When my son was moved from private school where all of his peers were pretty much on a par with him academically to a public school where he stood out immediately as smarter, teachers singled him out for what they thought was praise. Instead he climbed into a shell of mediocrity and hiding his gifts. It has taken him until his sophomore year in college to regain his confidence and willingness to show his intelligence in a classroom settings.
It may be a well-meaning policy, but it can have devastating and long-lasting effects both on those who are singled out for high performance and for those who are reminded that they haven't met the mark yet again.
Truly effective teaching inspires students to compete against themselves and to collaborate and support each other. My kids have had maybe three or four teachers who knew how to do this, and the effect on the entire class was impressive.
I'm impressed that you see the problems with this despite your child being the one singled out for praise. You're right that it will also have effects your own child - both in creating envy and resentment with peers and the risk of your child's personality being one that causes a negative reaction to public praise pointing out that they're different and better.
:nodding: A thing of beauty, this post. No need for me to add anything-- save-- I
know that this is true. From a teacher's perspective, I
know that it is, because I noted the difference that this one change made (making student grades on assignments completely anonymous)-- since that change largely happened while I was teaching at several universities. My colleagues who saw no problems with the practice had very different classrooms than I did.
My top students frequently HELPED their less-able classmates, and their classmates didn't feel THREATENED by those top performers.
Yeah. NO good can come of this. None. All my classes ever knew what
what the top score was-- and that stats associated with individual assignments and also with the class total. That is, unless they shared, which of course some of them did-- but the difference is that this is VOLUNTARY-- the
student controls the information, which is appropriate.
