… or is it regressive education:
Saskatoon’s public high school students will no longer be penalized for plagiarism or for turning in assignments late under a new evaluation method for report cards.
Some educational experts are critical of the move — an apparent first for Saskatchewan — saying it creates an uneven playing field for students in other parts of the province.
Not sure I can manage to comment without swear words.
I think this reflects the laziness of the teachers and admin. It appears that they are slacking off on the demands they make of the students but in reality, they are slacking off on themselves. They no longer have to hassle the kids about anything.
As far as waiting until the last day to submit assignments as someone suggested…does anyone believe they will actually be marked??? If the teachers are letting the kids off the hook for plagiarism and late submission, why would they not also let themselves off the hook for doing the work of evaluation? It’s so easy to make up numbers and it’s so easy to persuade yourself that in teaching the whole child, the numbers don’t matter anyway.
If kids are plagiarising, it’s because the teacher is setting up lazy assignments that encourage regurgitation. If kids hand the stuff in late, it’s because teachers allow it. This makes a mockery of the entire evaluative process.
I always wanted to know how my students were doing so I could better pitch my lesson to their needs. Also, I wanted THEM to know how they were doing so they could direct their efforts toward doing better. That sort of evaluation is time consuming and requires a lot of creativity to devise. But if you’re going to do it at all, you should do it well and in such a way that it is beneficial to the student.
I am disgusted with my former profession. It’s not just dumbing down, it’s becoming incredibly lazy.
Indiana Homez, I’ve seen teacher guidelines that excuse a complete lack of proper grammar, punctuation and spelling “as long as they get the point across”. These guidelines are meant for students poised to go into university. I wouldn’t accept that crap from an ESL student, I sure wouldn’t accept it from a native speaker gone through the system. We’ve set a bar far too low. It’s time to raise it.
Osumashi Kinyobe
You got that one right bud. The schools I went to where all Progressive or Liberal. You see the result in my posts.Not one teacher sent me for remedial learning, or even failed me. Let alone find out why no home work was ever done.
These types of institutions in a lack of integrity, fail us all.
JMO
The Calgary Board of Education schools have long had a “Zero is not an option” system, whereby giving a student zero for late work, or completely off the mark work is not-acceptable. They will give the students more time or a “re-do” if they need it to avoid failure…
Well, it sounds like we are grooming these kids for a rewarding career in one of Saskatchewan’s highly efficient crown corporations.
No deadlines, no real performance ratings, or even expectations for performance… sounds like my current job.
Am I being facetious? Not really. Honestly, there exists this same lack of performance measurement in most public service jobs or government employment in general.
most young people now a days can’t add or subtract because of calculators, and now we want to go farther down THAT road…idiots
Presumably all the good little “Lisa Simpsons” have all been talent spotted by the end of grade school and sent on their way to become useful marxist lawyers and profs while leaving behind the placard waving Caucasian drones filled to the brim with “self esteem”. The Chinese, Korean, and South Asian kids in medicine, engineering and business know what their family goals are, they’re the lucky ones if they can stand the pressure.
That’s definitely regressive, but it sure aint education.
advanturer children=new? Nobody can write that poorly without deliberately trying to do so.
rita, I hear you.
The really committed teachers, who can, are getting/have got out.
The really committed teachers, who can’t get out, function like a person walking upstream, in molasses, with leg irons, in January. Life, for them, is hell. They do the best they can, with the deck completely stacked against them by the army of unintelligent, self-serving, educational bureaucrats, who make these ludicrous policies. These people also make outrageously high salaries: try well over $100 000 for an idiot elementary school principal. (Though there are, few and far between, some good ones.)
The public educational establishments, which have been entirely hijacked by idiot “progressives”, are a cesspool: these self-important and bloated bureaucracies completely demean and insult the really committed, professional teacher. (Unfortunately, like the frog in the water that’s becoming hotter and hotter, many younger teachers are, themselves, the product of the lousy, dumbed down, problem system: they know things don’t feel right, but they don’t know why, nor do they have the skill set to offset the rot.)
With an educational system like this, it’s only a matter of time before we get our own (second) Obama: Justin Trudeau, anyone?
This is happening across North America as we reap the whirlwind of leftists becoming teachers and “educators” over the last 2 generations as Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard professor since 1949, so aptly explains on National Review.
No one fails, mark creep, no personal responsibility, poor work ethics, focusing on feel good human interaction and ignoring the basic core subjects are all part of the educrats mantra. The fact that my son’s high school science teacher told me kids coming out of public school here in Toronto are functionally illiterate doesn’t make an impact on our educators and their powerful unions.
