I can relate to this: I was always an "A" student, graduated 5th in my high school class but I never retained the bulk of the material past the finals, only a few key concepts or ideas that interested me.

Well for classes I cared about (mainly in my major) I cared less about my grades and more about learning and understanding the material. For GEs and other required classes, definitely alternative 2. Not only did I not see the purpose of taking the class, I didn't see the purpose of learning the material. I didn't care to remember astrology or geology. So yes I'd take the grade, and I guess I'm in the minority for wanting to learn the material in which my degree is in.

As a former student, I think I would have preferred a mix. On one occasion when I complained about school, my father said "You are not in school to learn, you are there to learn HOW to learn." I would agree, but why this should take twelve years rather than perhaps two eludes me even now.

But yes, the other side was my disgust at being made to read "Dick and Jane" material when I was checking out books meant for high-school children at the library. Or, at University, being assigned to introductory Algebra despite pointing out that in High School I had been taking Calculus. Conversely, I was also put in fifth-level German when I wanted to take level 1 or 2 - I had vocabulary, but no understanding, after four years of it in earlier schooling.

I generally learned the materiel and did well on the tests and big projects and essays, but since I didn't do my homework and it counted for a large chunk of the grade, I'd get a lower grade.

Gray is talking about the Sudbury Valley model.

I wonder how well this works in general. Based on my personal experience it would need to done at the later grades. Up through about 7th grade I would have chosen to do little or nothing. And I would be concerned that later on in life I would discover something that I should have learned earlier and is now difficult to learn.

I also wonder if the current success has a lot to do with children and parents selecting to go to the school. That is the kids who want to go to the school and the parents who want to send them probably value education and thus would be expected to perform well. A bit like a arts alternative high school that was opened where I used to live. They claimed great results, better than the regular high schools. In the news paper at statistician respond that if you controlled for the selection of students they actually did worse...to be accepted to the school students already had to be high performing.

Bright people tend to be a little lazy, especially when it comes to tasks, and subjects that dont interest them.

You can design a learning situation for the bright but lazy to make them go theough the steps they need in a given skill to learn the process.

You can design a system for the stupid and lazy that makes them learn up to the level they are capeable of.

You need very little structure for the bright and ambitious, they will learn on their own if given an environment like the one described above.

The stupid or average and ambitiious are another problem all together, because they think they know something, and go charging off blindly in all directions, leaving disasters in their wake.

In a military/war situation, it is best to shoot them. In civilian life they tend to get elected to public office.

contests and bragging are secondary to credentials. you get each grade and graduation credential to prove you could do it to the gatekeepers at the next level. they presume that you know something based on that. Even IF you don't actually need to know that for the next level or job.

the idea that you should just go off and learn is nice in theory... but then employers would have to test you, and spend time and manpower on that... it's not very efficient.

in this life, you don't need to know that much, but you DO need to know something for work... regardless of what you, yourself would choose. this is true for the vast majority of people.

" . . . we only care about the grades. We, the parents, maybe even more than our kids, think it would be stupid for our kids to choose Alternative 1 over Alternative 2. We would forbid them from making that choice, if we could.

Well, of course we would! It isn't just parents and teachers who look at grades. Colleges look at HS grades, graduate schools look at undergrad grades and, even, future employers look at grades of recent graduates.

The assumption being that you learned something, did something, (or didn't learn or didn't do something) to get those grades. I'm not saying the assumption is correct, I'm just saying that is what many folks assume.

30-odd years ago when I was an undergrad I really didn't care about grades. I was more interested in learning in college. While I'm glad I did what I did; on the other hand if I could do it all over again; I might be more of my fellow students and take those "gut" courses (I'm not sure why they were called "gut." But gut meant that it was an easy course and easy grade to help keep your GPA up. Do folks still call them "gut" courses or is there another slang term today?)

Instead I took some grad level courses because I want to learn more - but, it hurt my GPA which, unknown to me at the time, was something that future employers would be looking at.

Being the first in my family to go to college I didn't know any better. I wanted to get "my money's worth" and learn all that I could in college. I had no idea how important those grades were. Boy, was I stupid!

College is an expensive IQ test

The law says that a company cannot give an employment test unless it has been shown to be non-discriminatory in effect, that it doesn't screen out people of color at a different rate than people of pallor.

So, employers don't create their own tests or use standardized tests. Companies rely heavily on college degrees to give them some little information about the quality of candidates. Interviewers talk randomly about whatever they want, using personal judgment to decide if the candidate is "a good match". This is supposed to be less discriminatory!

