a flower in different stages of development from levels 1 to 4. Level 1 = just sprouting; Level 4 = full bloom. You get the idea. The more I think about this, the more I think I am going to superimpose drawings like this over the grade descriptors I give to my students next year.

You see, I don’t want them to think that assessment is not important. It IS important — and even if I don’t exist and they are teaching themselves, they must understand that being reflective and “seeing where you’re at” is necessary for learning. But, like you, I don’t want them to get caught up in the numbers.

One last point — you are lauding the benefits of Korean school at night. Interesting. Here in Hanoi (where we have an enormous Korean population) our Korean students also go to school from 6 p.m. to midnight, 4 days a week. They fall asleep in my English class regularly. Smaller class sizes, sure. But the learning? All rote, and all focused on getting these kids into “the best” Korean university. Is that better than what I’m doing with them for the 4 hours a week I see them, in a class of 18? I certainly hope not…
At June 11, 2008, Lucia wrote:

As usual, there’s more information here than I can digest in one or two readings.

You’ll get no argument from me about the need to change the way we assess students learning.

Our district has been toying with the idea of vertical teaming in core academic subjects. How we assess student learning has brought our efforts to align C&I across grade levels to a full stop. There seems to be a deep divide between teachers who are willing to let go of formal grading, and those who claim formal grading as a sacred right.

You’ve given me food for thought, and some solid arguments against formal grading to bring to my department.

Lucias last blog post..a grade by any other name would still stink
At June 11, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

@All, Forgive the silence for the moment - last days of school, packing boxes, AND dealing with all sorts of immigration, VISA, travel agents, moving to new apartment, etc issues have me all post-fall Humpty Dumpty.

BUT - Adrienne, I’d love to feature a guest-post from you in response to this post. Not so much about Farish (even I wrote “IF Hartmann’s research is correct,” as a nod to how I/we need more research on Farish and the whole origins of grading thing), but about assessment that a) matters, and b) is manageable in large classrooms. Oh, and c) anything else you want to add.

@Everyone else - I’ll be back, again, to respond later. But Robertogreco, thanks millions for bothering to add those links in your comment. Have been reading with great interest.

–C.
At June 11, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:

@Clay

Another great post. Although we are theological opposites I’m sure if we ever meet up we’d have a grand time. Best of luck with your future endeavors and in leaving school behind for teaching. Whoever your students end up being I am sure they will leave your care as better human beings than they began.

You’ll enjoy Hartmann’s radio show. I especially enjoy his anti-corporate rants and grueling critiques of political corruption here in the States. He has played a large part in my political conversion. I’m sure his research on Farrish is very solid - he takes much pride in his work.

All the best!

Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Changing Behavior
At June 11, 2008, OLDaily ~ by Stephen Downes wrote:

[...] they leave the traditional school system. Just saying. Clay Burell, Beyond School, June 10, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning] [...]
At June 11, 2008, Sean FitzGerald wrote:

The ratio of teachers to students has always seemed odd to me.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, so surely it would take a village to educate a child. After all, isn’t “education” part of “raising”?

One solution to this dilemma would be to distribute the labor by integrating learning back into the community whereby the teacher becomes a type of facilitator who helps to direct the student’s learning journey, and who shares the load with members of the community - family and friends, trade and business mentors etc. - rather than doing all the teaching themselves.

The labor problem stems from there being only one class of people - “professional educators” - who are allowed to do the educating. My grandfather was a carpenter and a great teacher, but he had no teaching qualifications. Everyone in the community has something to teach and show others.

Relying on professionals to deliver learning has brought us to this, and I think this is the model that needs challenging. The learning needs to become distributed throughout the community.
At June 11, 2008, Learning Is Messy - Blog » Blog Archive » My Response To Mia wrote:

