5-6 Essay # 4 due; look at Essay 5 options; read Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading.” Homework #15 due: Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the conflict Bell Hooks has about how her education gave her privilege on one hand and challenged her not be a sellout on the other. Also look at Bell Hooks’ “keeping close to home.”
5-8 Homework #15 due: Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the conflict Bell Hooks has about how her education gave her privilege on one hand and challenged her not be a sellout on the other. Also look at Bell Hooks’ “keeping close to home.” Homework #16 due: Read Cryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim.
5-13 Homework #16 due: Read Cryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. Watch Hasan Minhaj defend affirmative action in the context of Asian Americans suing Harvard (Netflix Patriotic Act, first episode). Homework #17 due: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend “A Teacher’s Defense of Homework” and explain why giving homework to middle school and high school students is controversial.
5-15 Homework #17 due: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend “A Teacher’s Defense of Homework” and explain why giving homework to middle school and high school students is controversial. Homework #18 due: Read “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City” and in a 3-paragraph analyze the crisis of race,class, and structural inequality.
5-20 Homework #18 due: Read “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City” and in a 3-paragraph analyze the crisis of race,class, and structural inequality. For sources, we will look at “Are Private Schools Immoral?” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of the author’s claim. We will also read Will Stancil’s “School Segregation Is Not a Myth” and examine the validity of the author’s claim. Homework #19: We will cover private school debate, and we will develop a thesis that about the ritualization of violence as described by Steve Almond in his essay “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” and his video “Eager Violence of the Heart--America’s Football Obsession.” As a source, you can also consult The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan Gottschall.
5-22 Homework #19: We will cover private school debate, and we will develop a thesis that about the ritualization of violence as described by Steve Almond in his essay “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” and his video “Eager Violence of the Heart--America’s Football Obsession.” As a source, you can also consult The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan Gottschall. Homework #20: Email me your tentative thesis. I will go over some but not all thesis statements in class. The thesis statements' authors will remain anonymous.
5-27 Holiday
5-29 Do thesis samples in class and provide counterargument samples. Students will show their tentative thesis statements.
6-3 Peer Edit
6-5-18 Essay 5 due. Portfolio due.
“From Degrading to De-grading” by Alfie Kohn 238-250
One. Kohn asserts that good teachers de-emphasize grades and that bad teachers, who even lack a conscience, emphasize grades. How compelling is his argument?
Some would accuse him of an over simplification and an either/or fallacy. “Either you drink my Kool-Aid and stop using grades, or you are proving to be a horrible, immoral teacher."
This extreme position, many would say, is an oversimplification and a form of bullying, evidence of a false prophet.
Furthermore, the “three effects of grading” that Kohn refers to could be disputed.
For example, we read, “Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.” What’s the baseline of interest that Kohn assumes will deteriorate if we push grades on students? Is there a baseline? If there is, he doesn't define it in any way.
He also claims that students will shy away from challenging tasks and suffer the reduction of “quality” thinking.
Again, Kohn is throwing an either/or fallacy in our face: Either hold students accountable with grades and suck the creativity out of their learning or cut out grades altogether and inject creativity into their learning. Why can’t there be a balance of both?
Two. What Are Some Possible Refutations of Kohn? (A Defense of Grading)
1. Competition from grading prepares students for real world.
2. Not all students try and perform equally. Those who are superior, as a result of their hard work, should enjoy seeing their hard work rewarded with higher grades.
3. It’s human nature to be motivated by the carrot and the stick. Kohn is living in a candy-coated dream world that ignores the realities of human nature.
4. Grades are not perfect, but they are an important motivational tool.
5. Grades are not perfect, but they do help show the “cream rising to the top,” an important process in any meritocracy. A meritocracy is a society that rewards the people based on merits.
6. It turns out that Kohn also is against homework. Thus, it appears he subscribes to the Cult of Academic Relaxation, a form of “creative laxity,” which I oppose.
7. Kohn's argument contradicts empirical evidence: In my 30 years of teaching, A students tend to be responsible; C and D students tend to be less responsible.
Three. What does Kohn mean when he says grades "spoil relationships with students"?
He uses an anecdote of a teacher whose instruction has been reduced to fanatical grading and that is served as evidence that grading is this monster that takes over teaching. In other words, he uses an extreme example to argue against grading. That's a logical fallacy.