Schools are conveniently exempt from testing restrictions, because supposedly they are altruistic and not connected to the filthy pursuit of money. So, they administer tests to determine who gets in and what grades they receive. I think that most of the excellence claimed by the top schools is actually selected up front by taking the students who test best out of high school. They have no magic "excellence" which can accept a poorly testing student and produce a great testing one.

( econlog.econlib . org/archives/2012/02/the_career_cons.html )
The Career Consequences of Failing versus Forgetting
02/09/12 - EconLog by Bryan Caplan [edited]
=== ===
How would your career have been different if you had failed all the classes you've totally forgotten?

The Human Capital model proposes that schools teach useful stuff. Never learning course material (failing) should have exactly the same career consequences as forgetting the course material. Either way, you lack the skills, and the labor market should treat you accordingly.

The Signaling model proposes that schools discover character by making students perform difficult tasks, even if useless. Here, the consequences of failing and forgetting are different. When you fail to learn useless material, you send a bad signal. When you demonstrate mastery of useless material, you send a good signal. The material doesn't matter. Employers naturally snub people who fail, yet smile upon those who merely forget.
=== ===

( www.insidehighered . com/news/2011/12/07/khan-academy-ponders-what-it-can-teach-higher-education-establishment )
College is Expensive and Unmeasured
12/2011 - Inside Higher Education - about Kahn Academy  [edited]
=== ===
Kahn:  The price of a college degree is not just tuition. What does the degree mean? A college degree is issued by the same institution that is in charge of setting and enforcing the standards of that degree. This is like an investment bank rating its own securities. The accrediting agencies which legitimize those “ratings” do not currently focus on what students measurably know.
=== ===

I can tell you one thing Peter Gray never learned and never will learn: critical thinking. He treats good grades and learning as mutually exclusive, as if no one in the history of the world has ever gotten a good grade, and gained some valuable learning from the course.

This sentence of his tipped me off, when I loaded into the "Fail Barometer" and the readings were off the chart: "Schools are for showing off, not for learning.

I see. And these two things are mutually exclusive? They couldn't possibly be about both, or a varying mixture of the two.

Patrick: you are right that he false dichotomy is problematic. I tutor high school students in math and science; most parents who call me do so after their child receives a bad grade. They are concerned about the grade, but also about the underlying lack of learning, or, in some situations, issues relating to their child's motivation and well-being.

When grades tank, parents immediately think something is wrong. Grades serve as an early warning: "Hey, your kid does not understand this material!" or "Your child went from doing all of his homework and getting As to not handing in homework and getting Cs - what's going on?"

Dr. Gray's solution is to remove the idea that kids should be responsible for certain material, hence, no need for grades. For many high-achieving students with involved parents, that is fine; for most students, it will only serve to mask problems for years.

I definitely got bad grades in classes that didn't interest me. I wouldn't do homework in those classes because I understood that homework was assigned to help us learn the material, and I already knew the material, so fuck it. I definitely got some Cs and Ds.

The only class in which I consistently did homework was math, because it was fun.

That bit about future employers caring about your grades is only true for your first job, and even then counts for less than what you learned. I had to hire six people at once, and my last choice was the least impressive technically/academically, but she wowed me with her attitude and organizational skills. To this day she is the best of the bunch. At least in IT, most of what you know will be obsolete in five years, so you just have to know how to learn, stay curious, and work well with others.

You may be right, MarkD, but the first job can count for a lot. When I was in college there was one girl (a running start student, so she was at least 2 years younger than the rest of us) who rarely showed up for class and never pulled her weight on group projects. Yet her straight-A average got her job offers left and right. Luckily for all of those employers she went to grad school instead. I'm still mad about that.

"That bit about future employers caring about your grades is only true for your first job, and even then counts for less than what you learned. I had to hire six people at once, and my last choice was the least impressive technically/academically, but she wowed me with her attitude and organizational skills. To this day she is the best of the bunch."

I've been in the hiring and interviewing loop at several positions in the aerospace industry, and my experience has been the same. Few candidates put their GPA on the resumes and few employers care. We were always more interested in what students had studied, whether or not they had done co-op work, and to an extent what school they went to. Some HR departments want transcripts, but they mainly only use those to verify that the candidate did in fact go to the school and get the degree that they claim.

"At least in IT, most of what you know will be obsolete in five years, so you just have to know how to learn, stay curious, and work well with others. "

Aerospace is kind of similar, in that much of the skill set isn't taught in any school and can only be learned on the job. For instance, I can't think of any school you can go to in order to learn test flight planning and operations, except maybe Embry-Riddle, and even then it's going to be fairly generic.

