After finishing an exam, we have different levels of hope and excitement. Once we receive our results, it's a measure of our success or ability to complete that specific test, but because it is only one measure of one event, it is only a measure of an individual accomplishment.
In an industrialized society where metrics are used to measure your career development, the results of your examination will determine your value in many aspects of your future.
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Get notified of top trending articles like this one every week! (we won't spam you)The Performance of Learning
In the past, education was driven by an innate curiosity about the world, where you would ask "why" global warming was happening instead of "what is on the test?" For classroom environments that once placed so much value on curiosity and exploration, the focus shifted to providing a performance arena for students, coaches, and schools. Over time, due to the change in focus from curiosity to performance, the feeling of wonder slowly faded away. Schools became hyper-focused on the system of grading as a form of validation, teachers became evaluators instead of mentors, and students became more adept at playing the system rather than working in harmony with it.
When we are inducting a new generation of learners to study for results instead of for the purpose of discovering truth and meaning, we turn learning into an act of performing a play instead of living life.
This is why there are many students who can recite mathematical formulas, write essays, and define words, but have no idea about how to think outside of those three constructs. We are trained to copy, not to ask questions. Every report card, every percentile rank, and every grade-point average all show that there is only one type of learning that has any value in today's world, and that is learning that can be numerically measured.
Therefore, the purpose of education has less to do with becoming educated and understanding what you are learning, and more to do with being able to demonstrate that you are smart or have a high intelligence level.
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When Curiosity Turns Competitive
Losing the innocence of a natural desire to learn and be curious is a painful thing. Many of us entered school with an enthusiastic attitude, wanting to learn simply because we enjoy it. Eventually, the competitive nature of school takes over and turns into a sense of anxiety if we don’t keep up with our classmates. Even if we have a true passion for a subject, we start calculating whether or not we can use it for college admission purposes or if it will help fill out a certain part of the application.
Students begin to feel more anxious when collaboration is viewed as a risk. They hesitate to share ideas or provide assistance because they fear their efforts will hurt their own ranking. Success then becomes measured by not only how much a student has progressed but also how many others they have advanced beyond.
The school environment has created a culture where success is measured by how perfect you are versus how much you learn, how much you can memorize versus how well you understand material, and how you are perceived versus how honest you are.
The Cost of a Scoreboard
The most dangerous element of a performance-based education system isn’t merely the pressure put upon students but rather what performance-based education teaches us about value.
Students who do not conform to the traditional descriptor of “high achieving” often get labelled as being lazy, lackadaisical, or less capable than others. In most instances, they are thinking differently; performance-based educational systems punish those who are curious, those who are thinkers that require time on task to arrive at a correct solution because they spend their time questioning the actual question being asked.
Most of the breakthroughs realized by society result from the minds of individuals that are willing to break this cycle; they are not afraid of being wrong, of being stuck in uncertainty, and they do not view their quest for knowledge as ending in the same manner as other “successful” learners. When we force every student to conform to some total amount of measurable success, we do not limit only the students who do not excel in their measurements but limit the limits for all of society.
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Rediscovering the Joy of Learning
What kind of educational system would occur if we were to stop obsessively measuring performance? Envision a classroom where making a mistake is seen as a milestone rather than a failure, where students pursue questions that are not clear-cut, and where growth is valued over grades.
This type of education is already present in various forms; many teachers now utilize discussion as the basis for their classes instead of test-taking, many schools are beginning to implement project-based learning, and many students are redefining success.
All of these acts represent small rebellions against the current structure of our educational system, but they are important because when curiosity is restored to the focus of learning, students cease to be performers and become adults.
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A Different Kind of Achievement
Temporary grades and everlasting development (how learning and experiences interest, engage, motivate, and amaze us) keep us awake at night; they're the part of our process of becoming who we will become after graduation.
The true irony... you can't quantify true intellectual ability according to your school transcript; you'll demonstrate your true ability it through the way in which you think, connect with others, and create.
Maybe we just don't throw all performance metrics away, but we should consider and remember what performance was created for. Achieving measurable performance is to demonstrate growth, not to replace growth. Education at its highest is not about racing or ranking; it is intended to create a lifelong dialogue, one that does not begin with "What is my grade," but rather "How did I change as a result of what I learned?"
