This morning, our six-year old first grader - a kid who has no experience with or conceptual understanding of school grades - showed us a "neat trick."
This morning, our six-year old first grader - a kid who has no experience with or conceptual understanding of school grades - showed us a "neat trick."
On a piece of paper next to some of his writing (we'd been playing Boggle last night), he drew a lower case "f" next to a minus sign (-) and told us that "f minus is a bad grade." Oh, OK, we said.
However, he slyly continued, "Look at this!"
And then he drew a curved-ish line down, turning his lower case "f" into an upper case "A." With a finishing flourish, he also struck through the minus, turning that symbol into a plus (+).
"It's an A plus," he exclaimed.
"What does that mean?" we asked.
He didn't know.
And we have no idea where he picked up this knowledge of grading, perhaps from a chapter book because his first-grade teacher does not assign grades to the many projects he creates in class. He has never received a grade from an educator in his life, yet he's approximating the act of assigning a grade to himself and believes it's best to avoid an F- and aspire toward an A+.
The logics of conventional schooling and success are so pervasive, are odd at face value, and are frankly incomprehensible to children unless they are first trained into a culture of what "counts" as rewarded achievement.
