School Grades in Socialism

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

A lot has been talked about the Schooling of children under Socialism. State schools are inevitable, a fundamental necessity of a functioning state, school books written in the interest of socialism and not capitalism. But a more concrete question i have is, what of the system of grading students? All teachers do not like it, and it has severe crippling effects on the development of children's personality and self esteem. I am not advocating getting rid of all grading systems, i do think a certain amount of national multiple choice-type tests (demanding the "right answer") are an important tool for a workers' state to have to bind the working class to socialism so long the capitalist states still exist.
But the policy of teachers having to grade every test, every homework assignment, every quiz instead of criticizing aspects of pupils writing, is counter to producing free socialist human beings, if one can put it that way.

[Questionable]

The grading system is based on the bourgeois assumption that success is something to be achieved regardless of social conditions. If you fail a test, it's not because you come from a shitty social background, it's because you didn't study hard enough according to these archaic reward/punishment systems. The concept that success is innate and not dependent on environmental factors is alien to socialism.

Furthermore, the very concept of intelligence and success in bourgeois school systems is inexplicably linked to capitalist standards. Children who prove themselves to be good future workers by adhering to the authority of teachers and doing all their work are rewarded the most. You can also gain prestige as a student by showing obedient citizenship, getting involved in clubs that "help the community." School isn't about education, it's about socialization.

In a socialist school system if a child showed a weakness in an area, it simply means he needs to be educated more, not punished.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Under the DotP education will serve to condition students into the cultural and political hegemony of that situation, all education does that. That doesn't mean we should have 10 year olds reading Engels.
As for what should be changed about the current economic system, this video sums up what I think. I do wish I knew more about the education system, though. As a student that could be useful for me.
zDZFcDGpL4U

[blake 3:17]

I don't think that how grades are given is all that important. Right wing and technocratic states have made them in to an end to themselves, which is primarily about fostering authoritarian forms of work discipline.

The more important question is how to recreate schools as vehicles for freedom and equality.

The primary function of schools in capitalist society is teaching children to sit and be quiet.

Capitalist work discipline isn't always an evil in itself, but it is a pretty shitty end.

[Blake's Baby]

Grades in schools mean very little and are primarily a means not of assessing pupils but assessing teachers and schools (less than x% at y grade = failing school, more than x+z% at y% = super-school that gets more funding etc).

There are some tests that are used for testing the children but often these too are used to differentiate schools (there's a constant fuss about 'school league tables in the UK' where schools with very different intakes are compared with each other - and guess what? Rich schools in nice areas with middle-class kids have better results than inner-city schools, who would have thought that?).

Testing the children in and of itself has little educational merit and most educational research over the last 50 years would back that up I reckon. Apart from being used to classify schools, tests are also used to determine future educational prospecs for young people (you don't have the right grades to this, you have to do that). Why? Why not base recommendations for future education on getting to know children and planning with them what to do? Why not allow young people to have a say in their own education?

What in the end is the purpose of education? when I was at college I knew a lot of trainee teachers and remember one day some of them came back really enthused after a lecture, saying that they'd been inspired by a realisation that their future job was not to 'teach' (=fill empty vessels with facts) but to 'help children learn' (=work with kids to helpl them develop themselves creatively). One is an alienating process where education is a mean to an end (and that end is about quantification and removes agency from the children) and the other is an end in itself (and involves creative engagement of both pupil and teacher). Much better than testing.

Of course, in the main it's not true, teaching in capitalism is primarily about quantifiable processes, but even capitalism needs an ideology that it's actually about helping people develop creatively.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

yeah, grades are a symptom of bourgeois evil and we need national multiple choice questions where the 'right answer' is 'i love the party'.

Fuck me.

For sure, educational systems aroudn the world have their problems, and part of the problem is the profit motive - we see this all the time with teachers being denigrated so that new free schools and academy chains can extract higher surplus. We see ridiculous charges for HE and FE, and we see the internal market ripping off schools and students via horrendously high prices for resources.

