Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Work for the grade or for the understanding?

A friend found this quote online.
One thing about school -- I always had this attitude that I was in school to learn, and attempted to do whatever was involved in that process, while school had this attitude that I was there to earn grades, which I couldn't care less about. Unsurprisingly, my grades weren't very good.
A verrrry interesting point that can be extremely subtle when you're actually really good at doing A+ work and you test well too (i.e., my older son and me, at least in primary/secondary school).

This reminds me a LOT of a little conversation Son1 and I had Monday afternoon over his finished and (graded? corrected? marked up?) schoolwork from the previous week. He was frustrated / irritated at the things he didn't get right, and I began to suspect that his goal was to do perfect work. I told him his job was to do his best. That sometimes he'd get everything "right," but at other times he would be challenged a bit more and the things he got wrong would help him know what he needs to work on.

Hmmm. I'm still thinking about this..

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