Two -a-days.

Week three begins. Today. And students are dropping like flies around me: victims of the swine flu (or perhaps hypochondria, or perhaps an overdeveloped sense of opportunism). Due to UC policy, which requires at least 65 days in the classroom (and there were precisely 65 days remaining in the high school semester on my first day at WCHS), I cannot drop like a fly, nor any other winged insect for that matter.

I believe prayer is in order.

Since I taught Mrs. Manning's 6th period freshman class week and have picked up her 1st period freshmen as of today, I'm working through much of the nuts and bolts of planning instruction for a room full of 25 students. In general, I feel confident in my content knowledge whether it be grammar, literature, or writing -- I've got that on lock-down; however, assessment and classroom management are different beasts entirely. By the grace of God (via the work of Mrs. Manning) all the classes I've been in are well-behaved; the only problem is students being too talkative from time to time; and they respond well to redirection. So, while I have had to manage the classroom, it has not been a struggle thus far.

But that leaves assessment. In Straight Talk for Today's Teachers, Mack-Kirschner begins her chapter on the subject with an insightful quote from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I've dabbled with over the last few years:

A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out their scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not. But if the grades are removed the class is forced to wonder each day what it’s really learning.

Although one might expect Mack-Kirschner, having introduced her chapter with such a provocative and controversial quote, to delve into a core element of modern education's foundational philosophy (either as a critic or apologist), she stops short.

In context, Pirsig is discussing Phaedrus, who questioned the very core of the traditional grading system in the first century A.D. He held that:

The student’s biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, “If you don’t whip me, I won’t work.” He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.

Phaedrus moved beyond the perceived problem and suggested a revolutionary alternative -- as Pirsig explains:

“the system” or “society” or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.

In practice (for Phaedrus was a teacher), he found that traditional grades held back serious students and provided a crutch for less serious students (by giving them a minimum standard to meet "just to get by").

Even if Phaedrus and Pirsig happen to be misguided or just flat wrong, Mack-Kirschner offers little defense of the traditional grading system but rather accepts it a priori; this poses a problem for a reader of her chapter who might happen to pursue enrichment through reading books she quotes. Although she poses many thoughtful questions -- What are you assessing? Why are you assessing it? How are you assessing it? and so forth -- she won't go where Pirsig has gone before her and explore the question, Why are you assessing in the first place?

The closest she comes in the chapter is by stating:

We grade to sort out those kids who know and can do and those who don't or can't or won't. We grade students because colleges demand grades and because parents and students themselves want to know how they are doing. And we grade because school districts require us to enter one or two grades in the roll book per student per week.

But does it work? With roughly 1/3 of the adult population of the U.S. functionally illiterate (http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF), it seems reasonable to question basic assumptions. For instance, in the reasons she gives, it seems that an overriding theme is that teachers gradeBecause they say so. Parents, students, colleges, school districts. However, such reasoning presupposes that the groups mentioned are correct in their assumptions, yet she offers nothing to support them. The one reason unlike the others, which is the first she mentions, presupposes that grades can in fact "sort out those who know and can do and those who don't...." Again, she moves on without discussion and asks for the reader's blind assent.

Pirsig, Phaedrus, and Mack-Kirscher notwithstanding, I want to know the truth; I want to believe it; I want it to change me; I want it to flow and speak through me. Right now I don't know which view is closer to the truth. Scripture teaches me to question the way the world operates. Long ago I memorized Romans 12:1-2. Verse two says:

Conform no longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind; then you will be able to test and approve God's will for your life -- his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For this reason, I constantly question assumptions (my own included) -- especially those espoused by systems of the world.

In the meantime, I am going to do all assessing and grading required by my degree program and the school district. And I am going to do it to the best of my ability. But at the same time, I will be studying, thinking, and dreaming about a way closer to the truth: a way that accomplishes what I believe to be the foundation of all education -- to know the truth and be free.