Why Grades Should Measure Individual Progress Instead of Comparing Students to Each Other

Todays’ content:

1. Why Do Schools Have Grades? What they measure and why they are so important to us.
2. When Grades Compare: Why is it so important to compare students using grades?
3. Effects of Comparison on Your Mindset: The negative impact grades can have on self-confidence and perception of own abilities.
4. External Factors vs. Talent: How much of performance is more linked to effort rather than talent?
5. Two Solutions: Self-Comparison and Uneven Support: Stopping comparisons and helping some more than others.
6. Further Reading

 

Why Do Schools Have Grades?

I thought quite some time about what grades are designed to do, but the answer is surprisingly ambiguous. Obviously, grades are supposed to measure something, but what exactly they measure is unclear.

• Is it memorization skills? Sure.
• Is it effort? I hope so.
• It it the ability to follow instructions? Maybe.
• Is it how much a teacher likes you? Hopefully not.

A short stream of consciousness:
I remember my teachers pushing me to work hard and take something out of class (to learn something). Is learning the same as memorization or something more deeper? If so, how do we measure it? And if grades measure hard work, shouldn’t a talented student be graded worst for the same effort?

You can now see how difficult it is to come up with a definition for what grades are measuring. Turns out we don’t have to know what grades measure in order to talk about them. We can talk about their effects on students and what their role in a larger context is.

Remember the feeling of dread when you got a bad grade or the immense joy when you aced your exam? The fact that we can experience such intense emotions when it comes to grades shows how important they are to us personally. When I was a kid I never thought about why I had to get good grades or what they mean. I simply wanted them because everyone else seemed to value them so much. My friends wanted them and my parents and teachers wanted me to have them as well. It felt too good to be praised for good grades – and it felt too bad to be scolded for bad ones. What motivated me to get good grades wasn’t what they would allow me to do one day, but rather the praise and good feelings that came with them. At a more advanced age I learned about university applications and job opportunities. The general rule was and still is that good grades open doors – opportunities.

 

When Grades Compare

I must admit that grades motivated me because they showed that I could be better than others. And you know how it goes: If one is at the top, another has to be at the bottom. Many of my classmates felt discouraged by bad grades and started falling behind. But I’d argue that this isn’t because of grades, but rather how they are used. Grades are used as a tool for comparison. They are usually not presented on an individual level but as a distribution of all grades in a class. The degree of comparison varies. Some countries list the students’ names along side the grades. There are some countries (e.g. Finland) and school types (e.g. Waldorf) that refuse to compare grades for most of the school time, but these are rather the minority. Competition does not stop in school, but extends to national and international test such as the SAT, GRE or PISA. What has happened, in essence, is that students’ performance has been relativized to other students. This creates a student hierarchy in which the top will feel great and the bottom sometimes completely devastated and these feelings are not entirely based on internal factors such as effort, but the external und uncontrollable performance of other students as well.

This would not be all too bad if grades didn’t have such tremendous influence over our future lives. Two examples.
In Korea, a students’ score on the final high school examination pretty much determines which university they can attend. In Germany and other countries, a student can only be admitted to certain programs such as medicine or psychology if their grade point average lies above a certain threshold that is defined over the student with the lowest GPA that got accepted the previous year. School ranking not only opens doors for some, but also shuts them for others. The ranking is a product of two things: limited positions and the wish to select applicants more fairly and easily for those positions.

From an economic perspective selection starts if there is a mismatch between demand and supply. If 500 students apply to 30 spots, 470 students will be disappointed. It is not that they were bad applicants, but that others were ‘better’. Universities want to recruit students with the best grades because it predicts quite well the likelihood that they will successfully pull through their studies (Source). There are of course other criteria that the admissions office looks at, but when spots are limited the most fair way of deciding who should get them are grades.
The take home message: competition occurs when there is a higher demand than supply.

I see two problems with comparison. First, giving students access to limited spots in academia and on the job market based on grades is crazy if we don’t know what they measure. What does better mean? Second, comparison can have detrimental effects on students, which I want to zone in on now.

