“accountability”
Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with NCLB.
I’m concerned with this article regarding the recent decision by several schools in Iowa to mitigate the consequences of failing to turn in homework.
“I have an 8- and a 10-year-old,” said parent Jodi Brown. “And as they excel through school, I would rather have them be held accountable for their actions. If they don’t turn in an assignment, I would think they deserve a zero for not completing it.” “I think it’s great to give them a second chance to make up for it,” said Julie Michalski. “I don’t want to see anyone fail, but they need to be held accountable for their work.”
“Held accountable for their actions,” “held accountable for their work.” On their faces, these phrases seem innocuous enough: simple, Puritan ethic. But this isn’t the case. Consider recasting the parent’s message in the proper context1:
“I have an 8- and a 10-year-old,” said parent Jodi Brown. “And as they excel through school, I would rather have them be held accountable for their actions. That is, I think that the teachers and administrators in charge of the school my children are compelled to attend should be able to craft artificial consequences if she does not do as they expect. If [my children] don’t turn in an assignment, I would think they deserve a zero for not completing it.” “I think it’s great to give them a second chance to make up for it,” said Julie Michalski. “I don’t want to see anyone fail, but they need to be held accountable for their work. We’ve set up this reward system and given grades arbitrary value. Besides, my kids don’t have a choice as to whether they do this work in the first place.”
When you compel someone to do something, when you force their hand, you can’t then “ask” for their obedience and claim that your response to “disobedience” is only fair, proper, or fitting. Many people suggest that schools’ authority is backed up via proxy by the parents’ authority, signalled by the decision to send their children to school. Maybe you could make a case for this if schooling weren’t compulsory. And if parents had fine grained control over their children’s education. And if the economic bedfellows of traditional schooling weren’t so compelling. But the fact that people nominally have the freedom to choose poor grades or no school does not trump the reality that they do not have the opportunity to pursue their education — what most people see as a right — in the manner they choose.
So next time someone uses language like “He’s such a responsible student,” or, “You don’t deserve that grade,” ask what exactly students are responsible for. And to whom? And why? Ask what the real purpose of grades is. And what it means to “deserve” someone else’s approbation of a task that is natural and wholly our own. We would never talk about our faiths our spirituality like this. We would never stand for gatekeepers to allow some religions but not others to be practiced. Why is education so different? Why don’t we naturally use the language of human rights to talk about school?
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- OK, OK — the loaded context [↩]
2 responses to '“accountability”'
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Schools are about grading, not learning. This can be proved easily.
If you claim to be about learning, the ONLY way to measure that is to ‘test’ before and after the ‘learning’. (This by the way is a measure of the school’s effectiveness, not the students)
No schools do this.
Instead, what schools do is ‘test’ after the ‘learning’ to assign a grade.
The primary purpose and intent of schools is to grade, not facilitate student learning.
The rest of school is about training conformity. Even things like requiring students to ask permission to relieve themselves is an act of subtle psychological dominance.
This all comes from the history of public education and how it’s initial goals of 150 years ago are the same today. Train children to have basic math and reading/writing skills so that they can work. This is not a conspiracy to enslave people, it was just the mis-guided goals of people over a century ago. What we know now is that every student is an individual whose learning should be facilitated and nurtured not dictated and coerced.
That we still aspire to impart kids with just basic math and language skills is a joke and a sad joke at that.
In response to Farbood Nivi’s comment above:
“The rest of school is about training conformity. Even things like requiring students to ask permission to relieve themselves is an act of subtle psychological dominance.”
You should be careful. The term “dominance” connotes “dominator.” I think that most schools are not quite so insidious (if so, who is the dark mastermind? the principal? note that he/she/it is appointed - is it the governor? the principal?)
I agree with the fundamental intuition that schools “train conformity” (though I wouldn’t use the term conformity) but I would claim that it is a natural process which is emergent from ambient pressures. I would claim that any group of people in one place for long enough will gravitate towards a status quo (and naturally create methods for preserving it).
I liked the following:
“When you compel someone to do something, when you force their hand, you can’t then “ask” for their obedience and claim that your response to “disobedience” is only fair, proper, or fitting.”
I’ll definitely be quoting that in the future - and I’ll be more careful to inspect people’s terms more carefully as you suggest.