False Rewards
 

I saw a short piece on the news last night regarding something nicknamed 'False Rewards'. This is a concept gaining momentum in the U.S. where schools are trying to eliminate competition in favor of competence. Here are a couple of examples:

1) Not keeping track of scores in youth sports so that there are no losers and then giving all kids a certificate or trophy at the end of the season.

2) Not keeping grades in class so that some students don't feel inferior to others.

I know that kids have an inherent desire to learn, but by removing a desire to compete, does this remove their desire to do better? How can two students be compared if you cannot measure their aptitude compared to a norm? Can you even set standards that can be applied to all students?

I can see certain upsides to this such as a reduction in bullying and a reduction in the extreme competitiveness that some youths learn from their parents, but I can also see downsides, such as students not being challenged and having no concrete means to measure performance.

Any thoughts?

In America the education establishment seems to have a remarkable ability to take any good idea and carry it to a detrimental extreme. Even more frustrating is their ability to run in cycles between opposing detrimental extremes. In my lifetime I've witnessed three full cycles of the Phonics and Whole Language extremes in teaching reading.

Our schools have been deficient in teaching collaboration and cooperation skills. There are many places in school and work where more collaboration would be a benefit. But eliminating all competition and handing out certificates to everyone is, in my opinion, another example of taking a good idea to an ineffective and ridiculous extreme.

Competition
 

Well, speaking as a former schoolteacher.....

Personally, although it sounds extreme what you describe, I think the basic idea has some merit.

eg I play sports for fun and fitness, not to be the most muscular, nor for the admiration of spectators, nor for money. I think this ethos should be foremost in schools. If you say well done you made and effort and went for the ball, that is better than you missed the goal you fool.

In the USA this is even more perverted because success in sports gains scholarship money to attend college/university whilst academically more able students may not have the money to support them.

In the wider world, businesses compete with their rivals for trade. But within the same company it is demonstrated a successful company cooperates rather than does backstabbing. For some people, competition is motivating (being number 1 in rank order). I have to admit I'm interested in my primenet ranking. However, better incentives are like a company that says to its salesforce - if you can sell 10000 widgets you come with us on a holiday. That way all have the opportunity to win. We should not envy or covet the success of others, rather rejoice with them when they are successful.

We are all uniquely different too. One may be good at sport, or art, or algebra, how can you possibly compare these aptitudes? Surely we should recognise that someone does something well irrespective of the average capability among our peers. We should be more focused on absolute rather than relative performance (criticising others is a dishonest way of praising yourself). Belbin's work on successful teams found a number of roles that team members can contribute which are distinct yet complement the other roles that others perform.

In school the competition should be against a set standard. In this country (UK) that is the examination test. If someone can pass the test that is great.

If everyone in the class can reach the standard and pass the test that is excellent. Thus if in class students helped each other it helps everyone achieve the success. If we do otherwise it can lead to sabotaging the work of others.

This philosophy is let down by the ridiculous use of quota of passes in some testing systems, or the USA emphasis on "percentile" of pass rate.

I think the current systems foster individualistic behaviour which does not translate well into a team context suitable for the world of work.

The problem with figures is they can be abused. For example, the UK government measured statistics on schools and they were put into league tables. Now, a high ranking school had students with good grades. However this totally ignored the catchment area, parental income, improvement over time etc etc. So if you had a class of well behaved pupils who had intelligent parents of course they got good grades. Even with mediocre teachers. Conversely you could have an inner city ghetto school where the kids' parents were unemployed and they had no money for home computers/internet. A good teacher or school in that area might be able to raise the grades of those pupils relative to their ability when joining but could not hope to compare with the other school in terms of output grades. If those pupils were sent to the so called "top" school in the league they may improve less! This did not stop the public moving house or sending kids a long way to be educated at a supposedly superior school based on the ranking.

