A common argument for continuing to use grades, awards, competitions, and point systems in schools:
Students will experience extrinsic motivation outside of school, so we help prepare them for this experience by using similar reward systems in schools.
Our monetary system is a reward system. You work, you get rewarded with money, which you can use to purchase goods and services to improve your life. Work harder, smarter, longer, you get more money. The recent attention on the income disparity in the world, and the fact that people will lie, cheat, steal, and murder people for this reward should tell you that there are perverse side effects of our monetary system simply because of its existence.
Every reward system I can think of has unintended negative side effects. While every system has people who play by the rules, all of them similarly have people who have focused too much on the reward and then engaged in immoral acts.
Instead of basing what we do in schools on what is not working in our society, why don’t we look at other alternatives for to motivate our students? If you can think of a system based on motivating participants with a reward that doesn’t have serious problems with internal corruption and cheating, please let me know…
Anonymous says:
Have you seen the Extra Credits video on Gamifying Education? Gives some interesting food for thought, with a specific section on grading at 1:06.
Here’s the link: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education
October 15, 2011 — 4:29 pm
Michael says:
Check out Blue Harvest from @ThinkThankThunk. Great system for feedback rather than grades. Plan on using it in January. You need to pay for it but quite reasonable.
October 16, 2011 — 9:11 am
Alfonso Gonzalez says:
If we try alternative systems with our students then won’t they be more likely to change the system when they run it? We to owe to our future to try new things with our students!
October 16, 2011 — 4:09 pm
John at TestSoup says:
I never remember being told that I had to get good grades as a kid. I simply wanted to because I knew that I was capable of it, and that it was something that would make my parents happy and proud of me. So I did.
Today, I work to live (not live to work), because I understand rewards like money to be something that is desirable but not so much so that you should gamble your own happiness to get them. So I will always trade income for free time to spend with loved ones.
I feel pleased with that outcome, and will hope to pass it along to my own kids.
The trouble with trying to come up with an institutional fix for this is that we’re then substituting the institution for the parents, who are (after all) one of the three legs of the stool of education.
October 17, 2011 — 2:26 pm