[...] This blog and the first one are both very interesting and thought provoking. I think you would find Clay Burell’s blog post on a related topic: http://beyond-school.org/2008/06/10/taking-back-teaching [...]
At June 11, 2008, treed wrote:

being a product of the “evil” grading system of schools and a teacher in said system, i agree the current system needs to change, grades can be very harmful, especially to those who learn differently than our current system teaches too… i believe smaller student/teacher is part of the answer. having individualized curriculum and assessing students individually is also part of the answer. doing away with grades? hard to do. our current society requires some sort of “grading” system, to compare, to assess knowledge learned. do not workers get a report card of sorts in the form of annual (or more often) evaluations the are reflected in pay? Yes, the A, B, C method of grading does not reflect what a student has learned or retained, but some form of “grading” needs to be in place that reflect what students actually know, i believe in individual assessment, one on one, teacher assessing what the student does and does not know. this is a time consuming method of teaching and and assessing, but students learn “better” and retain it longer. i have rambled on longer than i had intended.
At June 11, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

Um, Dawn? What’s the “Carnival of Homeschooling”? Drop a comment w/info so others can know too?
At June 11, 2008, Dawn wrote:

Oh, whoops!

It’s a blog carnival, one blog hosts and present submissions frm the blogosphere.

Here’s the page for submissions for the homeschooling carnival:

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_199.html

And here’s the page for the Carnival of Education where you should also submit your post:

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_5.html

It’s just too good not to share!

Dawns last blog post..The Origin of Grading Children
At June 11, 2008, Dawn wrote:

“do not workers get a report card of sorts in the form of annual (or more often) evaluations the are reflected in pay?”

The most useful ones I’ve had have involved a superior sitting down with me and discussing my performance. The most useless looked more like I think your envisioning and seemed little more then ways to ensure that raises stay small.

Really though, that’s a one shot deal. Most of what a child does in school is condensed to letters or numbers. Most of what I’ve done on a job was commented on and discussed. If Id ever gotten a B from an employer for stocking shelves I would have thought the person was crazy and incompetant.

Dawns last blog post..The Origin of Grading Children
At June 11, 2008, GingerTPLC wrote:

Funny. I didn’t hand out grades at the end of quarters this year except for the first quarter. I don’t hand out grades at the end of assignments. The kids get verbal feedback; the parents and I talk more often if they want to know how things are going. If a kid hands in a not-up-to-par assignment, I hand it back. If they don’t finish their work in the time allotted by our Carnegie units of school days, they go into summer school.

And my parents aren’t unhappy. Some are a little uncomfortable, but I’ve got no one beating down my door for their kid’s A’s. And I do need to do something for the end of the year to put into their files, but maybe this is all because I’m teaching middle school and if it was HS and having to do with college entrance, I’d be fired by now.

I love working at a charter school who’s really doing something different…not just talking about what we *should* be doing.

GingerTPLCs last blog post..Internalizing Global Thinking
At June 11, 2008, Accountability by Scantron? | Whip Blog wrote:

[...] the rub. I have been rattling around the idea of assessment in my brain for a while now. Then came Clay Burrell’s latest post on the history of grading as a form of assessment. Seems like it traces back just over 200 years ago to a fellow named William Farish at Cambridge [...]
At June 13, 2008, Day by Day Discoveries: The Origin of Grading Children wrote:

[...] Origin of Grading Children This is an absolute must read. Over at Beyond School, CBurell has a fantastic post that details the history of large classes and the grading of children. Here’s a snippet of what he [...]
At June 17, 2008, ted nellen wrote:

I post with great trepidation, clay.

When I read the Hartmann excerpt post that started your post I was aghast at how wrong he was on the history of education and you based much of the post on Hartmann scared me. Let’s put this grade part aside for a moment. Hartmann’s history is so flawed I don’t know where to start. Who were the students from 100.000 bc to 1990 AD? Rich, white males. So when he uses “she or he” in the second paragraph I had to chuckle. Emma Willard is important here, and not till midway through 1800’s and only for women and select women. Jefferson’s university is a good model, but we are talking white males who are land owners. Makes for a select group. We can’t really speak about education as you do until 1954 because of Brown vs Bd of Education which provides for equal and universal education for all. We can’t really talk about education as we know it today prior to 1954. Prior to 1954 education is restricted and selective. It does not include everyone.

As for grading, in 2003 I experimented with an idea I found in a book written by a man and wife named Vander. Problem is I can’t find the title. However here is a link to my journal at that time in my teaching: http://www.tnellen.com/iths/Journal.html#grade. Essentially, All the scholars will get an A. The thinking etc appears on above link. Grading is an issue, but we have to deal with it so we have to find creative ways to deal with it.

