In an environment where grades and scores are so important, getting things right becomes a matter of life or death. How many times have you been in a classroom, when the teacher asks a question and literally no one wants to raise their hand, even if the question was a rather simple one and you're sure both you and others know the answer. Why do we not raise our hands even if we are so sure we know the answer? My psychological theory is that we've been conditioned to treat being incorrect with being synonymous with being inferior. You feel a little bit judged when you're wrong, both by your peers and your teachers; if that is the entire truth or not is largely irrelevant, it's the fact that these pressure are felt in the first place. I think think we've all felt this feel before of not wanting to stick our hand up, so we can atleast with fairness acknowledge that this feeling is present in the minds of students.
You can talk about comformity theory or some other psychological behaviours about people being nervous with public speaking and those are all valid. The point here isn't to find a silver bullet to all the causes of this behaviour but rather to inquire and think about if the other dynamics in play in the classroom are causing hesitancy. Instead of using psychological theory as crutches, we can use psychological theories to criticize the existing forces that are influencing student behaviour. We can test this theory and there is even a slight improvement from the status quo, it is something worth trying - and I suspect that this type of behaviour is present in all forms of graded material from homework, to exams, to assignments.
Why are we so obsessed with being right? In most traditional education systems, classes are structured and graded in predictable ways. There exists:
These components are weighted and combined to total 100%. Some systems use absolute thresholds for grades, while others curve the class so the average is a B or equivalent. Doing well in school essentially means always being right. Sure, you might argue that you can be wrong in the classroom or in ungraded assignments – but look me in the eyes and answer this question: How many opportunities to be wrong did you actually get in those situations? Yeah, exactly.
Here's something crucial to understand: a graded class or subject is always a method of comparison, curved or not. Grades are inherently relative. The high performers get grouped together, only to be compared again at the next level, and then grouped and evaluated once more – this continues until each student reaches a high enough level of academia to have their soul beaten out of them.
In a society obsessed with comparison, your grades determine how you'll be treated when applying to universities, jobs, and beyond. Charles Goodhart famously said, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" – and that perfectly sums it up. When we're so obsessed with our grades, we compromise our learning, sacrifice our individuality, and destroy our health, all for the sake of being "better" than the next person in this weird, arbitrary intellectual dick-measuring contest.
One of the first things they preach at school is to be "open-minded," to be "risk-takers," to be "creative," and to "especially learn from our mistakes."
Now look me in the eyes and tell me I'm supposed to take that seriously.
The entire construct of classrooms and curricula is nothing but a system designed to trap and exploit vulnerable kids and young adults, subjecting them to an intellectually-abusive, sadistic game of stress, conformity, and misinformation. With the rise of the internet and globalization, the pool of people to compare yourself against has grown exponentially larger. So who the actual fuck is surprised that suicide is one of the leading causes of death among kids aged 12-19?
Now, I'm certainly not saying the schooling system directly causes such tragedies – but even if one kid decides to commit suicide because of their grades or school-induced stress – that is a fucking tragedy, and we all better understand that.
School should not give you a foundation to get an A. School should give you a foundation to fail. It should teach you that failure is something that is inevitable in everyone's life, a wise Jedi once said "the greatest teacher, failure is" it's about time we listen to him and help students overcome and embrace failure instead of conditioning them to be afraid of it.
