ON GIVING TEACHERS
WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR
by Robert Runté

Reprinted from I'm Not Boring You, Am I?
Number 8 (Nov., 1990)

Following this year's marking session I was part of team assigned to assess student achievement over time; that is, to determine whether this year's essays were better or worse than those written five years ago. Not surprisingly, we concluded that the quality of student writing had improved, an improvement for which the examinations branch was quick to take credit, given the recent reintroduction of provincially mandated examinations.

As a byproduct of this study we had to identify qualities of student writing associated with "excellent" and "satisfactory" papers. In comparing essays on thoughtfulness, accuracy of content, and the correct use of conventions (i.e., spelling and grammar), we stumbled across another key difference between mediocre and outstanding papers: students receiving mediocre grades are all a bunch of cynical, hoop-jumping hypocrits.

Typically, a weaker paper will start its discussion of, say MacBeth, with an opening sentence such as:

In the great play MacBeth by that great playwright Shakespeare we see just how really great Shakespeare (the greatest playwright in the English language -- maybe in any language ever!) was, because it is a really fantastically great play.

In contrast, the "excellent" papers generally take an original, and occasionally contrary, position on what has been taught. A typical "excellent" paper might start by complaining that Macbeth is over-rated compared to Shakespeare's other tragedies, and that the standard interpretation entirely misses the significance of the symbolism of the witches. The excellent student takes risks, and to hell with the markers if they disagree. Reading these essays one knows that the student is not only sincere, but that he has internalized both the play and its meaning: he has made MacBeth his own.

Let me give you an actual example. The question on this year's examination asked students to discuss the theme of "alienation" in literature. One student chose the poem "The Examiner" (I may have this title wrong. . . . ) to illustrate his argument. This already indicates a willingess to take risks, because poetry is almost always more difficult for students to interpret than a prose piece. Furthermore, it was a unqiue and daring selection. The poem he argued, is about the alienation felt by a teacher who is forced to proctor an examination, but who sees himself doing to his students what the gardener outside his window is doing to the grass: scything it to an even height. At one level, the paper was a straightforward discussion of a poem which met all the requirements of the question posed; but at another level, the student had built in a complete subtext in which he was able to give a giant rasberry to the examiners marking his paper. Pretty sophisticated stuff for a Grade 12 student writing first draft in an hour and a half examination. The teachers loved it. They gave him the highest mark in the province. And yet I bet he left the exam thinking, "They're going to crucify me."

I recently related this story to my own undergraduate students in the Education faculty as part of my lecture on the impact of examinations on teaching and learning. I pointed out that while the extrinsic motivation provided by examinations encouraged students to apply themselves, an excessive concern with grades simply encouraged students to "suck up". I have noticed, even among my own undergraduates, a much greater concern over marks than formerly, and argued that this preoccupation with grade point averages was a result in part of their conditioning in high school. Undergraduates today, I suggested, seem less interested in learning for its own sake than with jumping through whatever meaningless hoops the administration sets in their way. I concluded by arguing that the best marks came not from hoop-jumping, but from true learning and by stating what one really believes, rather than what one thinks the professor wants to hear.

When I finished a hand went up at the back of the class. "Will this be on the exam, sir?"

I don't think he was kidding.

* * *

A couple of weeks later, the same student involuntarily burst out at one point in my lecture, "But, but that's Marxism, sir!"

There followed a short silence while I considered this comment. Was I to infer that this student had been in my class for nearly six weeks and only now figured out that the theorists we been discussing (Bowles and Gintis) were Marxists? "Yes," I said cautiously, "these theorists are working from a marxist perspective."

"Oh, they are" he said, evidently much relieved. Later he approached me during the break and apologized. "I didn't mean to call you a Marxist, sir. I should have realized you were just quoting."

"Yes, I don't completely agree with Bowles and Gintis. I find their work much too conservative."

I then watched the wheels turning in his brain as he sorted that out and finally realized that I was indeed a leftist.

"Uh...oh." He said. "Yes.Yeah, of course Marxism has a lot of good points. I think it's important we learn this stuff. And of course I agree that Bowles and Gintis are way too conservative. That was really the point I was trying to make earlier."

*Sigh*.

How do you convince students that they don't need to agree with you to pass? Whenever I challenge students to write what they truly believe, they always complain that other professors insist that they tow the party line. This is a nearly universal perception on the part of students, but in all my 20 years on campus nobody has ever failed me for disagreeing with them -- and I routinely played devil's advocate and attacked all my instructors' pet theories because I found arguing against a known position helped me to focus my own thinking. Have I been outrageously lucky in my selection of courses and instructors, or all these other students wrong when they claim they have to suck up to their profs? What I have seen at the high school level, what I know happens there because I am part of the team that designed the exams, that trained and supervises the markers, and then does follow-up research, is that the students who do the best almost never spout the party line.

On the other hand, there may be just enough truth in the students' fears to perpetuate this paranoia. I have my own suspicions about one or two of my colleagues, and I must confess that we are all a bit biased, whatever our intentions. We may believe that we are basing our marks on the sophistication of the student's analysis, but it is obviously easier for them to be sophisticated if they base their approaches on sophisticated theorists; i.e., those with whom the marker agrees. A student can adopt a contrary position and do well, but only if he addresses the weaknesses inherent in the out-of-favour theory or anticipates and refutes the instructors' potential counter arguments; only, in other words, if he does more work than the student who simply reiterates the positions with which the marker agrees.

I suspect, then, that what is happening is that excellent students do best when they demonstrate their independence of thought by taking the instructor on; while weaker students' papers collapse under the rigourous examination that follows their adoption of an unpopular position. Weak students who tow the party line get mediocre marks for lack of originality but are accepted as basically correct. Excellent students who adopt the party line do better than weak ones, but not as well as they could have done had they written from the heart. The instructors and top students are then confirmed in their belief that the system is completely fair, while the lower students learn that schooling is about compliance and conformity.

Which, as it happens, is pretty much what we would expect from the work of sociologists like Bowles and Gintis or Jean Anyon who see schools streaming students into separate tracks for workers and managers. The potential future managers are taught self-reliance, independence, and critical thinking while the workers are ground into obedience.

Nice to know I'm doing my bit.

© 1990, 1999 by Robert Runté