I think that there are those of us who have 35 students in five classes each day. That’s 175 students everyday. Much of what hartmann writes about is maybe 20 students from exclusive families.

I’d like to have seen better research on the history of education and more logical less hysteria about grading.

Thanks,

Ted

ted nellens last blog post..Students 2.0
At June 17, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

@Tednellen,

No need for trepidation - it’s all about ideas. I’ve already invited Adrienne to guest post so she can counterpoint this post. My aim is not to be right, but to start conversations.

That being said, I’m not won by your response. Not only because I acknowledged my awareness that I was basing this post on what I read Hartmann with the key word “_If_ Hartmann’s research is correct” - and I’m unclear on how it’s not, despite your claim, but also because the other facts remain: class sizes are too large (even small ones), durations are too short, motivations are perverted by grade-rewards instead of intrinsic desire to learn, on and on.

I appreciate and agree with your “let the students grade themselves” experiment, and did the same this year (search “grade themselves” and you’ll find my posts about that). It _is_ a “creative” way to deal with this one challenge among the many others. But those many others still remain.

Of all your points, the one about socio-economic class and “education for the few” (privileged, white, male) is the most compelling. I’m not sure that universal education is performing its function by forcing students to come to schools physically, by coercion, without attending to all the things needed for true learning to happen. Drop-out rates and declining literacy and numeracy rates tell that tale. So I’m in search of new ways to help _all_ learn, without schools, but with these new tools.

I certainly don’t have the answer on that large scale, but I’m trying a few small-scale things that I think are interesting. Organizing, paying for, and launching Students 2.0 (I notice you just posted about that site) is one thing I’ve done. Many of the students there are not male, white, or privileged. But they get one student: 40 comment ratios regularly. It’s a start - though clearly it has a long way to go. But it is a model beyond school.

I’ve also posted about David Eggers’ after-school mentoring initiative (search TED Talks, or this blog using the term “Eggers”, and you’ll see more). That’s another model I hope to use my free-lance freedom to experiment with, and to find others already doing so, and promote and possibly work with them.

As for “less hysteria, more logic,” I’m not sure the logic is bad, and while there’s passion in my voice - I like writing with force, as it keeps me writing, and also incites good challenging responses like yours - I don’t see any hysteria.

Thanks for the response.
At June 17, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

@Tednellen - One last thing. If governments aren’t going to decrease class sizes, leaving you to find creative ways to _grade_ 175 students every day, doesn’t the fact remain that those numbers make it virtually impossible for any student to have a mentored, human relationship with any depth from anybody at his/her school? To be known?

Assuming you agree, the main thrust of my post still stands - the vast majority of students in over-stuffed classrooms are anonymous to the school system. In the age of social media - I’m reading Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody right now - it’s worth exploring if all the “surplus social capital” (i.e., the free time) of so many smart _non_-teachers in the world can’t be mobilized to participate in new forms of mentorship for the young.

Staying in the classroom 60 hours a week doesn’t give me time to do that exploring. Going freelance does. Call it a Robin Hood model of teaching: charging the privileged to help the rest learn.
At June 17, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

@Tednellen, Damn it, man, you’ve got me coming back for more.

You counter Hartmann’s “history of students from 100,000 BCE to UVA” by saying all students were rich white males. In terms of traditional “schools,” institutions with students, you’re largely right. But as I say in my post,

Some of the comments I’ve received suggest that people have defined schools as a necessary ingredient in the definition of “teaching,” and I can’t say loudly enough that that is an historical error of the largest proportions.

Defined more broadly, “teachers” are the mothers, fathers, community members who, until recently (and with the exception of the industrial era before child labor laws), have always had access to children. Sean Fitzgerald’s comment already addresses what I came back to say:

The ratio of teachers to students has always seemed odd to me.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, so surely it would take a village to educate a child. After all, isn’t “education” part of “raising”?

One solution to this dilemma would be to distribute the labor by integrating learning back into the community whereby the teacher becomes a type of facilitator who helps to direct the student’s learning journey, and who shares the load with members of the community - family and friends, trade and business mentors etc. - rather than doing all the teaching themselves.

