Trying to exert more effort tends to cause tension/desperation in many people; their solution is to not try so hard.
This is certainly true. However I think that that solution is only a workaround for failing to develop the skill of working through your tension. When you let it be there, without buying into it, tension dissipates. Like you are saying with the cat, just be there (and not inside your head).
Not sure what you meant in the third paragraph, despite several rereads. My comment was directed at the generalities of ‘calibrating what is appropriate effort’ you discussed in your comment, rather than the education system.
Barring the inevitable postmodernistic waffling, narrative evaluation does seem the best way to go on the student-facing side of things. (obviously there remains the question of how to translate that into something more quantified for admin/government purposes.)
My third paragraph cautions against doing or rewarding things like students who ask for lots of help from teachers even when they can do it on their own, or vice versa.
I see no need to provide a GPA to students in order to quantify numbers for other processes. What goal is served by more information than pass/fail?
Oh, so you meant external attention, rather than the attention of the student.
And, politics. A mere binary pass/fail system allows for less flexible boasting/excusing and spindoctoring the truth. .
Of course we don’t want to encourage that, but it is an existing element that would have to be dealt with somehow.
This is certainly true. However I think that that solution is only a workaround for failing to develop the skill of working through your tension. When you let it be there, without buying into it, tension dissipates. Like you are saying with the cat, just be there (and not inside your head).
Not sure what you meant in the third paragraph, despite several rereads. My comment was directed at the generalities of ‘calibrating what is appropriate effort’ you discussed in your comment, rather than the education system.
Barring the inevitable postmodernistic waffling, narrative evaluation does seem the best way to go on the student-facing side of things. (obviously there remains the question of how to translate that into something more quantified for admin/government purposes.)
My third paragraph cautions against doing or rewarding things like students who ask for lots of help from teachers even when they can do it on their own, or vice versa.
I see no need to provide a GPA to students in order to quantify numbers for other processes. What goal is served by more information than pass/fail?
Oh, so you meant external attention, rather than the attention of the student.
And, politics. A mere binary pass/fail system allows for less flexible boasting/excusing and spindoctoring the truth. . Of course we don’t want to encourage that, but it is an existing element that would have to be dealt with somehow.