Then there's the argument that a teacher should be less of a grader and more of a friend. Is this a good idea?
What if the student doesn't want to comply with his "friend's" educational goals?
The student might say to the teacher, "Sorry, friend, I don't feel like writing my Works Cited page."
Four. What is the Maternal Fallacy and how does this fallacy apply to Kohn?
The Maternal Fallacy is the emphasis on nurture and protection at the exclusion of discipline and control, qualities associated with the Patriarch or father figure. "Education should be a place of nurture and unconditional acceptance," says this line of thinking. "We don't want to traumatize the students by judging them harshly and hurting their self-esteem."
But in fact coddling students like this makes them weak and helpless in the real world. Creating dysfunctional citizens with no skills for the real world is hardly serving them.
In an affluent society in which the young generation have a foundation of basics in math and writing, some of Kohn's maternal outlets for creative freedom are valid. However, in the absence of these basic skills, grading and basics in education are sometimes necessary.
Five. Would you be more motivated if you did not receive grades? Explain.
Answers may vary.
For me personally, if I had an interest in the class, I might not need to be motivated so much by grades as much as I would be seeking approval from the instructor. But if the class were a requirement outside my sphere of interest, I might not do anything.
Six. Is it fair to compare grading to a polluted city or is this rhetorical demagoguery? Explain.
Circular reasoning or logic embedded in the premise of the comparison, which is a fallacy.
"Wearing diamonds is equal to killing slave children in Africa," it could be argued, has more of a basis in reality than Kohn's statement above.
Summarize Kohn's Arguments
“Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself” (238).
“Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenge tasks” (239).
“Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking” (239).
“Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective” (240).
“Grades encourage cheating” (241).
“Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students” (241).
Sample Responses
Student Who Disagrees with Kohn
My experience as a student contradicts everything Kohn tries to say. I’ve walked into classes with absolutely no interest in the subject, but because I had a gun to my head, that is the pressure of grades pointing at my temple, I forced myself to get acquainted with the material. Contrary to Kohn, my being forced to know the material made me respect and like the subject matter far more than a situation in which I knew I would not be graded. Without the pressure of grades, I would remain ignorant of the subject, and that ignorance would perpetuate my lack of interest in the material.
Kohn’s second assertion is that grading will discourage me from embracing challenging tasks. He’s assuming that without grades, I’d be more inclined to take intellectual and creative risks. He is wrong. When I was a college student, I was lazy and was not predisposed to taking on any kind of challenge. The path of least resistance was my work ethic. Grades or not, I was an incurably lazy human being. If anything, I needed grades to prompt me off my butt and to do some actual homework.
Kohn’s third assertion is that grading will compromise my critical thinking skills. Again, I don’t think Kohn knows what he’s talking about. When I was in college, I had no critical thinking skills to lose. Grades were hardly the reason I was so ignorant. My youthful naiveté, my laziness, and my being sheltered in the suburbs had far more to do with my lack of critical thinking skills than any teacher’s grading system.
Kohn’s fourth argument is that grading is not a reliable system because the teachers can be biased, unfair, and use unreliable grading measures. I’ll admit these are possible scenarios, but in my years at high school and college, it seems that over 95% of the time, students did indeed get the grades they deserved. If there is a five percent error, that is hardly sufficient reason for dumping grades.
Kohn goes on to say that grades encourage cheating and spoil students’ relationship with teachers. Of course, a grading system is going compel students to cheat. They want to be up to par with the A students whose A performance has earned them top honors. Any system with a top and a bottom is going to have cheaters. To deny that reality is to try to create a world that does not exist. And that world is the one provided by Alfie Kohn.
Regarding the final point about our relationship with teachers, Kohn is assuming there is this great relationship that is forged without grades and that grades spoils the deal. Again, he is in error. We are not friends with the teachers. They are hired to do what they do because of their presumed expertise and authority in the subject. They are our guides and mentors, and their grading system is their way of showing us how well we are at reaching the benchmarks that are part of each class. Kohn’s assertion that these benchmarks measured by a grading system is a degradation of the student-teacher relationship has no bearing in reality and again shows that he is trying to impose an artificial world on the real one. For all these reasons, I have dismissed Kohn convincingly. Can we move on to a new topic, please? (avoid hubris in the conclusion)
Student Defense of Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn is trying to save education from being a terrible place of fear, elitism, and students being helpless pawns before their maniacal teachers who use grades to bully, control, and traumatize their students.