 

Effects Of Comparison On Your Mindset

An example from my school life: When I moved from Washington D.C. (USA) to Beijing (China) I was put into a much tougher school. I had to work quite hard to keep up with classes and still I got pretty bad grades. I may have thought things like “I am a loser” or “I am stupid”. When saying such things I was essentially defining my abilities and self-worth over how good I was relative to others. I may have studied all night long, shown tremendous effort and still got a worst grade than my friends. The tables turned when I moved to Germany and switched to a less demanding school. I was suddenly among the best! Keep in mind that my performance didn’t change, but only the environment to which I was comparing myself. I may have thought things like “I am smart” and “studying was totally worth it”. It is commonly known that university freshmen – often having been among the best at their school – now face a completely different point of comparison: the best students of other schools. The same vicious self-doubt cycle starts and can be extended to job life, family life and others. I personally switched from “I am a loser” to “I am smart” because I was fortunate to experience a different environment. Therefore, comparison is essentially nonsense and the effects can be very detrimental to a students’ beliefs in themselves.

I recently read Carol Dweck’s book ‘Mindset’, which I’d like to bring in at this point. She is a psychologist at Stanford University and has spent decades researching how ones mindset can have dramatic influences on success in life. I’ll let her describe it in her own words:

“In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.” (Source)

Comparison can lead to a loss in self-confidence and a fixed mindset. I have experienced it first hand and I know that many other students suffer from it as well. I think it is one of the main reasons why some students don’t enjoy school at all and stop care to learn and be curious. This not only has detrimental effects on students, but also on society. I think we don’t want people that seek elite study programs and well paying jobs because it makes them feel good, but rather individuals that learn to improve themselves and act out of conviction.

 

External Factors vs. Talent

I certainly thought of myself as a loser when comparing myself to my friends who got better grades. And since effort didn’t change much of my situation I was led to believe that some people were simply more gifted than others. Research is starting to show that abilities are much less set in stone and more malleable than previously assumed. Students are not aware of disadvantages they might have experienced from early on, but which greatly influence their performance in school. A simple example is dyslexia (difficulty learning to read), which obviously undermines student performance in school.

Another external factor is money. “According to figures, 64 per cent of students from independent schools went on to these universities [Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London and other members of the Russell Group] in 2010/11, compared with 24 per cent from state schools – a 40 percentage point gap.” (Source)

Wealthy parents can send their kids to private (i.e. independent) schools and these schools may have a good reputation, which increases chances of students to get accepted at good universities. But it might also just be that private school prepare their students better! Getting a worse score on the SAT when coming from a public school and going against mostly such well prepared and well funded elite students is hardly surprising.

Other factors have to do with child rearing. Let’s suppose two first graders begin with school. One of them – Kid A – has parents with a professional background and the other one – Kid B – has parents on welfare. Studies have shown that the number of words an infant hears in its early years predicts its academic success as well as IQ. A study from 1995 has shown that professional parents talk more to their infants than parents on welfare, which means that Kid A who has professional parents will most likely be better in school (Source).

There are countless studies that show how external factors can have an effect on our abilities. Effort leads to improvement, no doubt about that. But all these external factors are not being considered when comparing kids to each other. Students have different backgrounds and therefore also different starting points.

Talent may very well be something that exists, but its effect is much smaller than we usually think. Geniuses have to work very hard for their achievements sometimes much harder than others. Dweck writes “Michael Jordan wasn’t a natural, either. He was the hardest-working athlete, perhaps in the history of sport” (Source). Beethoven centered his whole life around music, which was often the only source of joy in his life. The famous journalist Malcom Gladwell stresses in his book ‘Outliers’ how extraordinary performance has more due to do with hard work rather than talent (Source). Even Kenyan marathon runners are by some not thought to be superb performers due to some inborn abilities, but rather due to their cultural training in enduring incredible amounts of pain (Source).

 

Two Solutions

I want to propose two ways of improving the situation in schools. First, grades should not be used to compare students’ abilities, but rather individual progress. Second, we should recognize and combat disadvantages that students have relative to others.

 

Self-Comparison

We know now that grades – although thought of as being a fair way of measuring performance – actually aren’t fair at all.

