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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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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.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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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 agree with this. And even if praising the 100 WERE an effective form of motivation (which I don't think it is), there is no need to name the person who received the grade. Just say one person received a 100, they know who they are and will still feel the praise. Once, in college, a professor observed that one person got a 100% and if they'd like to identify themselves they could. I chose not to. I saw no benefit to myself in doing so. Alternatively, in high school I got a certain sense of satisfaction, I admit, by NOT disclosing my grades to my more highly competitive classmates. Drove them nuts that they couldn't tell if they had "beat" me or not. They got no real info on my grades until class ranks came out. I admit to enjoying that a bit, particularly because my approach to academics was to compete with myself and not others. It did not really matter to me what THEIR grades were, so I saw no valid reason to share mine with them. Not sharing did have some entertainment value, though! 
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I can still recall how sheepish I felt when in graduate school, I hit an O-chem exam out of the park (like, 96% raw score, which is insanely good for this class)... and my DH, our future best man, and a couple of our other close friends were all in this class together... I wanted to sink into the floor when they found out that I was the one who had earned that 96. The mean was 68 on that exam. I felt AWFUL.  And everyone involved was clearly an adult with little to prove at that point. We were all "smart like that." This felt awful to me because I am not a competitive person, but some of the people who got low scores on that exam were/are. I made them feel bad, and I didn't even get any satisfaction from doing so since it didn't matter to me-- I'd have been thrilled if the low score had been my 96, truthfully. Finally, yes, yes, YES-- student grades on assignments are covered by FERPA. This was still being sorted while I was in the classroom, but most of our legal advice was to err on the side of caution on that score. My guess is that this runs afoul of the law unless students (and parents) have given explicit permission to have grades shared.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 10/31/12 07:55 AM. Reason: to add FERPA info
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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"Under FERPA, a school may not generally disclose personally identifiable information from a minor student's education records to a third party unless the student's parent has provided written consent." Yes. Colleges no longer post grades, even tagged with student ID or SSN rather than name-- it's no longer permitted. In the same way, elementary schools should not be releasing grades of any individual student to any person except that student or the parents. DeeDee That's interesting b/c, carried to its end, it seems that this law would disallow posting honor rolls as well, which all of my kids' middle and high schools have done. They put the 4.0 honor roll, etc. in the newsletter, hang it on the walls of the school, hold ceremonies for kids who are on the 4.0, 3.75, 3.5, etc. honor rolls...
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Joined: Feb 2010
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I can still recall how sheepish I felt when in graduate school, I hit an O-chem exam out of the park (like, 96% raw score, which is insanely good for this class)... and my DH, our later best man, and a couple of our other close friends were all in this class together... I wanted to sink into the floor when they found out that I was the one who had earned that 96. The mean was 68 on that exam. I felt AWFUL. And everyone involved was clearly an adult with little to prove at that point. We were all "smart like that." I would have felt good since I did so well. We clearly have different personalities. In high school chemistry class my (male) friend and I were far ahead of the class. What kept us motivated was seeing who would get a higher score on each test. Why should schools be geared to non-competitive personalities rather than competitive ones? Maybe this another argument for school choice, so that schools can better match the personalities of students and parents. Many people oppose gifted programs and ability grouping because the children not selected for the gifted program or the "top track" will feel bad. Our middle school no longer publishes an honor roll for this reason, and many high schools have discontinued class ranks or made them almost meaningless by not weighting honors and AP classes. The desire to spare students' feelings can be taken too far.
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Are there schools that don't do this, gifted or otherwise? It was pretty common in my experience. Teachers might even give some kind of small reward to kids who got 100% on a test, the best essays were regularly read aloud (and credit given to the author), etc.
I even had an Algebra II teacher who would post the recent top test scores and their owners in a corner of the board. It was one of the few classes where I wasn't regularly on the top, either. Maybe I should have been doing some of that homework after all? Nah... close enough.
I don't see any problem with publicly acknowledging good performances. I would have a problem with publicly calling out poor ones. "Praise in public, correct in private" applies here. I agree with Dude on this one. As long as it's in elementary school. In Middle schol and High School, the other kids might ridicule you for being so smart but most of the teachers are doing it for motivation. As long as the teacher is not sharing everyone's grade, I would be OK with that. If your kid does not handle well with praise, you should talk to the teacher. And talk to your kid too that nothing's wrong with being smart and it's something to be proud of. (My DD wants to know who gets 100 if not her and that gives her motivation. She would relish on being the smartest one in her class. I do not want that in middle school tough because it will put undue pressure on the kid.)
