Editorial
The story in this article is published in translation.
Humanising Grades
Mojca Grešak, Slovenia
Mojca Grešak is teacher of English and German languages at the Primary School Nazarje, Slovenia. As a mother of three childern and as a teacher she is more interested in learning than in teaching. E-mail:mojca.familylab@gmail.com, gremojca@gmail.com
Menu
Introduction
Background
Example
Conclusion
It happens much too often in teaching that many pupils get the feeling of very low self-esteem due to the existent system of evaluation, testing and grades. Sometimes they speak it out loud: that they are feeling stupid or unintelligent, sometimes they don't, and just suffer silently, feeling ashamed to share these bad self-image with anybody. I don't know if there is any statistics or research done wheather this feeling is more common among students with bad grades, but according to my obesrvations it is not so seldom at all that I notice the same pain among some excellent pupils also. As if the grades they are getting were their only identity, or at least the ultimate proof of their intellectual abilities, and sadly enough, even of their human value. As if according to the motto: »Tell me what grades you're getting and I tell you how much you're worth.«
Unfortunatelly, we cannot (yet?) aboilsh the »stick-or-carrot« punitive system of grades and assessment, but it also doesn't help very much to say to our students (after he or she gets the grade he didn't want for himself) something nice to comfort him, like f.e.: »Just because you are getting some bad grades it doesn't mean that you are stupid!« Or: »No, you aren't unintelligent, you just haven't revised enough!« Or: »Come on, you mustn't think like that! Try harder next time and you'll see you can get much better grades!«
All these words of comfort may sound very kind and pedagogically correct, and they may even be great for the self-image of a teacher, but for a student himself they are usually absolutely futile.
One of the things I remember most vividly from my NLP course is the following paradox, showing how sensitive to language our mind is: if I say to you: »Please, do not think about a red square!« , it will be exactly the image of a red square that will enter your brain immediately!
So the above statements may sound not only rather hypocrititc to children, but such verbal rough denials of personal reality (how they are experiencing it) may just reinforce their own conviction, also because they trigger off the above »red-squere« effect in their brains.
It was only a few weeks ago that I brought the testpapers back to school again. Two of my 13 year old pupils, who had just about passed it (got the grade »2«/»D«), suddenly started to cry, sobbingly repeating to themselves: »I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid!« I was watching them, feeling frustrated, bad, sad and helpless. I simply didn't know what to say to them. So I did something pedagogically unheard of: I tore up their testpapers into pieces and said: »It must be terrible to feel so stupid just because of those stupid grades. They are numbers. And you guys are so much more than just numbers!«
Then I told the whole class to stop writing the correction of their testpapers, and to listen to the story which I just made up on the spot, as if it had been in me long time ago:
|
Once upon a time there lived a princess. A very beautiful princess with long blond hair and long, very, very long brown legs.:-) She had big blue eyes and a big red mouth, just like Angelina Jolie... And she wasn't only very beautiful, she was also very, very… khm, stupid!
Anyway, her beauty attracted princes from all over the world to the kingdom, who rode on their white horses thousands of kilometres just to see her, at least one time in their lives. But the moment they saw her, they could hear nothing but the nightingales sing and they wanted to marry her on the spot.
But it wasn't so easy to marry the princess in those days. Every prince was set under a test: the King wanted each Prince to spend at least one day with her to talk to her before the wedding would take place. And if after a few hours he was still sure that he wanted to marry his beautiful but stupid daughter, he may have her. You may find it hard to imagine, but literally all of the princes escaped, they all ran away already after a few minutes after talking to her. They found her simply too stupid to spend a lifetime with such plain brainless beauty!
So the years passed by. The princess was now getting older and older and every year more and more desperate. So was the King, who had in the meantime also given up teaching her Maths, Goegraphy and English! He got so desperate because his own daughter couldn't understand anything he tried to teach her, that he ordered all the schools in his kingdom to be turned into prisons! The princess felt sorry for all the children, but without real love there was nothing she could do, she was helpless herself. She wanted to live no longer, she wanted to die.
But then one day… completely unexpectedly, a prince on a black horse rode into the kingdom. Overwhelmed by her beauty, he stopped and gazed at her in amazement. He didn't only hear a nightingale sing, but also the churchbells ring! He could feel his heart beating so fast, that he thought it would jump out of his armour. He got off the horse (well, somehow he did that!), and started talking to her… and…and…you won't believe that…they spent a WHOLE wonderful day together! And on the very next day, you won't believe that either!, he proposed to her. Yes, there was a prince who wanted to marry this princess!