We want students to advance, but we shouldn’t do it by creating a performance hierarchy that compares apples with pears. This creates irrational fear for apples to perform like pears and vice versa. Consequently, students’ self-confidence will suffer and they begin believing in a fixed mindset – the belief that abilities are inborn rather than trainable. Instead of comparing students to each other, we should compare them to themselves so that their motivation for learning about being better than their current selves. Emphasizing personal progress in schools maintains self-confidence and helps develop a growth mindset – the belief that abilities are trainable rather than inborn.

The ‘Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum’ led by the headmaster Margret Rasfeld has shown that this can work. At this school, students don’t take an exam together, but each one does it on their own – whenever they feel ready. This flexibility adjusts to the learning pace of students rather than forcing them to work under time pressure. Furthermore, grades are not used for comparison, but rather to measure individual progress (Source). The students even outperformed other students from a comparable school in Hamburg. Although having started with lower performances the students outperformed the Hamburg kids in reading, grammar and natural science as well as equaled out in English and math (Source).

The school is actively trying to build a close community among teachers and students and remove sources of fear. Mrs. Rasfeld and her students want to create a school that is enjoyable for all.

 

Uneven Support

If students perform differently due to their personal advantages (biological or environmental) but are treated equally in school, they suffer a disadvantage. A logical consequence would be to invest more time and money into more needy students so that everyone performs about equally. Extra tutoring classes for students with dyslexia or learning disabilities would be one example. Amanda Ripley describes in her book ‘The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way” how the Finish education system does exactly that. Here is an excerpt from the book:

“Until students reached age sixteen, though, Finnish schools followed a strict ethic of equity. Teachers could not, as a rule, hold kids back or promote them when they weren’t ready. That left only one option: All kids had to learn. To make this possible, Finland’s education system funneled money toward kids who needed help. As soon as young kids showed signs of slipping, teachers descended upon them like a pit crew before they fell further behind. About a third of kids got special help during their first nine years of school. Only 2 percent repeated a grade in Finnish primary school (compared to 11 percent in the United States, which was above average for the developed world).” (Source).

This example shows very nicely how abilities can be developed with the right support (fostering growth mindset), but more importantly it shows it is possible to build structures that create more equal opportunities than we currently have.

 

Concluding Remarks

Although designed to be fair, grades are actually not as fair as we thought or still think. When considering that students can be vastly different from each other, comparison makes little sense. Yet, our education system has been built around these numbers although we don’t even know for sure what they measure. As a side-effect, comparison creates fear of failure, lack of self-confidence and a belief that abilities are more fixed than they are. The fixation on grades leads to the loss of curiosity for the subject matter.

The solution is to use grades, not to compare students to each other, but students to themselves. Teachers initially set out to teach their students and they will be able to do it much better if students can learn and improve themselves without the fear of failure. Individuals with  disadvantages should receive additional support so that we can come closer to the ideal of true equal opportunities.

 

Further Reading:

1. The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way – by Amanda Ripley
2. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character – by Paul Tough

3. Outliers – by Malcom Gladwell

4. Learning in Finland – by David Rothenberg

 

The Origins of Education

An ocean of information

Having almost exclusively spent one week reading about education I felt like a little boat on the Pacific Ocean – completely lost in the vastness of the topic. There are so many schools of thought, different sets of values, cultural differences, governmental regulations and new technologies that makes the field of education very difficult to navigate. But the field remains absolutely thrilling!
Before we can start talking about education in more detail we have to zoom out and establish some groundwork.

 

Today’s content:

1. A WORKING DEFINITION OF EDUCATION
2. HOW AND WHY DID EDUCATION EMERGE?
3. 19TH CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS: THE BEGINNING OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION
4. TODAY’S WORLD: AN EDUCATION REVOLUTION?
5. SUMMARY: THE MAIN TAKE AWAYS

 

What is education?

