You're viewing a single thread.
"I know he deserves a B but he could get an A if he tried harder so I'll give him a C to motivate him"
Yeah, I had a few teachers adopting that reasoning. While kids who knew less than I did but were perceived to try harder were given better grades. Surprised pikachu when I started to barely do enough for a D.
Holy shit that makes my blood boil! If I earned a B you fucking give me a B, marks are not arbitrary and based on your feelings.
We had a teacher like this for my youngest son. Her marking of his work was consistently two letter grades below every other mark he got in all of his subjects. Got the school board involved after having a few other teachers independently grade the same paper she gave him a C on. She is no longer involved in any of his studies.
It'll make your head explode to find out that giving someone a B+ in that situation is more likely to lead to an A the next.. positive encouragement leads to positive feeling about the task. It's bullshit to think some kid is gonna think "oh I did bad I'm gonna do more of this to get better.". it's really easy to see how "oh I got this, I'm going to do more of it"
(This works for subjective learning only. Things that require mastery like mathematics needs a different system)
I guess I am the outlier here. In college I half assed a paper, figured I'd take the B so I could just be done. Prof gave me a C and told me he knew I was smarter than that and knew I could do better. I appreciated that he knew I was better than that, and didn't write my next paper buzzed. With that professors encouragement I ended up changing to a harder major overall
Humans are complex beasts.. what might work with one person might not work the next day if they had a bad sleep or were a bit distracted.. brains..
I've always had bad grades, so for that one test my mom studied very hard with me. After grades were given back, my teacher came up to me and literally said that the performance was worthy of a 2 (B) but she's given me a 4 (D) again, to motivate me.
Needless to say, motivation was not achieved.
Furthermore, it's one of the core experiences that led me to mentally check out of the school system eventually and still fuels my distrust of authorities and institutions to this day, almost 20 years later. Well done Frau Bauer.
Yeah...she didn't tell you what she was motivating you for...
Well to be fair, if she and others hadn't shown me how ridiculous this kind of hierarchical thinking is, I wouldn't have been angry enough to quit all the jobs and relationships I didn't feel appreciated at. So I kinda wouldn't be who I am without it. But I still wish I didn't have to be who I am to get by.
That's insane! Why wouldn't she have given you an A to motivate you / reward you for the hard work!?
I don't want to be too "we live in a society" but I noticed that - since I'm a man / was a boy - people in care giving roles usually assumed I want to prove myself. Because All Boys™ want to prove themselves all of the time. So it's good to be as adversarial as possible, actually. To grow their character.
Regarding her generation and type of character, I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that she thought she was actually doing me a favor. Also she co-taught our class with another teacher who quite openly disliked boys in general and me in particular. Which was probably also a factor.
It was grade 4, the night before I had committed to memory the spelling and order of 20 words the teacher told us would be in a test. When the test started I wrote it out perfectly. She accused me of cheating in front of the class. I rewrote the entire list in front of her to prove my innocence. Afterwards I became less motivated.
Wow you've brought back unhappy memories 'a for achievement, d for effort' and 'you got everything right but poor presentation, c'
Worst was when I'd to a test and get all the answers right and they'd question how I did so well, bitch because you can't take marks away for no reason on a multiple choice. Actual worst was that this was 1990 and they wouldn't let me do my homework typed 'when you get a job your boss is going to need things hand written' fucking what lol
Is that because you started doing drugs as a way to escape all of the pressure of having such high potential and low achievement? Asking for a friend...
Of course not! I wasn't doing drugs, who do you take me for! I only started doing drugs long after everybody was already convinced I was using.
Holy crap, that cuts deep.
this thing happened to me too. infuriating
"I'll motivate this child to spend the system, to bring about the vast changes this world needs. It all begins with giving him this D, historians will look back on this moment and praise my foresight" -Frau Bauer (probably)