I don't really see where grading comes into it, though. Sure, there may be TOO MANY exams at inappropriate times (i.e why have national GCSE exams at 16 when the compulsory leaving age is now 18? and why have the 11+?), but that's not an argument against graded exams, it's an argument against poor policy in regards to graded exams.

I don't see a problem with classification. In fact I think it's necessary and I don't think there's opposition to it as a concept, merely the policy ideas behind it. Grading should be an indicator, a means to an end, not the ends in itself. Therein lies the problem, not some bourgeois conspiracy (though of course there are many companies who are fond of excluding people based on grades, degree classifications etc., but that's another argument really).

[Lynx]

There would still be grading, but it wouldn't carry the dire consequences that it does now.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Compulsory education should be abolished. It only exists to prepare kids for compulsory labor. Let kids learn whatever they want in whatever environment they want. I suffered through school for years and I only remember the things that interested me.

[hetz]

I think they'd generally improve. :D

[Raúl Duke]

I think it's unknown how education will play out, as with many other details of how the future society will look.

I think it'll be more possible for teachers and educators to set the curriculum, including implementing certain new pedagogies that the current set-up doesn't allow them to, rather than a school board or principle or bourgeois state.

[Questionable]

yeah, grades are a symptom of bourgeois evil and we need national multiple choice questions where the 'right answer' is 'i love the party'.

If you're referring to me when you made statements like this in your post, I obviously don't think it's a bourgeoisie conspiracy where they're cackling loudly as students flunk classes and get sent to work in factories, but the public education system is shaped by the demands of the economic system that it exists within. I doubt many business owners consciously recognize this but it's still there. The grading system could have its uses but as long as concepts like "success" and "intelligence" are formed by capitalist society it will be flawed.

[Post-Something]

I think that the student-teacher relationship will largely cease to be institutionalized. The traditional school as we know it will no longer be a sustainable model and we are already seeing massive cracks in its arrangement. There are a few interesting developments which point in new directions, for example online learning with Coursera. But no, hopefully learning will happen on site of the work that needs to be done, doctors will be trained by spending time with other doctors etc, the grading system could be replaced with a portfolio full of the different things you've done etc. I would VERY HIGHLY recommend you read Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society", the book had a profound effect on me and is probably my personal favorite radical thinker.

[Jimmie Higgins]

School isn't about education, it's about socialization.
Yes, it's about socialization into capitalist society. State schools were set up to help modernize the labor force in early days - the Prussians used a military style eduction system to help create a proletariat, in Candada schools were used to destroy Native American communities, in France they were used to create a standard language and national, rather than provincial, identification among people. And more generally, as others have said, it's used to train people how to play their roles in capitalism: to be factory and other kinds of workers (take tests, fill out bubble work, labor autonomously, sit doing boring work for hours on end, and respond to bells like Pavlov's dog), or how to be managers for the petty-bougrois (work in groups, learn how to give the responces that are expected of you, competiting with your peers, and the other general skills needed by all workers), and how to think critically and lead with confidence for the eliete kids (debate classes, more nuanced lessons, critical thinking skills).

As for what I'd guess worker's would want from an education system (and I think after food and housing and possibly medical facilities this would be a major priority as soon as workers were in power) is increassed acess and self-directed eduction. So people might decide there is a basic set of skills that everyone should be taught - so maybe there would be mandatory education to some extent for people until pre-teen years or early teen years when they can reasonably begin to get a sense of what their interests are. So I think eliminating grades would happen as a way to gauge someone's development, but I also think age-grades would be done away with. So if you are intrersted in learning something a little more advanced in say, chemestry, there might be some 15 year olds who want to study this, but there might also be some 40 year olds who never learned or just recently became interested in this subject for academic and personal reasons or because it will help them to fill a needed and (for them) interesting role in society. So the whole idea that by 14 everyone should know algerbra just wouldn't exist IMO - it would be "education for use" rather than education as a way of measuring and evaluating people.