The problem with the word ‘education’ is that it is very badly defined in everyday language. Does being educated mean to hold a diploma or degree? Does it mean to have proper manners or the right set of moral values? It is an umbrella term, which makes discussions about it very fuzzy. The first thing one should do when confronted with an ill-defined term is – you guessed it –  look it up in a dictionary! 😀

Education:
“Learning that takes place in schools or school-like environments (formal education) or in the world at large; the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In developing cultures there is often little formal education; children learn from their environment and activities, and the adults around them act as teachers. In more complex societies, where there is more knowledge to be passed on, a more selective and efficient means of transmission—the school and teacher—becomes necessary. The content of formal education, its duration, and who receives it have varied widely from culture to culture and age to age, as has the philosophy of education.”
(Source)

This definition will suffice for now, but it has its limitations! Defining education properly is terribly important because much of our upcoming discussions will be based on that definition. A separate post will deal with this topic in more detail!
But let us now look at (1) why people started educating themselves and each other, (2) to whom education was accessible and (3) how education changed over time within societies!

.

A historical look at education

We start in prehistoric times. The only type of education that existed back then was so-called informal education. It is called informal because no explicit ways of passing on knowledge had to be created in order for that knowledge to be passed on. Things like catching fish, building a house from clay or distinguishing poisonous from edible berries – these are all things that can be taught on the go, things that can be imitated. Many animals teach the next generation via imitation.

As people started building settlements and continued accumulating knowledge new ways of passing on knowledge emerged that were more efficient (formal education). While education had previously been a kind of ‘learning by doing’, it now became more like a set of instructions. Imagine for a second the first person in ancient Egypt to notice the link between the movement of the sun and seasonal rainfall. That person must have been able to communicate his finding in a formalized manner so that it was comprehensible to his peers. Such knowledge is after all not easily learned by imitating another person.

Emerging civilizations were confronted with the challenge to come up with new ways achieving peaceful coexistence in larger groups. Most if not all civilizations formed hierarchical structures in order to better manage daily life. While there was little need for formal education at the lower end of the hierarchy (agriculture) knowledge accumulated among the ruling class. They needed people who could predict rain fall, build temples and develop war strategies. The person on the throne may have been an emperor, king, priest or half-god, but the pattern was always the same: larger groups of people (civilizations) required a new form of structure, which had to be managed by educated individuals.

In the large majority of cases formal education stayed within the ruling class and thus was only accessible to a small percentage of the population. In ancient Rome, private tutors were readily available, but only wealthy people could afford them. Similarly, every Chinese could in theory work for the empire as a bureaucrat, but had to pass the imperial examination, which existed for about 2000 years. However, the large majority could not afford the tutoring necessary for passing the exam. In other societies education became a good only accessible to a certain subgroup of the population. The caste system in India is such an example, which divided society into four groups (varnas). But in many cases education was not possible simply due to a lack of time. Agricultural work was very time-consuming and children had to help their parents on the field. Finally, there was no real need for people to get educated. Nearly all of the population had to work in agriculture to sustain themselves and pay their taxes.

Special places for teaching emerged like the madrassa in the islamic world during the middle ages and the academies in ancient Greece around 400 B.C. But the very large majority of the population remained deprived of formal education. The idea of educating young people in specifically designed places is very old, but it was never applied to the whole population. There are some sources that claim that the Aztecs in todays Mexico had a compulsory education system, but that is still heavily disputed.

 

The beginning of state control over education

The major advancements in education occurred in the 19th century in Prussia (todays Germany). Napoleon had just humiliated Prussia by defeating its army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (1806). The Prussian aristocrats started a massive reformation process, which included the introduction of the first compulsory education system ever to be created by a state. The Prussians believed that their defeat at Jena was due a lack of education (discipline), which had been left to parents. Consequently, the state sought to educate their population through their education system. Compulsory education stretched over 8 years and was organized into 3 categories that could serve the state in different ways. The Akademieschulen (school academies) fostered the next generation of policy makers and was only accessible to the top 1% of the population (mostly of aristocratic backgrounds). The Realschule was for the professional proletariat ranging from engineers to doctors to which about 5% went. The large majority of about 93% went to the Volksschule (elementary school) where they were taught obedience, cooperation and the right attitudes as well as basic literacy (Source). Friedrich Wilhelm III would later say:

‘Teaching and education define the individual and the citizen, which is why they [teaching and education] are of utmost importance to the welfare of the state’
(Translated from German, Source).  

