Quoting Oliver Sacks

I'm nearly finished with the Oliver Sacks autobiography On the Move.  With an interest in writing and the brain, Sacks has been a great companion over the years.  In the book he describes both his medical life and his life of writing.

I will miss him when he's gone.  His life is nearing its end, as he has publicly announced and chronicled in the New York Times Op-Ed section here, here, and most recently here.

He reveals all in this life story which was written prior to learning he has terminal cancer.  Very much fun to read.

Of course, ever alert to teaching and learning I dog-eared the following page where he describes working with neurology interns:

At one point, the neurology department asked me to test and grade all my students. I submitted the requisite form, giving all of them A's. My chairman was indignant. "How can they all be A's?" he asked. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

I said, no it wasn't a joke, but that the more I got to know each student, the more he seemed to me distinctive.  My A was not some attempt to affirm a spurious equality but rather an acknowledgment of the uniqueness of each student.  I felt that a student could not be reduced to a number or a test, any more that a patient could.  How could I judge students without seeing them in a variety of situations, how they stood on the ungradable qualities of empathy, concern, responsibility, judgment?

Eventually, I was no longer asked to grade my students. 

Be Nice, Work Hard

There are a lot of rules centered on behavior in schools.  For years, I've had nagging doubts about whether we should be creating rules to manage and anticipate every instance of student misbehavior.

The inclination has always seemed out of step with the education mission.

Today I read an article on humanism in the Guardian by A. C. Grayling, and two sentences seemed to express that nagging voice.

Though the topic is religion, the last two sentences are what caught my eye.

Religious moralities assume that there is one great truth and one right way to live for everyone.  Another great flaw with religious morality is that it says if you do not obey, you will be punished.  The threat of punishment is not a logically adequate ground for moral behavior, even if it is prudent to avoid punishment by behaving as ordered. Unless one's moral outlook comes from being thought-out and chosen for oneself, it is at best an imitation of morality, at worst a subversion of it.

I'm a practical person, so I know that some rules are indisputable, especially where children are concerned. (You simply MUST leave the building when the fire alarm goes off.  We can't tolerate violence against another person.  Listening to adults in a time of crisis is non-negotiable.)

But there are other areas where teaching the child to think through an issue, choose for oneself, and make a moral choice is the slower, but ultimately better way to develop thoughtful, good human beings.  Growing people is what we are about, so a continuing conversation about choices should figure into the curriculum.

Threatening our way to good behavior puts a lot of pressure on the threatener and none on the miscreant.  Certainly there is something inherently good about making the right choice that could be shown, unfortunately sometimes only through trial and error.  It's the errors we continually prepare for in our phalanx of rules.

Students, especially good ones, grow preoccupied by the extrinsic rewards celebrated in a school--and that includes the awarding of grades--and can miss the larger purpose of education: to improve the self. Taking short cuts to get the rewards seems like a logical, if immoral, response to the game in play.

But who set up the false prize in the first place?

In the meantime, since I'm "all in" by now for this particular game, I compromise with two classroom rules poached from a colleague (who likely poached them from someone else).

They remind me of a description of the Torah I once read:  The Torah all boils down to: treat others as you would like to be treated.  Everything else is commentary.

Be Nice.  Work hard.