I think teachers would be necissary, though I agree that their role and relationship to students would probably be different. Right now, they are managers of children in this machine of education (nothing against teachers who for the most part go into teaching for altruistic reasons and figurativly kill themselves trying to make a shitty structure workable for their kids) but I think we'd want something more like a mentor/advisor. Beyond learning some basic math and reading, I also think that people would work together on projects in school. But unlike now where group-projects are assigned, it would be more of a mutal interest. And this, rather than by age-group would probably decide what induvidual classroom participants look like - teams of various size working together to learn specific things or research particular areas of study with acess to specialits and mentors.

I do think that like now with capitalism, "socialization" would probably be a part of education - at least in the early years if there is a mandatory basic-skill part of education. But unlike capitalism where workers are socialized to show up to things on time, stand in lines, punch buttons, compete against other students on an induvidual basis, and do alienating work with little fuss, I think education would be much more about actual self-education, learning how to be a confident leader (since especially in the early years after a revolution, workers with confidence in their own leadership would be essential to a liberated society) and learning to work with and rely on other people for mutual ends.

In some ways this is what the elite kids get now: they have much more options for studying areas that they find appealing, they get one-on-one mentoring and tutoring, education is geared towards actually having competent decision-making and leadership skills, and so on. Of course it's not without it's own problems because it is still geared towards a class society full of inequality, and even the eliete have to be conditioned through education to compete and take their roles in society, but since they do need to be confident and knowledgeable to run society, they do get the best education in the sense of learning self-empowering skills and useful knowledge (though much of that knowledge is probably just useful for being ruling in class society - like when people used to learn the Classics just to prove their elietness and acess to education.

[Blake's Baby]

What the fuck is the obsession with grading? No-one who supports it has offered any explanation as to why it is necessary. why reform something that serves no purpose? Why not abolish it?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What the fuck is the obsession with grading? No-one who supports it has offered any explanation as to why it is necessary. why reform something that serves no purpose? Why not abolish it?

Surely the onus is on you to prove it serves no purpose, rather than simply saying 'well grading exists under capitalism, it doesn't work perfectly, so its inadequacy must be tied to capitalism and thus the answer is to abolish it, as abolishing capitalism is also our aim.'

Doesn't make sense to me.

[Blake's Baby]

Seriously? Ususally I think you're a good poster.

Go read some educational theory, sociology and psychology.

Try googling 'child-centred education' or 'student-centred learning'.

From Education Week, May 2011: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/26/33academy.h30.html?tkn=UTVFsh4GS4taeAQuW0UJp%2FJFE fK7moKBWaOn&intc=es

on why testing isn't working. There are dozens of reports like this.

If you replace the word 'testing' in your question with the word 'prayer' by the way, then your question makes just as much sense. Please, demonstrate that's either necessary or desirable.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

yeah, grades are a symptom of bourgeois evil and we need national multiple choice questions where the 'right answer' is 'i love the party'.

Fuck me.


Yes, correct on both accounts.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What the fuck is the obsession with grading? No-one who supports it has offered any explanation as to why it is necessary. why reform something that serves no purpose? Why not abolish it?

Yup, the real answer is:

D) None of the Above
:D

[Regicollis]

There will probably exist some grading to ensure that people are sufficiently skilled for the tasks they perform. If someone wants to be a surgeon in a free society going through medical school is not enough - there still have to be some kind of exams to make sure the would-be surgeon knows what he is doing.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Seriously? Ususally I think you're a good poster.

Go read some educational theory, sociology and psychology.

Try googling 'child-centred education' or 'student-centred learning'.

From Education Week, May 2011: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/26/33academy.h30.html?tkn=UTVFsh4GS4taeAQuW0UJp%2FJFE fK7moKBWaOn&intc=es

on why testing isn't working. There are dozens of reports like this.

If you replace the word 'testing' in your question with the word 'prayer' by the way, then your question makes just as much sense. Please, demonstrate that's either necessary or desirable.

I think i've been a victim of trans-atlantic mis-interpretation.

When I talk of grading, i'm not really talking of 'testing'. I'm talking about 'grading' submissions, whether that be in exams, intra-school/college tests, submitted projects and class/homework.

I agree with you that 'testing' based on memory recall, and testing used to separate students by ability, is of course archaic, outdated and not fit for purpose.

