Redefining Grades and Growth
As a school which believes in the power of relationships, community, and culture in shaping aspirations and behavior, Browning tends toward skepticism about descriptions of boys rooted only in biological explanations. Claims such as “All boys are naturally X” or “Every boy is born with a need to Y” are reductive, and can deny boys both their individuality and their agency.
However, it is responsible to recognize identified large-scale gender-related tendencies. Years of academic research suggest that boys and men—whether by dint of biology, culture, or interplay between the two—have a greater propensity to compete (rather than cooperate) with one another in various social contexts. I am thinking about this tendency as we conclude our first semester, and term grades await for our Grade 6-12 boys.
Many educators—and I certainly count myself in this camp—lament that students can become so focused on the number or the letter earned that they lose sight of what the grade intends. Grades are feedback given to learners about where they are thriving and where they can grow. Any mature growth endeavor requires some sort of evaluation of how we are presently doing. Assessments can be misused or misunderstood or oversimplified, but they can also be deployed in ways which encourage self-reflection, growth mindsets, and healthy aspirations.
Whatever my admonitions about the privacy of grades, over nearly three decades of handing back quizzes, tests, or papers, I would hear the inevitable question passed among the boys: “What did you get?” Given this reality, it seems to me that our challenge—and our opportunity and obligation—is to help boys harness this competitive energy in a way that preserves the intention of assessment and feedback.
Scholarly literature on motivation notes that competition connected solely to extrinsic incentives—generally, achieving “victory” over a competitor—risks greater feelings of negativity and reduced senses of self-determination for participants. Competition anchored in the “game” itself, however—the enjoyment of the activity and performing it with excellence—can promote increased feelings of competence, autonomy, and fulfillment.
Rather than immediately label “What did you get?” as inherently negative, we might instead reframe it as an initial step toward a boy summoning intrinsic motivation. There can be something useful in a boy wondering how others are doing, insofar as it leads him to broaden his imagination of what is possible, offers a data point of inspiration, or suggests a model of peer growth than he himself might also be able to access.
Our job as educators and as parents is to help boys turn their competitiveness and curiosity about how other learners are doing toward self-examination and refinement of their own approaches to their studies. The instinctual “What did you get?” can and should lead to the question of “What did I get, and what do I think it means for the student I want to become?” The point is not to banish competition, but rather make the competition between the boy’s current and his possible self. This possible self—a more informed, more sensitive, more capable, more aware self—is the ultimate aim of a Browning education. This aim can only be realized with proper feedback and a shared understanding among learners, teachers and families of what that feedback—which includes grades—is for.