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Bill Page says: Ron Clark’s “Not Every Child Deserves a Cookie” is “Repugnant”
By Bill Page
[Editors' note: Be sure to join the discussion - add your thoughts - following Mr. Page's article and bio below, or on the Teachers.Net Facebook page]
I want to express my repugnance to the lead article in the September Gazette, Not Every Child Deserves a Cookie, from The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck by Ron Clark. I found the content of the article offensive and inappropriate, and wish to share my questions, comments, and concerns with the author, and with you, Dear Reader.
Ron Clark,
1. Do you honestly believe that all the students you saw receiving awards in the ceremonies you attended “Were only achieving mediocre standards set forth by a mediocre teacher?”
2. Your unwarranted sweeping generalizations, copied below, are an insult to teachers, who always try their best to be fair and objective in their grading:
“There is a misconception in our country that teachers whose students make good grades are providing them (students) with a good education.”
I can’t name one teacher with that misconception, much less a country full of them.
“. . .teachers could be giving good grades to avoid conflict with the parents and administration.”
What a foolish notion! In 50 years of teaching in four states and seven school districts I have never worried about conflicts with parents or administrators; I worried about the kids who had many years and many experiences dealing with teachers and their idiosyncratic evaluation procedures. They know the grading game and play it well.
“It’s easier to fly under the radar and give high grades than to give a student what he or she deserves and face the scrutiny of the administration and the wrath of an angry parent.”
The scrutiny and wrath, which you infer that you face courageously, were never a problem for me. I found that the alternative to flunking kids, giving bad grades, or even of giving high grades was teaching them. Teachers are accountable for teaching kids, not flunking them. Kids should not be allowed to flunk instead of to learn; and teachers should not be allowed to flunk kids instead of teach them. If kids are allowed to fail rather than to learn, that’s the teacher’s problem, not the kid’s, parent’s or administrator’s problem.
“I am sure in most classrooms the projects would receive high grades, mostly A’s and B’s. I, however, hand out grades of 14, 20, 42, and other failing marks.”
You hand out failing marks on work done at home with students’ own time, materials, money, effort, and creativity? That’s cruel and unnecessary! If the purpose of the project is learning, commend them on the work thus far, don’t condemn it. Why not point out the better features, good points, specific factors, additional ideas, your expectations, and offer opportunities for project expansion, extension, and collaboration? How about permitting many more tries at improvement before pronouncing your judgmental label? And may I assume your grading system is sufficiently sophisticated that you can “hand out” a 14 by distinguishing it from a 15 or 16?
3. “I recall giving one fifth grade student a failing grade on her first project. She cried and cried. She had never made less than an A on her report card . . . her next project came to life with New York City skyscrapers that were sculpted from clay, miniature billboards that contained academic content, and street lights that actually worked. The project was much better and it received a 70.”
No, it didn’t receive a 70—you gave it a 70, unilaterally and arbitrarily. You can’t have a flunkee without having a flunker. People cry because they hurt; they cry when teachers inflict mindless pain, humiliation, and intimidation on their efforts. If hurting people is a good teaching strategy, you didn’t go far enough…you should have painted a big red F on the project, set it in the hall with her sitting beside it wearing a Dunce Cap. Do you really believe giving an F is better than pointing out what was good and what she might do better? She needed the opportunity to learn. She did not need a demoralizing, punishing, sadistic grade. The only thing she learned from her project was about your haughty, condescending attitude.
4. Do you speak from personal experience? May I assume you attribute your teaching degrees and credentials from taking courses from courageous teachers willing to flunk you as motivation, and by teachers giving you good grades to “avoid conflict with parents and administrators.”
5. The operant conditioning theory you espouse and its most renowned advocate, B. F. Skinner, were both debunked decades ago. The carrot and stick theory hangs on only because that is the way teachers themselves were taught, not according to the preponderance of research to the contrary.
6. “Not Every Child Deserves a Cookie. ”
Right! By withholding rewards you can punish kids with them instead of reward them; that’ll teach ‘em!” Yes, that will teach them anger, resentment, and retaliation. I should write a sequel, “Not Every Teacher Deserves Authority”
7. Here are some references for you:
Wounded by School, Kirsten Olson, 2009
Teaching Children Compassionately, Marshall Rosenberg, 2005
Stories Out of School: Memories and Reflections on Care and Cruelty in the Classroom, 2002, J. L. Paul, T. Smith, Editors.
Degrading the Grading Myths, 1976, Simon and Bellanca, editors
The Compassionate Classroom, 2005, Hart and Hudson
8. Students are a captive audience, compelled by law to attend school for at least ten years from ages 6 to 16. They are at the mercy of despotic teachers, but they don’t need mercy. What all students need are teachers who care, who are willing to teach them instead of fail them, and who do not abuse autocratic grading decisions.
9. “As a society, we have been using rewards to change behavior–without any consideration of their long-term deleterious effects. This manipulative approach is not rooted in ethical behavior of right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, moral or immoral. Giving rewards for expected standards operate at the lowest level of moral judgment, which is that obedience is good because it is rewarded.” Discipline Without Stress, 2011, Marvin Marshall
Retired after 50 years of classroom teaching,
Bill Page
Also by Bill Page
Failure Is Devastating to Kids and Their Families
Students at Risk – Of What?
The Lives of Students: Off-Task. (And a Special Offer!)
More by Bill Page
About Bill Page …
Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.”
For 46 years, he patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, and struggled with innovations. He has had his share of lunchroom duty, bus duty, and playground duty. For the past four years, Bill, who is now in his 50th year as a teacher, is also a full time writer. His book, At-Risk Students is available on Abebooks, Amazon, R.D. Dunn Publishing, and on Bill’s web site: http://www.teacherteacher.com/
In At-Risk Students, Page discusses problems facing failing students, “who can’t, don’t and won’t learn or cooperate.” “The solution,” he states, “is for teachers to recognize and accept student misbehavior as defense mechanisms used to hide embarrassment and incompetence, and to deal with causes rather than symptoms. By entering into a democratic, participatory relationship, where students assume responsibility for their own learning.” Through 30 vignettes, the book helps teachers see failing students through his eyes as a fellow teacher, whose classroom success with at-risk students made him a premier teacher-speaker in school districts across America.
Bill served as originator, program director, teacher trainer, and demonstration teacher for Project Enable — a six-year research project of the Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory (CEMREL) funded by the U.S. Office of Education. The program, implemented in St. Louis Missouri and Nashville, Tennessee, was extended and jointly funded by Peabody College, The Kennedy Child Study Center, Nashville Schools and Model Cities.
Page is known nationally for his staff development programs and presentations. He is also known for his remarkable classroom success in closing the achievement gap between successful students and at-risk, school-alienated, learning disabled and “trouble-making” students — in heterogeneous groupings in regular classes and regular schools. He taught in reform schools, inner city schools and elite suburban schools. Bill taught 14 different courses at 86 universities including 26 consecutive summer courses at the University of California at Riverside, San Diego, Irvine, Santa Barbara and Davis. Armed with the lessons he learned about “kids who have trouble in school” and with his humor, clarity and commonsense, Page has informed, inspired and motivated more than 100,000 teachers — and administrators — at hundreds of seminars and conferences in more than 2,000 school districts throughout the U.S. and Canada.
