Working for good grades can interfere with learning

Professor Milan Hejný is a Czech mathematician, who is well known for his alternative method for teaching mathematics – Hejny Method. That is why it comes to many as a shock when he talks about his grades from calculus in primary school: he regularly scored C on exams [1]. He goes on, explaining that after an incident like that his father would regularly tell him that grades are not important. Grades do not tell the whole story; his father was reassuring him [2]. Professor Hejný later proved his father’s words by obtaining a doctorate in mathematics. As illustrated by Hejný example, as counterintuitive as it might sound, can working for good grades interfere with learning?

One of the base principles of Hejny method is the joy of learning. It assumes that children and by extension people are curious and thus learning is a positive experience, in which children voluntarily engage if put in a stimulating environment. Furthermore, Hejny method is trying to preserve this curiosity in children because it presumes that learning is a lifelong process; it does not end by getting a grade nor by obtaining a degree. This assumption is shared by many alternative education frameworks. In the last decade conventional education frameworks (especially in Czechia) are also catching up and, consequently, are introducing the term lifelong learning into its education plans, but real-word implementation is lacking [3].

This traditional mindset supposes that there has to be forced external motivation for students to start learning; which is often presented in the form of testing and summative assessment (grading). Hence, the responsibility for one’s education is taken from the learner and as a result, consciously or unconsciously students are not studying for the sake of their knowledge but for the sake of passing the test. This system results in learn, pass, forget scheme as for our brain this stream of information is not authentic nor it is fixed and when consequently a new test comes, more space is again needed. This information is then easily misremembered and replaced. This process is frequently liked with rote learning nevertheless it is present in any system, where the output of one’s education is a grade. That is because students will at the end priorities passing the test over understanding the given topic. Ironically the better grades the student is pursuing, the more is he/she absorbed by this senseless scheme.

These students are also bound to fail as no one can perform 100% all the time. Their failure is then seen as them not trying enough. We compare them to others, previous success is often not taken into account, in order for them to somehow see they can do better. This can only deepen their self-pity and anxiety over a bad grade. In contrast, alternative education approaches embrace failure. They take failure for what it really is – a learning opportunity. As Mark Manson, in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life in chapter 7: “Failure Is the Way Forward”, argues that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. In this book, Manon is not only trying to explain how “always succeed” mindset is actually self-defeating, but he also points out that changing this mindset is not an easy process as we are conceived in it from a young age [4]. This stance is also supported, for example, by the age limit being set for enrolling in Summer Hill, one of the oldest alternative schools in the world, at eleven years old.

The school was founded 1921 and they soon noticed that the later the students enrol the harder is it for them to adapt to a school system which is based on their own interests and internal motivation [5]. The underlying problem here is that students were relying on external motivation instead of their curiosity for such a long time they have lost the ability to hold this responsibility again. Summer Hill also adopted a formative assessment. This means of evaluating in comparison to the above-mentioned summative assessment has the goal of improving the student’s learning, not to rank him/her against others or some set criteria. It accounts for individual’s needs. People are by substance all different and thus we will take different roads in order to approach the same goal. Simply put, Summer Hill’s education revolves around the student, not the other way around.

In conclusion, having good grades does not reflect what a student will remember after obtaining the diploma and thus being too reliant on them can prevent us from gaining self-awareness of our knowledge. Furthermore, the dependency on grades and external motivation can rob us of our ability to self-study. Making us comfortable with our current level of knowledge and hence never improving ourselves, which defeats the purpose of why we worked for good grades in the first place.

[1] BENEŠOVÁ, HANA. Výuka matematiky podle Hejného: Na co děti přijdou samy, to nikdy nezapomenou [online]. [cit. 2019-10-27]. Available from: https://www.reflex.cz/clanek/rozhovory/78147/vyuka-matematiky-podle-hejneho-na-co-deti-prijdou-samy-to-nikdy-nezapomenou.html

[2] Milan Hejný – “Radost dětí nelze uchopit žádnými čísly” [online]. Forbes [cit. 2019-12-27]. Available from: http://18inspirativnich.forbes.cz/2-milan-hejny

[3] Strategie vzdělávací politiky České republiky do roku 2020 [online]. MSMT [cit. 2019-12-27]. Available from: http://www.vzdelavani2020.cz/images_obsah/dokumenty/strategie-2020_web.pdf

[4] MANSON, Mark. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. HarperOne, 2016. ISBN 978-0-06-245771-4.

[5] What are the steps to follow when enrolling my children [online]. [cit. 2019-10-27]. Available from: http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/enrolling.php