Berkeley High School dropping science labs because black and Hispanic students don’t do well is par for the course. Bill Gates in a recent Macleans complained about the terrible state of our education and wants the bottom 10% of teachers, who simply can’t teach, fired as a start. He notes that the US used to attract students from around the world to their universities, now they stay home as their standards are much higher.
These teachers are all part of very powerful unions that resist testing of students or getting rid of bad teachers and come up with the stupid ideas that the Saskatoon School Board and teachers have presented here. Should they care as they get guaranteed increases each and every year.
For many of the students that do graduate the best career move for them is to get a union government job that will reflect the educational standards of the teacher’s unions. The private sector will toss them out on their surprized ass.
It is obvious that most people here are jumping to conclusions without thinking through the issue. There is room for debate but first understand the issue. The focus behind the change in assessment practice is to make it more authentic. In other words, evaluate the ability
and achievement of the students and not the behavior. Should an “A” on a report card reflect th
e actual achievement of curricular standards or reflect the politeness/niceness of the student. What teachers then do is discipline the behavior and do your best to ensure the work is completed. Instead of a zero on a plagiarized work, it’s an incomplete until they turn in an original piece
And disciplinary action as punishment for the plagiarism. Assigning a zero for a late assignment doesn’t authentically assess a students ability but instead assigns a mark to an unwanted behavior.
If we want to assign grades to behavior,fine let’s add it to the report card.
But the last time I checked, the reports cards assigned grades to achievement of curricular standards.
Discipline behavior, evaluate ability/achievement.
Ps~if it was a matter of being lazy, its much easier to assign a zero
Than to create new assignments, supervise detentions and work with parents to unsure the evaluation is authentic.
Yes, t, us stupid hicks are unable to think the issue through. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to more thoroughly explain the nuances of the issue to us.
Is it possible that many think that proper behavior is an integral part achievement? In the real world, meeting deadlines and playing by the rules is an important skill (except government union monopolies). Students that are able to produce assignments on time and following the most basic of rules should get superior marks. Rewarding those with good time management skills and discouraging procrastination are common sense approaches to prepare students for their future as mature, responsible adults. Hiding behind the term “curricular standards” is a shallow appeal that attempts to focus on narrow technicalities while ignoring the intent of the standards.
What Rose said @ 3:45.
I remember once growing up (went to a catholic school):
I Forget exactly what I did, wasn’t all that much anyway, a small uncomplimentary diss to the woman teacher or something. She literally freaked out like she was possessed. She actually went to the back of the classroom and picked up the small cross on the back wall and held it in front of me while she spewed hellfire rhetoric at me (like I was Satan or some slightly lesser demon). Anyway the entire classroom was stunned to silence and half even gaffed and laughed at her along with me. She left the room and never returned until the bell ending the class.
Anyway that night at home doing homework and forgetting the incident she called my dad. I remember him on the phone going un-huh, un-huh un-huh ok etcetera….. After the call he came and told me,” that was your teacher on the phone, my god what a fruit-loop she is”.
Ha ha anyway memories and school. “Oh yea, by the way I did become a ditch digger, for about an hour. Decades later since then it’s been up and up and up with no end in site or big time doctorate under my belt. The crazy left doesn’t ever seem to get it right or have my butt at the end of the day.
Funny that.
Okay, now I’m convinced, those flourescent light bulbs, including those twisty CFL’s, are the leading cause of insanty. Our children must sit under this fake, pasty, unatural light hard to read or cook by “light” for 6 – 8 hours during a school day – no wonder there has been a warning from the medical field to increase vitamin D intake from 400 units a day to 4000 units a day.
What does one expect from a progressive school system as long as a student shows up – they pass.
t (9:41 pm), there is a lot of thought behind your comments. To some extent,I agree with your disapproval about using marks to reward behavior. There are all sorts of impossible to measure behaviors like “co-operation”, “citizenship”, “brown-nosing” etc.
Did I believe in deadlines? Yes I did. A deadline was part of the exercise. Why should a student who got an extra week or more to work on something, be marked the same as someone who submitted the work on time? I never gave a zero for work that was submitted late, but I never gave full marks either. Of course no student lost marks because of bereavement or serious illness.
As far as plagiarism, if you set up assignments that require nothing more than cut and paste off the internet, you (the teacher) deserve what you get. That’s what I mean by “lazy”.
Evaluation has many purposes. Teachers are required to submit numbers that are used for sorting–who gets into what university and who gets the big fat scholarship. Who can blame a student, who sees his future hanging on the basis of one mark or two, for resenting his peer sitting in the next class, who is guaranteed a higher mark, simply because the teacher allows unlimited “redos”. For that type of evaluation I would favor standardized tests: Everyone writes the same test and everyone is evaluated according to the same criteria. Or else have the post-secondary institutions set their own entrance requirements and test for them.
