Scared Into Learning?

OPINION - Reader Views - SCHOOL GRADES - How do they measure up?

June 17, 2004

Does the emphasis on grading schools create lifelong, literate learners? Apparently not. Another explanation for the decline in school grades in high schools is that the short-term gains associated with elementary students are similar to cramming for a test -- you may stay up all night and pass the test, but what do you retain, remember and actually know afterward?

Before we blame students, teachers and administrators, and indict the educational system, let's take another look at the faulty system politicians created to measure children. Educators forewarned politicians about these potential results but were uniformly dismissed as not wanting to be accountable. The explanation is that mandatory grade retention has not been in effect long enough to work. Please, no one has ever been scared into learning.

Who better to let the world know they are tired of grading antics than high-school students who resist conventionality because they can? Otherwise, we'd have a society of children all doing the same thing on the same page on the same day in the same way perfectly suited to go to work in a factory that just closed.

Sarah Sprinkel

Winter Park

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