The labor problem stems from there being only one class of people - “professional educators” - who are allowed to do the educating. My grandfather was a carpenter and a great teacher, but he had no teaching qualifications. Everyone in the community has something to teach and show others.

Relying on professionals to deliver learning has brought us to this, and I think this is the model that needs challenging. The learning needs to become distributed throughout the community.

David Eggers, again, is after the same grail.

You rightly insert the ideal of universal education for all genders, races, and socio-economic classes. Progressive political history has made gains in establishing this a the contemporary norm.

But that does not mean, in this Age of New Social-Technological Tools, that Old Schools are the best (or only) way to deliver that education. We’ve got the means now, for the first time in history, to challenge the “bus them to buildings” model of education.
At June 17, 2008, Inger wrote:

I’ve just been to a conference on distance learning and elearning (which explains why me head only thinks in one direction) and I keep thinking about “it takes a village to raise a child”. Well, the global village is there at our feet. Just a click away.
At June 17, 2008, Ted Nellen wrote:

As I said, Clay, it was with trepidation and here is why. I agree with what you say. My problem is that I have taught in private boarding schools in New England, but spent the bulk of my time teaching in NYC public schools. My problem is that I am concerned with mass education, not elite education. Homeschooling and small environments are elite, sorry. When I look at the thousands of children in refuge camps in Africa, refuges in Asian countries, in the Americas, I’m blown away by the lack of education and the lack of educational resources like schools. I’m not concerned with the few who we can teach in homeschooling or small communities I’m concerned with mass education and that is a huge ugly contradiction, IMHO.

Yes, as Inger replied, “it takes a village” and that is a valid and worthy quote. It was perhaps that notion that sparked me to undertake the use of technology in my public school as a model for mass education back in 1983. I have been teaching in a computer room connected to the internet since 1986. I may be the first teacher to provide accounts to his scholars in a public school and have them publish their work online in 1993 using the WWW. I agree there has to be other ways, but I want to see those other ways on a massive scale where we teach millions not tens or even hundreds. That is easy, we know that. What isn’t easy is providing the educational opportunities for millions. Technology is a way, but teachers need to come to the table on this.

I hope I have made my trepidation clear. You referred to my Students 2.0 post. Then you read what I wrote in praise of this site. I went back to 1871 with a quote that I know you would appreciate and repeat here:

This site reminds me of the classic Garfield anecdote at the Williams College alumni dinner:

In 1871 an obscure politician named James A. Garfield remarked at a Williams College alumni banquet that “the ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.” Mark Hopkins was a former president of Williams College and Garfield’s favorite teacher.” What this quote says to me is that we must give the scholar voice and what Students 2.0 does is give scholars voice. This is important, Plato and Socrates showed us and we are still seeking that end in our teaching, student voice.

Heck, I’d love to me able to sit on a log with one student, but I don’t have that luxury. I have found that the internet has allowed me that ability to concentrate on my challenge to educate the masses in a good, fair, and intelligent way. This is my trepidation, cause what if I fail? It is about the millions, not just the few as Horace Mann, John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Seymour Papert extol and encourage us to consider in our pedagogical theory and practice.

Now about grading:

I found the lesson I used for that “all scholars get a ninety.”

http://www.tnellen.com/iths/quest.html

The source was from reading “The Art of Possibility” by Zander and Zander Chapter three.

Oh and I discovered your site is blocked by the filters in NYC public schools.

Cheers,

Ted

Ted Nellens last blog post..Students 2.0
At June 17, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

@Ted:

“Ted Nellen, Ted Nellen….I know that name, but I can’t place it….”

Then it hit me. I know you from some old listserv I subscribed to back in Shanghai in the early part of this decade. I was really impressed with what you did, and even remember your use of a Montaigne essay as a model for your students.

I think you may have excerpted a review I did of a Huck Finn offshoot called _Rule of the Bone_ on a Twain site you maintained, and for which I recently searched to no avail. If that _was_ your Twain site, can you direct me to it? The resources were rich.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful response. Mass education _that works_ - an important qualifier - is apparently the goal for both of us. With each passing month, technological and social media innovations are making that more and more possible. Right now, the tools are just waiting for more “contractors” to give them a purpose. That’s my obsession and future direction. I don’t mean to sound grandiose, and don’t expect I’ll do much more than move the ball forward by a few yards. But I can stay open to the possibility that I’ll have more of an effect on mass education that way than I did as a teacher in my elite private school.