The King couldn't believe his ears when he heard the news! Suspicios as he was, he invited the prince to a private men-to-men conversation, and started interrogating the prince immediately:
»Did you talk to her?«
»Yes, Milord, I did.«
»Did she give you any answers?«
»Yes, Milord, she did.«
»And those…answers…they…weren't stupid?« carefully continued the King.
»No, Milord, they weren't.«
»Now eather some kind of a miracle had happened, or I'm getting old and deaf and crazy, or this strange new Prince is completerly out of his mind!« thought a king to himself and scratched his balding head.
»What did you ask her?«
»Oh, all sorts of things.«
»And she really knew all the answers?«
»Yes, Milord, she did.«
»Can you give me at least three examples! But beware, only if I see some reason in those answers I will let you marry her!«
»I asked her what colour the rainbow was.«
»Oh, thank goodness! I have been teaching her the names of the colours for years! She must have remembered some of them, didn't she?«
»No, Milord, I'm afraid not. She said the rainbow was colourless.«
»Dam**, » almost said the ugly word the disappointed king. »So you still want to merry this silly woman?«
»Yes, sir. And the woman you are talking about isn't silly. The point is, that it is only our eyes that see the rainbow as a scale of different colours, but the truth is, that we percieve it as such because of the air and water and the sunrays… So in fact, scientifically speaking… her answer was even more correct than our perception of reality… »
»Ok, ok!« the king stopped him because he could hardly understand a word the Prince was saying, no matter how many times he scratched his bolding head.
»And what else did you ask her?«
»I asked her what colour the sea was.«
»I hope she got at least this one colour right!«, said the king. »She didn't say pink, did she?«
»No, sir, she didn't«
»So she did say blue, didn't she?« asked the King eagerly, full of hope.
»No, Milord, she didn't. She said that the sea doesn't have any colour at all. And if you are able to think of the sea as nothing but salty water, you must admit that her answer was correct again.«
»Well, well, this is slowly making sense, yes, yes…« the almost balded King pretended to understand.
»And what was the third question you asked her?«
»What colour the snow was.«
»And of course she said again it was colourless?« said the King who had already given up all hope.
»No, she didn't.«
»So she said it was black?« said the desperate King.
»No,« smiled the prince and continued: »This time she answered with a question.«
»How can you answer a question with a question,« said the upset king who understood very little outside his little box.
»She asked me why I kept asking her such stupid questions,« politely continued the prince. And added: »She said that every fool can see that the snow is white, the see is blue and the rainbow is full of colours.«
»So why for God's sake didn't she say it in the first place!« screamed the King.
»Because not many people can see beyond the obvious. But she can.«
»So…this is why you want to merry her?« said the king who slowly, very slowly started to understand.
»Yes, Milord. She isn't stupid at all. She only sees things with different eyes than you or me or most of us do. Which doesn't make her stupid, but a very special and unique person. Actually she is exactly the kind of woman I was looking for, because life with her will never be boring. Besides, she is the only one who can teach me look at the things and human beings from another perspective. And that is what learning, not stupidity, is all about. And as a Prince, I came to learn, and not to know everything.«
»Aha!« said the King, who finally understood that he had been wrong for many many years when he was calling his daughter stupid.
So they got married and had 9 children and they all lived happily ever after. Even the king stopped scratching his balding head... and even started to see the snow, the sea, the rainbow…with different, more open eyes. He finally realized there is no such thing as a stupid human being.«
|
When I saw a flash of almost happiness crossing my studens' faces at those last lines, I sincerely hoped and believed it wasn't just because of the happy ending…They must have got the message, at least for a while… Until the next blow of grades?
Dear Teachers!
You might find the story useful if you also have students in your class, who are often feeling different or less intelligent than they really are (who are we to judge or know about that?!), just because they don't fit very well into the existing school system. Or because their parents keep saying bad things to them unless they fulfill their expectations. Or because their friends are doing better at school, so of course they find it hard to accept the fact….
Anyway, I could see many of my students breathe with relief and delight at least during that one lesson, which had started for some of them as a usual nightmare, which could be given a horror movie title: »You-are-bad!« whispering grades«.
Anyway, in the end we all knew the story wasn't merely a made-up fairy tale…
Somebody in there was seen and understood. So who cares about the grades, after all!
MG.
The Creative Methodology for the Classroom course can be viewed here
The Literature course can be viewed here
|
