Monday, September 26, 2011
Week 8: Failure as an option
What if the secret to success is failure?: A fabulous final post for the month of September. This is a longer piece, so if you comment on this it will count as two. Even if you already posted, go on and read this one. I promise it's good. There's surely an MA angle in this story ... where and what is it? What do you think of the idea of failure and how it isn't really present at MA? Is that a good thing? A bad thing? How might this relate to our mission statement of Think, Question & Create?
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4 comments:
I really enjoyed all nine pages of this article, and I think it brings up an importance concern: that we put so much pressure on ourselves to achieve success, yet we almost never question our definitions of success. This concern applies to MA as a private college preparatory school, though not as much (I hope) as it does the mega-wealthy NY school cited in the article. But on a less dramatic level, the privilege at our school definitely contributes to a sense of security among students, which, as the article points out, can have very negative effects: students who can depend on the "safety net" of their families' bank accounts don't see failure as a potential reality. Security leads to complacency with what modern society tells us to do in order to achieve success, and we don't question that it doesn't emphasize building positive character traits as essential to success.
The only part of the article that I question is the practice of ranking students' character. Character, to me, is too broad and too arbitrary to assign numeric values to, and there are definitely moral issues with teachers deciding how good of a person a student is. I think schools can easily find ways (as the schools in the article have) to feature character building more prominently in curricula, even to communicate "things to work on" to parents, without bringing numbers into the picture.
This article is completely MA. Evaluating students for more than just their test scores, and building personalities that are unique and strong, is a big goal at MA. Of corse, this can be bad, as it doesn't necessarily help kids raise their SAT scores. For example, teachers don't think bad grades are always a bad thing. When teachers give us bad grades, they smile and tell us how great it is that we can see our mistakes and learn from them. I don't smile when this happens, because i know it will hurt my GPA, and thus my college app. The concept of rating character is great because it takes the heat off of just our grades. If we have a CPA along with our GPA, it would make us want to appreciate class more and be more enthusiastic about school, because we would be measured on it. Kids would try harder, and not just when a grade depends on it, to show teachers that they have the qualities that make good character. Personally, I would be more willing to take chances and fail if I knew I was being graded on my ability to overcome my failure. Currently, thoough, I am less willing to take chances that jeopardize my grades, because the only thing that is being looked at is my grade, not by character or 'grit'. Colleges do try to get a sense of character through teacher recommendations, but a character score compiled by all teachers ever had in high school would be a good addition, in my opinion.
In the second page, Tough discusses how the first class of KIPP was very successful on the eighth-grade achievement test, but how not many ended up completing college. He says that Levin attributed this to a lack of character- that the ones that completed college were not always the ones with the high scores, but rather the ones with grit, optimism and perseverance.
I think that a similar phenomenon is happening here- MA is very good at prepping students for college, just as KIPP prepares for high school, but as a result on the emphasis on quantifiable results, students lose a bit of character. The way I see it, many students are very driven, both from their desire to prove themselves and to get into college. They want As, to be involved in lots of extracurricular activities, to score high on the SATs and ACT, and to be just as good as or better than their peers.
Starting freshman year, students worry about whether the classes they choose will “look good” on an application. When my sister signed up for classes she was worried that starting in regular geometry would give her a disadvantage. I told her it was actually better because she wouldn’t suffer and get a bad grade in David’s honors class, and she could move up the next year, which would look just as good. On the other hand, I knew cases where a kid had done poorly in David’s honors class and had had to move down and continue in the normal math. In this case, which class she actually belonged in and would thrive in was not of importance. Additionally, I taught her to avoid persevering the harder class and challenging herself in order to achieve a good college application, which is, in my opinion, the antithesis of character.
In addition to choosing the right classes, MA students focus a lot on getting good grades on assignments. I remember when I was in middle school, how I would start studying for a test three days before, and have my dad test me for about an hour the day before the test. Teachers used to give multiple homework nights in advance to study, and I would learn the material thoroughly. These days, teachers assign homework up until the very last homework day, leaving one night to cram. With all of my other homework, and my desire to simply get tests out of the way, I generally follow the one-night cram system. As a result, I think I actually remember more of the facts from MCDS’ eighth grade chemistry and U.S. history than MA’s sophomore chem and USH- no joke. I think in general the desire to do as much as possible with the best possible results means students spend as little time as possible- because they don’t have the time- on essay prep, test studying and homework in general. They think of the “right” answer, aka what teachers are most likely to look for, and use that. When it comes to grades, the means justify the ends, and as a result I think MA students have less grit. Because of time constraints and the empahsis on the end result, don’t think as deeply as they could, they don’t take as many risks, and overall they develop less intellectual character.
When I leave MA I’ll have taken classes that will look good as opposed to classes I want to take and I’ll have completed hundreds of homework assignments in a short amount of time. I think it’s very likely that I’ll leave feeling a little bit more pessimistic about homework and its benefits, a little bit less like I fought for what I really wanted, and overall like I lost a bit of my character. According to the KIPP example, I might have the right GPA and get into college- but how well will I do in life?
To bounce back from a mistake has always been thought as a virtue in our family, and to learn from a mistake is the greatest learning opportunity. Levin, through trial and error sees how vital failure is to students. Through the nine pages the group of intellectuals discuss the importance of learning from mistakes and how it builds a students' character into a hard-working individual.
Duckworths idea of 'grit' expresses this exactly. The idea that a student with the passion for learning and the mindset that to learn will take you to higher places emulates that of and MA student. (or at least in my mind.) Zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity are key elements in a students' education, that can not be portrayed with grades. School is a sanctuary of learning how to become a civilized part of society, and with that comes character.
Like Julia and Randolf, I also question how teachers would rank character. Teachers only see the student during a class environment and not how they interact with people outside of class. Levin, Duckworth and Randolf study the way students learn and communicate, but in my mind everyone is unique in the way they live their day today lives. It is impossible to write even an 800 page book about each and every learning style, or even sum up character with 24 words. Though what I think the real purpose of this article is to inspire students with the passion to learn and to encourage 'zest' in students to rise to new heights in their education.
-D. Sutter
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