People started to have this notion that education somehow led to professionalism – meaning better work performance. There was a Prussian landlord called Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow who noticed that his agricultural output increased with a better educated workforce, more specifically, a workforce that could observe and reflect better as well as articulate their thoughts. His findings were politicized and became part of the Prussian education reform efforts (Source).

I don’t think that people had proof that better education would lead to a better workforce, but rather that many individual experiences led to a new consensus within the ruling class that widespread education would be a good thing for the state. The Prussian idea of making education a state endeavor spread to other European nations as well as the United States. Later German success in the fields of science, philosophy and military strengthened the assumption that the Prussian education system was of high quality and should be adopted (Source).

It seems that education has almost exclusively been a set of teachings that would allow governing bodies – kings, bishops and others – to train people who could perform certain duties for them. Soldiers, bureaucrats, strategists, clergy. The large majority of people – peasants – worked in agriculture. But while the Prussians were setting up their education system, the single most important process for the development of compulsory education began: the industrial revolution in the western world.

 

Industrialisation: pushing for a more educated workforce

The industrial revolution was a period that stretched from 1760 to about 1840 and it involved the mechanization of work in the western world. The introduction of machines to perform human labor led to an increase in productivity. During this period companies emerged as self-governing entities that needed lots of skilled workers in their factories. Completely new jobs were created and the necessary skills to perform certain tasks first had to be taught to the worker. Peasants pursued better paying jobs in the cities and were not needed in such large numbers on the field due to the introduction of agricultural machines. The industrial revolution caused a dramatic rise in living standards and companies began to contribute quite significantly to the wealth of the state. The state had a natural interest in keeping the factories open and running. Investing into education meant a win-win-win situation for the industry, the state and the worker!

Higher education also became increasingly important with time. Wars in the 20th century demonstrated sometimes quite dramatically how technological superiority could lead to victory – the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) as well as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan are two examples that readily come to mind. But wars were not the only domain that raised the importance for higher education. People started realizing that research could lead to new products and sometimes even to whole new industries. Think of the pharmaceutical industry. It is very costly on the research side, but people are also very willing to pay for new drugs to solve their health issues.

The western world had established unprecedented wealth and abundance of jobs, and all thanks to a mix of compulsory formal education by the state and demand for a workforce due to the industrial revolution. Living standards were rising across the globe and education was more accessible than ever before.

 

A new world, a new education system

All over the world education is still seen as the ticket to a better life and that promise still holds true in many cases. However, jobs have become scarce. Unemployment rates range between 0 and 70% from country to country (Source) and consequently the competition for these jobs has often become insane. In Korea, students go to school until around 4 PM and continue with private tutoring, sometimes until midnight. At the day of the final examination the whole country is in a state of exception. Employees are asked to come an hour later to work so that students can make it on time to their exam. Taxi drivers give free rides to students and airplanes are not allowed to take off! (Source). The so-called ‘Korean Pressure Cooker’ is a symptom of capitalism and the question of how to deal with such manifestations of education remains.

If you listen to the discussion on education you can hear two things. First, people seem to acknowledge the tremendous importance of education for dealing with the global challenges that humanity faces in the 21st century. But many say that current education systems do not equip youngsters with the necessary skills and knowledge to tackle global problems at a satisfactory level. A whole army of reformers are trying to ‘fix the education problem’, but nobody seems to have found the magic bullet – if there is such a thing. The problem is incredibly complex and involves many disciplines ranging from politics to developmental psychology. Some people throw tables into the classroom and replace the teacher with an online course. Others look to science for finding out, which character traits need to be enforced in early childhood so that these kids become successful in their lives – however you might want to define success. And another group abolishes school all together and asks kids to define their own curriculum. There is something to be learned from all of these experiments and we will definitely cover them in the coming posts!

The other reform that people are tackling is not on a societal, but rather on the individual level. The question is how we can achieve higher living standards by e.g. eating healthy, reducing stress, focusing more on teaching values. This is a far more fuzzy reform and it varies greatly from country to country, but a highly interesting frontier to look at (which we will do as well).