I actually find myself slightly supporting (slightly!) Ed Miliband's ideas for a Technical Baccalaureate. If you look at the best education systems (i.e. Germany) they don't separate based on academic ability (therefore placing a greater emphasis on traditional subjects such as Maths, English and Science), but they do separate. They have advanced schools, basic schools, and technical schools. I'm not sure about separating by school, but if from a younger age (i'm not really enough of an expert to do anything than give an arbitrary age of say 13 or so) pupils were able to themselves choose whether they wanted an education that focused on 'academic' subjects, or whether it focused on 'technical' subjects (without any preference by the education provider over which type of education was 'better' or more useful/worthwhile), and were allowed to specialise then for 4 or 5 years + before leaving school, if this was combined with a more practical approach to teaching (i.e. not teaching towards the test) based on modules, based on key skills, based on chronology of the subject's history and based on independent investigation (i.e. building towards original research and inquiry of some sort), then you would have a school system that stimulates students' learning and produces people who are ready to either put their already-gained knowledge to good use, or to apply it at a higher level (at Bachelors', Masters' or Doctoral level).

Unfortunately, there is no incentive to do this under Capitalism, but in my (hopefully) future career as an educator I won't give up on doing better for my students. I'd be a waste of space if I did.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I actually find myself slightly supporting (slightly!) Ed Miliband's ideas for a Technical Baccalaureate. If you look at the best education systems (i.e. Germany) they don't separate based on academic ability (therefore placing a greater emphasis on traditional subjects such as Maths, English and Science), but they do separate. They have advanced schools, basic schools, and technical schools. I'm not sure about separating by school,

The German Prussian schooling system is not the best, the Scandinavian schoolsystem that East Germany used to have as well, is th best. The great "separating" you talk about is class oppression. At age 11 (5th grade) kids are put in one of three schools that will stigmatize them the rest of their life. 74% of poor children never make it to the Gymnasium. The future of 11 year old children who are put into Hauptschule because of their bad grades, is already one of being the most downtrodden of society. The german education system is complete classist shit, so don't talk about stuff you have no idea about.

[Bakunin Knight]

Some great points in this thread. In order for children to flourish both in education and in life, they should not be forced into propaganda camps and have to learn a set one-size-fits-all curriculum. If students have little interest in it they hear only the base propaganda with little actual learning, and therefore are not only wasting their time but being effected detrimentally. Children should be allowed to discover the world as they choose to, with guidance from adults rather than compulsion. Have a look into 'Unschooling'.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The German Prussian schooling system is not the best, the Scandinavian schoolsystem that East Germany used to have as well, is th best. The great "separating" you talk about is class oppression. At age 11 (5th grade) kids are put in one of three schools that will stigmatize them the rest of their life. 74% of poor children never make it to the Gymnasium. The future of 11 year old children who are put into Hauptschule because of their bad grades, is already one of being the most downtrodden of society. The german education system is complete classist shit, so don't talk about stuff you have no idea about.

I was talking more of separation via academic and technical routes. I wasn't talking of including the more negative, classist elements of contemporary education systems around the world.

[Blake's Baby]

I think i've been a victim of trans-atlantic mis-interpretation...

I'm on the same side of the Atlantic, Bossman, but as the beginning of the debate used 'grading' as a synonym for 'testing' as far as I can see, I stuck with that usage. So it may have been my misinterpretation that led you astray, in which case I apologise, we seem to be arguing over a much smaller set of differences than I realised.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

we seem to be arguing over a much smaller set of differences than I realised.

Indeed. I can't think of a single contemporary (non-ideological) educator who actually advocates testing (or 'grading') as a means to the end of improving education. Of course, those who aim not to improve education for children but have more economistic/overtly political ends in mind do advocate testing, but I think it can be seen in general as quite backwards and outdated really.

So you know, i'm REALLY looking forward to teaching the last year of GCSEs (as my first teaching year post-PGCE will probably be 2014-15) and then having to teach to the EBACC 'testing' regime that Gove is bringing in. :rolleyes: