About slaves and breaking chains

I had a recent discussion with a young adult from Russia about the idea of grading in education these days.  She described her experience in Russia.  Then we compared to the system used in the United States.  It was the same in both countries.  Then we talked about what we thought the results of such a system have yielded.  She had studied psychology and is currently taking courses for her masters degree in psychology, so she understood well the ramifications of giving everyone an "average" of all the grades they make.  She agreed it has led to mediocrity.

So we talked of various other methods for grading and tried to predict the ramifications for them as well.  One of the more interesting methods was taking the grades a person made and plotting them on a chart of standard deviations.  The first grade over the first standard deviation or the highest grade before the first deviation would be the grade the student should receive.  This in turn would teach the lesson of incentive and trying to do well for yourself.  That translates to the idea used by business in giving people bonuses and promotions based on merit.  This also eliminates the idea that if one can do well, then it is recognized rather than pulled down by the law of averages.

We spoke of conditioning.  Those who knew about receiving the highest grade if it appeared over the first standard deviation or right below it, would probably try harder to make sure that the deviated grade would  be higher than the time before. Of course, there would be those that never completely understood how the standard deviation works, so they would plug along without realizing the pull that low grades have on a complete distribution of grades.

At that point the discussion moved to Jean Piaget and the idea that people go through cognitive stages.  It seems that some people make the middle adolescent concrete stage a stopping point instead of a way station along the developmental journey.  Those people understand the idea of money buying goods and services and make decisions to stay right at that level.  Others understand delayed gratification and are willing to put off goals and achievements until they have put themselves in a better position to live a long, productive life, the abstract and advertent stages of life.

We mused about what might cause one to stop at a concrete stage and what might drive one to continue through to the later stages.  We ventured into the territory of making a correlation between a grading system that produced an "average" and a system that rewarded more determination and understanding.

We went on to another topic soon after that.  But, I have reflected on that conversation since then.  What if the "average" method of grading really did have a strong an effect on people as we ventured that day?  What if people are so conditioned to mediocrity that the law of percentages of any other psychological damaging cycle applied here?  You know, like the percentage of children whose parents go to prison also go to prison.  Or the percentage of alcoholic children who also become alcoholics?  Chains are hard to break.

I certainly lean that way.  The grading chain would be hard to break.  I can see its enslaving effects. And, it would take as much an effort for people to free themselves from it as from any other strong, suffocating, conditioned influence they had experienced.  How freeing would it be to offer a better way to the generation coming up.  We should do that ASAP!