sravakavarn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sravakavarn) wrote2020-05-08 05:09 pm
sravakavarn) wrote2020-05-08 05:09 pm
(no subject)
There are four functions that I do as a teacher and various parts of society and education have an interest in them:
1) I watch teens en loco parentis--this is something I don't do at moment because of coronavirus--but we all know it is a crucial function of school since child care is so expensive in the US.
2) I educate according to "standards" which are cultural norms, generally middle-class cultural norms, that I teach kids to navigate implicitly.
3) I sort kids by their ability level. This is a crucial part of my job and despite all of the equity talk in education, we all know this is function and one that increases as students move up the chain. Most crucial skills are taught early and students can (but have little incentive to outside of school) do this.
4) I hope to teach the value of certain kinds of learning and have students be able to do without me.
Let's be honest, for all the equity talk, two and three are in a major function of the entire expensive educational complex: we don't teach the skills directly for employers but we do skills adjacent to it, and that why so much effort is pushed into it.
Furthermore, most teachers believe that students "earn" grades despite the fact we know that even best practices such as rubrics and standards and profiency-based grading because we are sorting them within a system. Equity is generally code for "meritocracy for those who are willing to comply."
I realize that we also do other things that really are to our student's benefit nor is the entirety of our job grading and thus sorting. But we have to admit that in our system, we are gate-keepers as well as skill- and meta-cognition teachers and mentors.
I honestly think this is why grade inflation happens even though it devalues ALL four functions of a teacher, although maybe not the fourth as much. We don't feel good about the disjunction between being a mission to increase equity between disadvantaged people and the fact we are deciding, but frankly politically adjudicated criterion, who gets a chance to try to climb the class ladder. And if we don't do that, we also fail our students because we are misleading them about the society they live in.
Thus grade inflation is a kind of bad faith way to deal with fact teachers have two contradictory missions in the four primary ones we all share. The latter three apply to professors too.
Businesses and college admin teams have an interest primarily in 3 and to lesser degree 2. Parents have an interest in 1 and 2, and to a lesser degree 4. Students may or may not have an interest in 2, 3, and 4.
1) I watch teens en loco parentis--this is something I don't do at moment because of coronavirus--but we all know it is a crucial function of school since child care is so expensive in the US.
2) I educate according to "standards" which are cultural norms, generally middle-class cultural norms, that I teach kids to navigate implicitly.
3) I sort kids by their ability level. This is a crucial part of my job and despite all of the equity talk in education, we all know this is function and one that increases as students move up the chain. Most crucial skills are taught early and students can (but have little incentive to outside of school) do this.
4) I hope to teach the value of certain kinds of learning and have students be able to do without me.
Let's be honest, for all the equity talk, two and three are in a major function of the entire expensive educational complex: we don't teach the skills directly for employers but we do skills adjacent to it, and that why so much effort is pushed into it.
Furthermore, most teachers believe that students "earn" grades despite the fact we know that even best practices such as rubrics and standards and profiency-based grading because we are sorting them within a system. Equity is generally code for "meritocracy for those who are willing to comply."
I realize that we also do other things that really are to our student's benefit nor is the entirety of our job grading and thus sorting. But we have to admit that in our system, we are gate-keepers as well as skill- and meta-cognition teachers and mentors.
I honestly think this is why grade inflation happens even though it devalues ALL four functions of a teacher, although maybe not the fourth as much. We don't feel good about the disjunction between being a mission to increase equity between disadvantaged people and the fact we are deciding, but frankly politically adjudicated criterion, who gets a chance to try to climb the class ladder. And if we don't do that, we also fail our students because we are misleading them about the society they live in.
Thus grade inflation is a kind of bad faith way to deal with fact teachers have two contradictory missions in the four primary ones we all share. The latter three apply to professors too.
Businesses and college admin teams have an interest primarily in 3 and to lesser degree 2. Parents have an interest in 1 and 2, and to a lesser degree 4. Students may or may not have an interest in 2, 3, and 4.