Thanks again for weighing in and extending the dialog.
At June 17, 2008, Sean FitzGerald wrote:

@Ted: you seem to be missing my point. High attention education isn’t about one teacher for one student, it’s about many teachers - some professional, many not - for many students. The community as a whole needs to take responsibility for students’ education so that the onus isn’t on one teacher in a classroom of 30 students.

I’m neither a teacher or educational expert, but from what I’ve read and seen it is possible to do community-based education on a large scale, but we all have to stop thinking that education is about sending kids to a specified place - the classroom - run by dedicated teachers for all their learning. I think we have the models and the exemplars - such as the Sudbury model schools and Steiner schools - and I think we have the technology which will be a big part of the process.

I’d like to believe that it’s possible, but it requires a paradigm shift in the way we as a society think about education, and I admit that is going to be tough.

I think you have a common misconception about what home schooling can be. The name is deceptive as it conjures up the image of a lone parent teaching the children at the dining table. This may be the case for some, but many home schoolers get their children involved in the community, and get the community to help with their education.

I agree with you on one point though - despite my preference for a community-based and student-centred model of education I actually believe that the industrial model is efficient for some situations like developing nations where there is a need to rapidly raise the education levels of the population. It makes sense to educate one person and put them in charge of 30 students who are all instructed (and graded) the same way. Individual differences aren’t catered for, but who cares when you can’t read and write and you are in abject poverty. I even think it played an important role for our society when it was first introduced.

But in developing nations we now have gone beyond that model. Lowest common denominator education isn’t as effective in a more developed, educated nation. In a sense we have the luxury to experiment with new models, and we have the necessity to accommodate individual students’ needs and honour individual students learning styles, pace of development and interests, and teach in ways that empower students to become self-directed learners. It seems to me the only way to do this is to get the community involved in education again and return to pre-industrial models of education.
At June 17, 2008, Dawn wrote:

“Homeschooling and small environments are elite, sorry”

Homeschooing is by no means elite. In fact, in my experience, it’s been the one option parents could pursue when they don’t have the money for private school or tutors and/or don’t have the support or connections to effectively advocate for their children in school.

I have people take a look at average incomes and education levels of parents in homeschooling studies and make their judgments from that. Take a closer look at the studies and you’ll see there are people with high school degrees and poverty line incomes (perfectly describes my family when we started homeschooling) who are homeschooling. And they’re doing it precisely because it’s reasonable and accesible choice and it’s NOT elite.

Dawns last blog post..Yard Sailing for Homeschool Supplies
At June 17, 2008, GingerTPLC wrote:

Ok, in the interest of discussion…

Fellas, while I’m someone who appreciates a good bit of philosophical discussion, this “circle of mental pleasure” gets old after a bit. Sure, let’s discuss where the problem began so we can understand it’s roots a little more clearly, but let’s not get STUCK there.

So in the interest of moving forward, what, if you were starting up your own “mass education” school, would you do to optimize student/parent feedback on performance?

Sure, it’d be nice to have small-group mentors, but HOW would you provide feedback to parents regarding their kids’ work and learning?

Sidenote response:

Elite: The best or most skilled members of a group

As for *ever* using the word “elite,” I’ve got to say I agree with Jon Stewart as he fires back at the derrogatory way the word “elite” is often used in America:

“[N]ot only do I want an elite president, I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me.”

So it goes that I’d prefer to not only work in, but also create an elite educational environment for every single student with whom I come in contact. And if I had children of my own, I’d demand them to be taught in the most elite way–to be elitists in their OWN right.