As everyone has different ability, I would rather be concerned at maximising someone's potential, helping them increase their personal competence as much as they can, and comparison with peers has no part in this, other than to make the slower people feel belittled and ridiculed.

Unfortunately the US does use quotas in some cases, but they are quotas based upon race/gender more than grades and I don't think that is what you are referring to.

I had experienced in some classes that teachers set up their scoring system so that only 10% of the students get an A, 30% get a B, etc. This is extremely unfair to students because their final grade is weighted higher or lower due to other students. There are also teachers that use a bell curve where the median score is a C and one standard deviation above is a B and two or more above is an A.

In the US there is now the 'No Child Left Behind' act, signed by our current president. The idea is full of good intentions, but the outcome has been disastrous. Teachers are now 'teaching to the test' because they want their students to pass the test, but 'teaching to the test' completely overlooks a lot of other important material.

There is one question I don't really have an answer for. If we work to maximize each student's abilities (competence over competition), would a 'minimum competence' level be necessary for graduation to the next grade? I'm concerned over the possibility of students that have excelled in their core compentency areas (such as math, writing, etc.) only to have those same students be socially inept or to have no concept of social boundaries. I have seen cases where an individual has extremely high confidence in themselves, but few skills and little ability to learn new ones.

[QUOTE=rogue]Unfortunately the US does use quotas in some cases, but they are quotas based upon race/gender more than grades and I don't think that is what you are referring to.[/QUOTE]Grrr! :rant: :furious: People have sex, [b]words[/b] have gender.

Sorry, one of my hobby horses and this is the Soap box, right? :wink:


Paul

Hi instability, I'm recklessness. Wanna have gender with me :love:

[QUOTE=xilman]Grrr! :rant: :furious: People have sex, [b]words[/b] have gender.

Sorry, one of my hobby horses and this is the Soap box, right? :wink:

Paul[/QUOTE]

Here is one definition from dictionary.com: [b]The condition of being female or male; sex[/b]. One could argue that the word 'gender' is politically correct compared to the word 'sex'. To many people (in the US) the word 'sex' is taboo because it is equated with coitus. I would not be surprised if my use of the word 'gender' is strictly American.

[QUOTE=rogue]Here is one definition from dictionary.com: [b]The condition of being female or male; sex[/b]. One could argue that the word 'gender' is politically correct compared to the word 'sex'. To many people (in the US) the word 'sex' is taboo because it is equated with coitus. I would not be surprised if my use of the word 'gender' is strictly American.[/QUOTE]
Actually, it's not strictly American. The usage in that sense infests British English too. The difference is that some (boring old farts / people who understand grammar / pedants / delete as necessary) still use the grammatically correct terms and fight a probably lost battle against those who do not.

However, grammatically speaking gender has nothing to do with sex. English has largely forgotten that, except in somewhat unusual circumstances such as ships having feminine gender, but many languages preserve the distinction. I won't bother quoting the standard, mildly risque, and counterintuitive examples from Latin but will remind you that a young girl has neuter gender in German.

Paul

[URL=http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/gender.html]Paul Brians' take[/URL]

Alex (Man, I don't even have an opinion!)

[QUOTE=akruppa][URL=http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/gender.html]Paul Brians' take[/URL]

Alex (Man, I don't even have an opinion!)[/QUOTE]

Very interesting read. It should be added to the 'Perpetual Interesting Links' thread in the Lounge.

While the Equal Rights Amendment was eligible for ratification, one of the favorite arguments of its opponents was that "sex" in the text could refer to sexual intercourse and so the proposed ERA would ban legal discrimination against homosexuals.

However, according to what I read (IANAL), the truth was that in legal terminology the term "sex", with no accompanying modifier, always means gender, and any legal reference to sexual activity would have to incorporate the additional word(s) to designate that.

Seeing that that particular anti-ERA argument impressed a lot of non-lawyers, ERA supporters vowed to use "gender" instead of "sex" in any future proposed ERA.