But if your main purpose is to evaluate to assist in the teaching/learning process, then, I figure that whatever most helps a particular student to learn, is appropriate. This does NOT mean dumbing down the course or fixing things to give a false notion of achievement.
In trying to be nice to kids, we do the opposite. We lower the bar. We trench under the capable kids so they don’t stand higher than the others. This ultimately does nothing to foster self-esteem. Kids aren’t that stupid. They know perfectly well they’re being lied to.
I don’t agree with failing kids–or more precisely “letting them fail”. I believe we should keep working until they succeed. Not everyone can do higher level algebra or write a novel, but almost every kid can be numerate and literate if you are prepared to insist, and are prepared to help enough.
Revnant Dream, even a failing mark can teach a lesson.
t, having taught English for four years, I’ve seen students completely bomb an assignment or test but bounce back after they realised that failure was not an option. By giving them the mark they deserved, they DID learn what a powerful motivator a failing mark could be. If a teacher was to give a full or passing mark for a late (without sufficient reason) or plagiarized assignment, the moral lesson of idleness or dishonesty would be a negative one. If a student was marked accordingly for turning in an incomplete assignment for his plagiarism, all he would learn is how to press certain buttons. Give him the cold, hard consequences of his dishonesty. I think the lesson might stick.
Where do we start on this one? I taught one son how to read after he was subjected to the latest theory of the time – marking off the shape of words, so ‘cat’, ‘oat’ and ‘eat’ all were marked off in squares so he could memorize the “shape” of words. The fact that the shapes were the same escaped the learned idiot who devised the system. The second son made exactly the same mathematical mistake on a series of questions but the teacher failed to recognize the pattern, which was remedied in one evening’s session. Years later, with my long obsolete Grade XIII Ontario I was helping a young fellow who worked for me with algebra questions. When I asked exactly what he was working towards, he told me, “Third year college algebra”. Aaaargh, how have the standards fallen! As long as education is held hostage to the latest lunatic theories and union imposition, there is no hope for the next generation.
Wanna look like a genius?
At the checkout, for a due amount of $16.33, give em 21.08.
They are dumbfounded when the machine tells them, the change is $4.75.
“How the frick did you know that???”
I hope my math is right 🙂
Dumbing us down by John Taylor Gatto
“In other words, evaluate the ability
and achievement of the students and not the behavior.”
Except that meeting deadlines shows both ability and achievement. Trying going through life without meeting deadlines and see how quickly your utilities get cut off, your car or house gets repossessed and you get fired.
Oz at 5-17pm.
Wrong way round, my friend!
We are all born ignorant, not stupid.
We become stupid only by what we are taught, by what we learn and by what we fail to learn.
I the business I was in, results and the behavior to achieve results were equally weighted at assessment time. I used to disagree with this concept (as long as you achieved the desired results does it matter?) but I now agree with the concept. It does matter how you achieve results. IMO, the education system is clearly wrong on this one.
A very smart business man told a friend of mine once what he thought of our teachers. They go to school for 13 years, and then after grade 12 they go to university for 4 years, and then they go back to grade school. These people have no idea how the real world works. Now they think that they are all powerful, but what do we expect when the unions and government are educating our children, they’re just brainwashing the next generation of socialist union drones, because the only place in the real world that something like being late is tolorated is government or unions. UNIONS SUCK-parasites!
If only my Grade 5 teacher was still alive I’m sure she’d be one of the few teachers lined up against such an idiotic method of marking grades. The year was 1981 and I, along with a couple of others, were kept after school for different reasons my the aforementioned teacher. For the next hour (until 4:30) I wrote the sentence over and over on the chalkboard “I will not write with a backwards slant ever again”. At the time I thought she was a lunatic! “Who cares what my handwriting looks like!”
Some 29 years later I get regular comments such as “wow, you have really nice, easy-to-read handwriting for a guy!”
I look back at that one hour out of my life with who I thought was a lunatic teacher and can only wish my son who is now in Kindergarten could experience what I did. Unfortunately, it appears he won’t have the same opportunity unless I teach him myself (which I am fully prepared to do).
As a successful businessperson now who employs some high school students on a part-time basis, I see what the end result of their education looks like and I’m quite fearful. I have a young lady who can’t give out change without the cash register telling her how much is due. I have another girl who figures its her God given right to text while she works because her “teacher allows it” and I have a young man who shows up 5 minutes late everyday and, despite being told over and over that it’s not acceptable, shoots back “chill out dude, like why do you care what time I get here?” (scary part? the latter two are children whose parents are teachers!).
I do not like where this is headed and be damned if we should be sitting back and taking it!