…but I find myself joining the circle of mental pleasure…

GingerTPLCs last blog post..Grading, Assessing, and Underachievement, Under-Engagement
At June 18, 2008, Apollos Academy: COH- Week 129 wrote:

[...] thing which tells time”. Poetry. Sheer poetry, Ralph! An A+!- from A Christmas StoryIn his post, Taking Back Teaching: A Forgotten History, Clay (Beyond School) reviews the history of the grading system and its effect on [...]
At June 18, 2008, Ted Nellen wrote:

i took all the responses and put mine here. turns out this blog is filtered in my school. now aint that a kick. gotta fix that:)

clay, i appreciate that you appreciated and agree with the “let the students grade themselves” experiment, heck it ain’t an experiment it is real world. it has been done many times and glad you messed about with it, clay.

it would be great if we could learn without schools, but that just aint going to happen, ever. jefferson knew this well.

now as for schools, let’s understand their primary function is to babysit. once we get past that we are fine. once we have them in their seats let’s do something with them, hey let’s do some pedagogy.

eggers, ha, havent thought about him in some time. when i first got my scholars on online i started getting these people writing them and me. called them telementors, 1994. every one of my scholars had a telementor in one case 10. imagine that 10 teachers to one student! that was because of the internet and we did that in 1994. anyway this guy eggers heard about it blah blah. unfortunately with filters and fear etc etc scholarly use of the web aint what it used to be. that’s government intervention for you. a few other people and organizations tried to “capitalize” on the concept, to no avail. funny when i saw the TED thing i laughed. he stole it from others and gets the accolades. no problem, i’ve published:)

sure students are anonymous to school systems, always have been always will be. they arent anonymous to their teachers, though:)

glad i’ve got you coming back for more:)

i know i havent said old school is the best. it is what we have. when we try to change it as so many have, oneil at summerhill, maria montessori, dewey, and so many others we get caught in the governments control and intervention. so, beat them at their own game. as i said earlier schools are about babysitting, attendance and seat time. we dont allow students correspondence courses, homeschooling is highly regulated… so what do we do in schools to make learning happen? ah now that is a nail upon whose head i want to bang!!

this is where the intrernet and subversive teachers come in. it has to be done from within.

ah you found me out clay:)

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/huckfinn/

is the link you mean.

it was on my school server till it was mysteriously ravaged.

yeah it was probably on wwwedu. i was a member of that list since its inception and andy is a good friend. we parted ways though over politics. his is a censored list, alas.

yeah i hear you about moving the ball a few yards.

sean, this is what i am saying. that is what cyberenglish is all about. that is what the telementors program was all about. that is what web 2.0 tools are all about.

in 1993 i created a program called cyberenglish, it is community based education. my doctoral work was about that. let me direct you to these sites:

http://www.tnellen.net/cyberenglish/

http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/ectoc.html

that should get you started.

sorry dawn it is elite cause these kids have parents or a parent. I’m thinking of the millions of kids without them, sorry. yes, homeshooling is tough, i wouod never do it. but it is still elite cause these kids have parents. too many of my kids in my nyc school, one of the richest cities in the world, and i have students without parents. these kids are stuck with the street, crime, or a school if they are lucky.

love it ginger, “fellas.”

i know why i had trepidations, clay. a lecture on beyond schools blog, haha. now that is rich.

i knew elite would raise a stink. i love the power of words.

john stewark is da bomb. his show is 2 blocks from me a we go a couple of times a month. colbert is a couple of blocks further and even better:)

nothing better than mental gymnastics and pleasure, ginger.

time to water the garden.

ted

Ted Nellens last blog post..In Time vs On Time
At June 18, 2008, Making The Grade(s) | Teaching Generation Z wrote:

[...] really enjoyed reading Clay Burell’s most recent post. As happens so often in my online reading, it ties in with some of my thoughts as I’ve just [...]
At June 18, 2008, Will Brehm wrote:

Clay, Great post. I’m now working on all the comments. You obviously hit a cord in many readers. Here is a book suggestion, which I came across while doing research for my graduate application personal statement (I’m studying comparative and international education), for you: Successful Failure: The School America Builds. http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/hv/sf/sf.html

The book speaks on an anthropological level, working specifically with an ethnography of America. But because the school America builds is now replicated throughout the world–just think of all the American Schools–, the cultural fact of failure, and the idea of learning disabled students has redefined “success” not only in America but also around the world. It’s a good read even if very “academic.” It’s exactly what you’re talking about here.