Related References:
Academic Achievement Awards

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: December 16, 2001
Latest update: December 16, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org.

Related Scholarly References:

Journal entry by jeanne

Teaching essay by Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata
Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata: December 2001.
"Fair Use" encouraged.

• Alfie Kohn Dear Habermas File.

  "This essay was prompted by Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Goldstars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. In Volume 2, our Spring 1998 Issue, we addressed arrogance and hierarchy in the academy. On this page we will review the threads of Alfie Kohn's arguments on how grades, praise, honors' convocations, all that we think of as good about our grading system, can have the same harmful effects on learning when they are set within the context of a manipulative environment that rewards competition in lieu of cooperation, and when they treat us as objects without intrinsic motivation."

  I know that Alfie Kohn doesn't believe in gold stars, and probably not in Oscars, either. But respect for accomplishments and motivation is a major social issue we need to address. No one who receives these awards knew that they would even exist. I hadn't created them yet. And if the award itself wasn't the motivation for the achievement, then our Oscars do count. But how do we make them count without someone of questionable integrity seeking them for their "marketing" value?" Tough question, hmmm? Perhaps we should write to Alfie Kohn and ask for his help on this one.

• Alfie Kohn's Website

• Grading: The Issue Is Not How but Why By Alfie Kohn. Accessed from Alfie Kohn Website, December 16, 2001.

  Compare the levels of assessment Alfie Kohn discusses in the excerpt below to the assessment we have arrived at in the Moot court/ Dear Habermas program:

  "Why are we concerned with evaluating how well students are doing? The question of motive, as opposed to method, can lead us to rethink basic tenets of teaching and learning and to evaluate what students have done in a manner more consistent with our ultimate educational objectives. But not all approaches to the topic result in this sort of thoughtful reflection. In fact, approaches to assessment may be classified according to their depth of analysis and willingness to question fundamental assumptions about how and why we grade. Consider three possible levels of inquiry:

  • Level 1. These are the most superficial concerns, those limited to the practical issue of how to grade students' work. Here we find articles and books offering elaborate formulas for scoring assignments, computing points, and allocating final grades -- thereby taking for granted that what students do must receive some grades and, by extension, that students ought to be avidly concerned about the ones they will get.

  • Level 2. Here educators call the above premises into question, asking whether traditional grading is really necessary or useful for assessing students' performance. Alternative assessments, often designated as "authentic," belong in this category. The idea here is to provide a richer, deeper description of students' achievement. (Portfolios of students' work are sometimes commended to us in this context, but when a portfolio is used merely as a means of arriving at a traditional grade, it might more accurately be grouped under Level 1.)

  • Level 3. Rather than challenging grades alone, discussions at this level challenge the whole enterprise of assessment -- and specifically why we are evaluating students as opposed to how we are doing so. No matter how elaborate or carefully designed an assessment strategy may be, the result will not be constructive if our reason for wanting to know how students are doing is itself objectionable."

    Note that in the Dear Habermas program we have been trying to approach Level 3. I think the November Writing Project came close, and, oddly enough, I think our Dear Habermas awards are coming close. I just want to be sure we don't turn either group into traditional M&Ms.

• Power Goes to School: Teachers, Students, and Discipline by John F. Covaleskie, Northern Michigan University. Quotes below taken from the EPS site on December 16, 2001.

  "[D]eveloping the mix of foresight, judgement, and self-control that enables (or perhaps just constitutes) “discipline” is an important task . . ." Covaleskie says, "of childhood." And I would like to expand that definition to include all of us as we experience anticipatory socialization and socialization into ever-expanding work and social roles. "However, when used in school-talk," Covaleskie reminds us, "'discipline' often is translated into terms of control and power, not development or education. 'Discipline' is often, perhaps usually, synonymous with 'classroom management.'" And classroom management is not what education in a liberal arts university should be about."

  Grades often become classroom management and obeissance to the needs of the corporate world for picking the most likely candidates for their corporate hierarchy. Neither classroom management not developing "trained" workers for a corporate hierarchy satisfy the goal of learning for self and community growth and development. Grading that adheres to those objectives is unsuitable to higher education in four-year universities, whose graduates are expected to take an active role in the democratic government of their nation-state until such time as there is sovereignty beyond the nation-state, on a global level.

• Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, speaks of a "culture of silence." (p. 12) Quote below is taken from Curran and Takata, Oppression and Revolution, Section IV, Segment 1:

  "So also do Belenky et al. in Women's Ways of Knowing (1986). "Although the silent women develop language, they do not cultivate their capacities for representational thought. (p.25)....The inability of the silent women to find meaning in the words of others is reflected also in their relations with authorities." (p.27) They come merely to accept, never to question, never to oppose. Freire's methodology comes of giving "voice" to the silent, to the exploited peasants of Brazil. Belenky and Gilligan (In a Different Voice) seek to give "voice" to women who have so often not been heard and not been included in the recognized power of our institutions.

  "Freire attributes the silence of the peasants to the complex pattern of social, economic, and political dominance in which people were expected to respond to orders, to obey, never to understand and to choose. He attributes the silence, which he also calls apathy and lethargy, to dominance and paternalism. Belenky and her colleagues attribute the women's silence to much the same sources. Powerlessness breeds hopelessness breeds apathy and indifference and a loss of one's sense of the ability to control one's own or anyone else's destiny.

  "If so many have learned to be silent and simply to accept, how are we to discover their "truth," their "knowing?" This is where feminist theory seeks to discover new approaches to conceptualizing the world, and new approaches to measuring the patterns of transactions in the world.

  "Freire developed an entire pedagogy around the silent, uneducated peasants. He operated from the assumption that "every human being, no matter how 'ignorant' or submerged in the 'culture of silence' he or she may be is capable of looking critically at the world in a dialogical encounter with others." (Freire, op. cit., p. 14) He affirmed his belief in the human's desire and ability to control his/her destiny. Belenky describes the same kind of affirmation for the young mothers who had never learned to use language to understand and control their world. Many of the excerpts in this text affirm that women's silence is, like that of the Brazilian peasants and the young mothers, a response to oppression, and reversible if women are given a chance to be heard."