First off, everyone knows that grades are unfair. Teachers don’t really care how well you write. All they care about is that you agree with them, so you spend your time kissing up to them, trying to make your essays reflect what your instructors say in the class.
Secondly, Kohn is right that grades reduce interest. How can you focus on the subject with any interest when you’re always worried about achieving a 4.0 so that you can get into a good university? Interest is irrelevant. It’s all about the grades. And seeing some students get As while others get Cs is traumatizing for the lower students who feel stigmatized and shamed, often wearing these negative emotions for the rest of their lives. How dare we let teachers have so much power over our self-esteem. We should cut their grading power out from under them just as Alfie Kohn says we should.
Third, Kohn is so correct to point out that grading makes us students avoid challenging approaches to the subject matter. We always seek the easiest path to The Land of A. Why take risks by doing something more challenging than we have to?
Finally, what kind of relationship can I have with my teachers when I fear their power over me? Their grade determines my place in the world. One wrong move and my life as a successful banker could be diminished to a milk truck driver. It’s impossible to develop strong relationships with figures that wield so much power. Therefore, I commend Alfie Kohn for telling us to stop the insanity, cut out grades, and bring real education back to the classrooms.
Refutation of the Above Response
While I concede that there are too many teachers who want their students to regurgitate their ideas rather than think critically for themselves, the rest of the student’s defense of Alfie Kohn is a mishmash of egregious fallacies, clichés, and sloppy thinking, all of which serves to highlight Kohn’s dangerous arguments for ending grading systems as we know them.
Perhaps the biggest danger is this idea that we are hurting students’ self-esteem and subjecting them to lifelong traumas by judging them with clear benchmarks to see if they are fulfilling course requirements. The sentiment of preserving self-esteem has everything to do with the fantasy of staying home in the safety of Mother’s House and nothing to do with the reality of competing in the real world. The fantasy of preserving the Big Baby for eternity is typically an upper class one. Narcissistic, well-to-do parents who can’t accept the foibles of their “perfect” Junior want teachers who can only mutter obsequious flattery, and if their grading system in any way is less than flattering, then clearly grading, as Kohn argues, is the enemy of all: self-esteem, creativity, student interest, the buddy-buddy relationship with student and teacher.
Of course, this fantasy bears no resemblance to the real world. Imagine a jiu-jitsu instructor who elevates his students’ self-esteem by giving everyone a black belt. The tournament comes along and that instructor’s students have to spar with real black belts. I think we all know what the outcome will be.
Kohn is the instructor who’d love to give everyone a black belt, which of course is a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that.
Break Down the Assignment into Your Own Words
We're asked in the prompt to explain, perhaps in one sentence, what Kohn means when he says we must move from a grade to a learning orientation. Clearly, a grading orientation for Kohn excludes learning. We have to explain why Kohn believes this and then explain whether or not we agree with him.
Student Refutation of Kohn
Kohn has created a false opposition, between grading and learning, to propel is phony argument that grades are a plague ruining schools and minds. What Kohn and his ilk are afraid of is this big scary thing called judgment. Grades are a form of judgment, and judgments for Kohn are a very scary thing because they take a child’s fragile self-esteem, Kohn’s view, and dismantle it.
I’ve got some scary news for Kohn. Judgment is here to stay. Judgment is everywhere. Judgment is how we survive. Judgment is how we flourish. And judgment is how we measure our educational success. When we choose toothpaste or a cold cereal or a web browser, or a laptop, or a smartphone, or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, we exercise judgment. When a university picks students from a pool of community college students, the university exercises judgment.
Kohn’s argument is so removed from reality that it seems he must live inside a bubble in which he talks only to himself or his Kool-Aid drinking believers. Grades aren’t going anywhere. Grades are a normal part of the judgment process. And Kohn’s fantasy of taking judgment out of the education process is so lunatic that he is nothing more than a provocateur and a demagogue whose flea-sized arguments will be crushed in the elephantine marketplace of real ideas.
Using Commas, Dashes, Colons, and Semicolons
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
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