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Bostonian, I agree that you and I clearly have different perspectives here. My DH is highly competitive-- like you. So I respect that your perspective is valid. But my experiences as a teacher would indicate that practices which support competitiveness rather than cooperative learning environments-- on balance, I mean-- leave a greater percentage of students WORSE off than before. Another reason to support change to a more cooperative model is that students don't wind up viewing future colleagues as "the enemy" when they need to learn how to work in teams. This is really crucial in engineering and science disciplines, and it used to be an area where future employer stakeholders and professional organizations were telling colleges that we were FAILING our students in a pretty much EPIC fashion by setting them up to "compete" with one another rather than viewing learning as a potentially collaborative experience without winners and losers. While someone has to lose a football game, that is NOT the case in a biology lab. Nobody "has" to get an F in order for someone else to get an A-- unless we're talking about pure Gaussian grading, which has also fallen out of favor for the same reason-- its arbitrary nature and artificiality. This isn't about student "feelings" so much as a pragmatic view that suggests that making learning a situation where the 'finish line' is not arbitrary, but has a well-defined set of expectations, makes it fine for a lot MORE students to cross that line with success. Some won't, of course. I'm no suggesting that "we're all winners here" is a good thing, either. I feel that student grades SHOULD reflect to what degree an individual has demonstrated mastery of the subject. But that's all that they should do. Again, I was witness to that sea change. It's been a very hard sell in the physical sciences, and most of the old guard was never able to accept the truth of it-- in spite of evidence that it was true and that changing it didn't lead to "dumbing down" anything or to making students "soft." It has led to better retention of women and minorities in those disciplines, however. 
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 10/31/12 08:09 AM. Reason: to clarify that this isn't about 'touchy-feely' woo-woo new age crap. Which I do NOT believe in.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Competing on grades misses the entire point of learning.... it completely degrades the experience of learning. My husband and I think grades are bogus. We're also in a homeschool group that caters to gifted children and I believe they opted to leave grades entirely out of the classes.
My parents were always proud when I made the honor roll and they didn't fight to get me into the gifted program because they thought it'd be better for me to be the best in the class, instead of possibly struggling in the gifted program (I was close to the cut-off)
When I found out I made 1 of 2 As in a difficult college biology class (where half the kids failed out each year), I didn't feel proud. (I actually felt disgusted because of the low standards in the class. I hadn't attended a single lecture and read the book the night before the test.)
I despise all of it. If you're getting 100% on a test, it means the work isn't challenging enough, imo. I am a competitive person, but grades don't mean much.
(And if tests just show what you've retained so far, it's great to be able to get 100%, but it still means nothing beyond that you are further than you were than when you first starting learning about the subject. The style of the test matters, too.)
Last edited by islandofapples; 10/31/12 08:15 AM.
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Bostonian, I agree that you and I clearly have different perspectives here. My DH is highly competitive-- like you. So I respect that your perspective is valid. But my experiences as a teacher would indicate that practices which support competitiveness rather than cooperative learning environments-- on balance, I mean-- leave a greater percentage of students WORSE off than before. Another reason to support change to a more cooperative model is that students don't wind up viewing future colleagues as "the enemy" when they need to learn how to work in teams. This is really crucial in engineering and science disciplines, and it used to be an area where future employer stakeholders and professional organizations were telling colleges that we were FAILING our students in a pretty much EPIC fashion by setting them up to "compete" with one another rather than viewing learning as a potentially collaborative experience without winners and losers. While someone has to lose a football game, that is NOT the case in a biology lab. Nobody "has" to get an F in order for someone else to get an A-- unless we're talking about pure Gaussian grading, which has also fallen out of favor for the same reason-- its arbitrary nature and artificiality. This isn't about student "feelings" so much as a pragmatic view that suggests that making learning a situation where the 'finish line' is not arbitrary, but has a well-defined set of expectations, makes it fine for a lot MORE students to cross that line with success. Some won't, of course. I'm no suggesting that "we're all winners here" is a good thing, either. I feel that student grades SHOULD reflect to what degree an individual has demonstrated mastery of the subject. But that's all that they should do. Again, I was witness to that sea change. It's been a very hard sell in the physical sciences, and most of the old guard was never able to accept the truth of it-- in spite of evidence that it was true and that changing it didn't lead to "dumbing down" anything or to making students "soft." It has led to better retention of women and minorities in those disciplines, however. Amen!
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But my experiences as a teacher would indicate that practices which support competitiveness rather than cooperative learning environments-- on balance, I mean-- leave a greater percentage of students WORSE off than before.
Another reason to support change to a more cooperative model is that students don't wind up viewing future colleagues as "the enemy" when they need to learn how to work in teams. This is always my point with competition. It just made me alienated and anti-social. It really didn't help me to view my classmates as existential threats. It's pretty anti-social and tends to viewing the world as a conflict of all against all.
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