 

Summarizing the major findings:

1. Formal education has always been a tool for governing bodies to teach their people the skills that they need to perform work for them.
2. Education has never been accessible to all people within a society until the 19th century.
3. The rise of industry has led to a demand in an educated workforce, thus raising the general level of education in countries.
4. Governments started setting up a compulsory education systems, thus raising the general level of education as well.
5. Reformers are looking for ways to modernize the education system to foster students that can deal adequately with global challenges of the 21st century as well as raising living standards even further.

 

I hope this was informative to you! Please get back to me with any comments you might have! I want to hear your take on this!

See you next week!

BENDING THE CURVE

Hello world!

It’s an exciting time to be living on this planet! So many things are changing at breathtaking speeds and this means two things: more unpredictability and more opportunities. Take a look at the average global temperature projections from the year 2000 to 2100.
First, the range of possible temperatures increases as the years progress. By the year 2100 we could be looking at anything between 3.8 – 8.0 degrees fahrenheit increase in temperature, which is an incredible amount of uncertainty. Second, out ability to influence the outcome is also increasing. Political reforms, new technologies, a new global consciousness within society – these are all factors that could slow down the rise in temperature – or not.

.

“The future is more unpredictable but also offers more opportunities than ever before. “

 

This does not only hold true for climate change, but also for the fight against poverty and disease, women’s rights, overpopulation and many other things. We are more in control of our future than ever before, which means we must also bear more responsibility than all of our ancestors.

.
But is there a lever that we can manipulate to solve all of these problems at the same time? I believe so. That lever is education. Think of change as trying to push one of these stones down the mountain side and causing an avalanche. Education is like letting it rain so that its easier to push stones. If the person pushing is better educated he or she will be more successful at achieving change. It is in education where our future societies are being taught everything they need to know to shape the future. If we improve education we can create better societies and ultimately a better future.

.
.

---

.

About this blog

After finishing my Masters’ Degree in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology at the LMU (Munich) I decided to leave academics and dedicate one year to education. I will hopefully be working in the education sector, and learn as much as I can about the area in my free time.
I came across the word ‘uptrain’ in a recent article by the Huffington Post entitled ‘An A to Z of Noah Webster’s Finest Forgotten Words‘. Uptrain is described as “to educate” — literally ‘to train up.'” This is very fitting since we want to educate ourselves on how to educate others better.
This blog is for everyone who is interested in education. I’ll keep the language simple, give general introductions to more specialized topics (e.g. neuroscience), but I’ll also have more in depth sections to which you can jump and skip the intro if you feel comfortable with the topic. I’ll label it clear.

 The mission of this blog is to answer the following question:

“How can we improve education with the largest possible impact?”

Proper definitions for the words ‘education’, ‘improve’ and ‘impact’ are of course crucial and we will naturally deal with them later. But let me first say a few words about how I will go about to answer this question.

1. Diverse content: Innovative education concepts, new government laws, latest research findings, news articles, blogs and personal experiences – whatever source of information fits – I’ll use it.
2. Evidence based: I will backup my arguments with data and clearly label opinions as such. I want to produce good content (that’s the research scientist in me!). This is the only way I can make you trust me!
3. Structured, labeled, summarized: I’ll label my posts with titles and sub-titles so that you know exactly what the post deals with. Summarizing or aggregating multiple posts into one is rarely done by other bloggers, but definitely worth it. I will do this from time to time.
4. Creative presentation: I’ll present my content in ways that are entertaining and easy to understand. I have read enough horrible research papers that require 110% mental capacity. Extra effort will go into this.

 

---

 

Final words – I N T E R A C T :

.

Education is a tough topic because of its complexity. It often requires highly inter and even transdisciplinary teams. Coming back to the analogy of moving stones down the mountain side – education is like a big boulder that can only be moved via team effort.
I need your participation to move those big stones. Yes, its tough, but they are also more likely to cause an avalanche!
Together, we can start to understand education better, see where it’s heading and how we can shape it! SUBSCRIBE via mail (on the top right) to get your weekly posts. FOLLOW this blog or just WRITE ME! I really like getting mail! Bombard me with (1) topics you find interesting (2) thoughts you have about my posts, (3) ideas you want to exchange, (4) further information on the posts’ topic, (5)

In the words of the great Nelson Mandela:
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”