" . . . we only care about the grades. We, the parents, maybe even more than our kids, think it would be stupid for our kids to choose Alternative 1 over Alternative 2. We would forbid them from making that choice, if we could.
___________________________________

Well, of course we would! It isn't just parents and teachers who look at grades. Colleges look at HS grades, graduate schools look at undergrad grades and, even, future employers look at grades of recent graduates.
____________________________________

Yes, Alternative 1 doesn't really make any sense. How many kids who get Cs and Ds in something actually LEARNED anything? One percent of those kids, maybe.

The saying: "It's not what grades you make, it's what you learn that counts" ONLY makes sense if you're addressing a straight-A student, who, after all, might be cheating. What's more, while hard honest work is clearly important, if you can't get more than 65% right on a math test, why SHOULD you get a B or an A?

Only in the last 20 years or so - I don't know why this didn't start earlier - have educators been pointing out that parents should really not be praising kids for their brains, even when they do well, because brains are something you're born with, like beauty (or the lack of either one), and such praise can easily lead to a kid's quitting whenever he/she runs into a truly challenging task. What's good is telling kids to do the best they can and to focus on improving any areas that CAN be improved. When kids are praised for hard WORK, not brains, they are less likely to cheat.

"Yes, Alternative 1 doesn't really make any sense. How many kids who get Cs and Ds in something actually LEARNED anything? One percent of those kids, maybe."

I was one of them. I had several problems as a high-schooler. For one, I was an obvious misfit; I was poorly suited to the school that I attended. Teachers picked up on that. For another, because I had been switched from left-handed to right-handed in elementary school, I had a difficult time writing papers and exams. I almost never finished an exam in the time allotted because I simply could not write down the answers fast enough. And then, sometimes teachers would mark my answers wrong because they had difficult reading my handwriting. Also, becuase of the handwriting problem, I found it difficult to listen to a class lecture and take notes at the same time, and teachers who emphasized note-taking in class would mark me down for class participation because they thought I was lazy, when the truth was that my hand felt like it was about to fall off from handwriting-induced cramps and pains.

Further, I did not suck up to teachers much. Part of that was because, yeah, I had an attitude. But part of it was because I could not participate in athletics, and so I was perceived as not having "school spirit". Athletics was big at our school, but I could not participate in some sports because of health issues, and in others I was banned by the state sanctioning body because of the circumstances under which I had been admitted to the school. And I refused to go begging to teachers for higher grades or extra credit -- I thought it was toady and unseemly.

If I may say so myself, when our class scores for our SAT and AP exams came in, they demonstrated that I had actually learned more about the subject matter than many of my peers who got higher grades than I did. Same went for several of my acquaintances who had also been viewed as malcontents (one of whom is now a professor of math at MIT). There was quite a bit of consternation over that.

Further, I did not suck up to teachers much. Part of that was because, yeah, I had an attitude. But part of it was because I could not participate in athletics, and so I was perceived as not having "school spirit". Athletics was big at our school, but I could not participate in some sports because of health issues, and in others I was banned by the state sanctioning body because of the circumstances under which I had been admitted to the school. And I refused to go begging to teachers for higher grades or extra credit -- I thought it was toady and unseemly.

If I may say so myself, when our class scores for our SAT and AP exams came in, they demonstrated that I had actually learned more about the subject matter than many of my peers who got higher grades than I did. Same went for several of my acquaintances who had also been viewed as malcontents (one of whom is now a professor of math at MIT). There was quite a bit of consternation over that.

Same here. Begging for a higher grade was viewed as low class toddy behavior at my high school. I had too much pride to stoop to that tactic.

High school was too easy, and there were too many cake classes you could take to boost your grade average. Valedictorian of my high school class went into the brick laying business with his father, The Salutatorian became a checker at Safeway.

I have always done well on standardized tests. And in spite of the trashing they have taken, by political elites who did not do well on them, they are at least "standardized" and you can measure both achievement and academic potential across large demographic groups.

Unfortunately white males tend to do better on these tests than other groups, so when they dont yield results exactly in line with grades: The tests must be thrown out, to "level the playing field".

In short, everything the educational elites stated unequivocally would NOT comes to pass, if they eliminated standardized testing as the major criteria for academic admission and advancement, HAS come to pass.

I definitely got bad grades in classes that didn't interest me. I wouldn't do homework in those classes because I understood that homework was assigned to help us learn the material, and I already knew the material, so fuck it. I definitely got some Cs and Ds. -- Sosij at September 21, 2013 9:03 PM

I lived on C and D's. Mostly because I didn't do homework. I could blow the bell curve on tests if I truly studied.

My math sucked, but 75% of algebra is not real world. The military ASVAB test is the one that should be given to everybody. That shows a combo of likes and dislikes and aptitudes.

But I joined the military while I was in my Senior year and only needed the diploma, not the "education" by that point.