The English Teachers Online Network of South Africa logo
   

Awards Days, Principal's Roll, And Honour Roll

by Dan Lukiv



Alfie Kohn, in Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, says, "When administrators proudly tell me how caring their teachers are, I am apt to reply, 'That's great. But do you have awards assemblies?' If things have been set up so that...the school sets children against each other in a race for artificially scarce recognition, then nice teachers can accomplish only so much" (pp. 105-106). If students are presented awards for achievement, based on genetically-endowed gifts they possess to a greater degree than other students, "then nice teachers can accomplish only so much."1

A sperm unites with an egg, each with its own ladle of DNA, to create an individual with, say, a genetically-endowed gift in art, creative writing, or mathematics. The zygote grows into a student. Should a teacher present an award to that student for inheriting such a genetic force? If a teacher does, won't this award, given before the watchful eyes of other students, for special recognition, divide a class into Those With versus Those Without?

Add to the genetic forces in children circumstances. One child has a private, Pentium-equipped study area at home, whereas another shares a mouldy bedroom (study centre) with four screaming siblings and urine-stained mattresses. Should a teacher reward the child with the "good" genes and the right circumstances with Principal's Roll recognition? You be the judge, but first consider more of Kohn:
Here's a[n]...exercise worth trying out at a faculty meeting:...ask everyone to think of the most effective ways by which a community can be destroyed....Don't be surprised if participants nominate competition as the number one community destroyer--not only awards assemblies but spelling bees, charts that rank students against each other, grading on a curve, and other things that teach each person to regard everyone else as obstacles to his or her own success. (p. 106)
John Taylor Gatto would agree that competition destroys a school's sense of community. In his Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, he relates that
if...[obtaining] an A average is accounted the central purpose of adolescent life [rather than acquiring "community" (humanistic) values of friendship, loyalty, integrity, compassion, and empathy]--the requirements for which take most of the time and attention of the aspirant--and the worth of the individual is reckoned by victory or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine [our traditional system of scholastic achievement] has been constructed which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students. (p. 62)
Is the word "dehumanise" too strong? Not if we realise that our advertising this traditional system of scholastic achievement, especially at high-profile awards days, reinforces that a student's worth stands directly proportional to the merit someone else (a teacher) bestows on him or her. Self-worth (W) = Merit Bestowed (M). W = M. Not even "nice teachers" who work hard to make students feel good about themselves because of their humanistic qualities can completely erase this equation from those students' concepts of self-esteem, or from their psyches. No wonder Gatto calls traditional grading a system of "one-upmanship" (p. 70), and no wonder I call it a system of Those With versus Those Without.

This machinelike system divides students just as the Rocky Mountains divides southern British Columbia from southern Alberta. Consider some divisions: Principal's Roll, Honour Roll, nothing. First, second, third, nothing. I remember my grade two class in 1978. Sports Day had ended, and although some chests boasted many ribbons, others had none, or very few. The class had returned to my classroom before they could leave for the day. Those with few or no ribbons (about seven students, I recall) cried. I still feel sick as I remember that day, as I visualise those sad faces.

I asked the unhappy seven, "Do your parents love you because of who you are, or because of how many ribbons you have?" They didn't seem to know the answer. I told them, "Your parents love you because of who you are, not because of how many ribbons you have." I'm not sure they believed me.

If you don't believe that competition divides, or, as Gatto says, that competition "dehumanize[s]" (p. 62), then ask students who receive no awards on awards day how they feel about that. If you're the principal of a school staff, and you don't believe that competition divides, at the next staff meeting give out a Principal's Roll award for the "top" teacher, and give out an Honour Roll award for the next-best teacher. Then ask Those Without to tell you how they feel. You might want to wear armour before you ask. If you're a husband eating lasagne that your loving wife has prepared for you, you probably shouldn't tell her that it's not a good as Aunt Martha's, unless, of course, you firmly believe that competition unites people.

Aboriginals (in North America) have long understood that competition divides and dehumanises.
Solidarity and loyalty to the group is likely to be contradicted by learning practices which encourage competition rather than cooperation. Any demonstration of individual superiority is avoided because it is seen as demonstrating the inferiority of others. A competitive classroom atmosphere therefore produces conflict in [many] First Nations students who are disposed to learn cooperatively in groups rather than competitively as individuals. (Maina, 1997, p. 304).
Traditional Aboriginals don't like to divide people into Those With versus Those Without. Neither do I.

References



Footnotes

1Some teachers give students awards according to their efforts and interests--rather than glorifying what outstanding abilities they have.
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1