If you haven’t heard of
zero to one hundred quizzes, they are exactly what they sound like, an
assessment where the student get either zero or one hundred percent. In my
school, I see a plethora of these in math. It is something I have noticed on
the down low, and I have seen that these quizzes teach absolutely nothing.
Toward the beginning of the year, my friend at lunch pulled out a front and
back piece of paper, filled to the brim with formulas. Me being a math nerd, I
starting glancing as I devoured my ham sandwich. I got curious, as many of the
formulas were pretty advanced. I asked my friend, “Hey, is that your formula
sheet for math?” He replied, “No, this paper is full of formulas for my zero to
one hundred quiz. My brain went hay wire. I thought to myself why any teacher
would even consider putting their students through this insane trial. All the
students had to do was memorize the formulas, and write them down. If they
missed even one, “oh well”, they get a zero and have to go in and retake the exact
same quiz. My brain was flying a million miles per hour, and I finally asked my
friend if he knew what any formulas were. He knew a few, but most of them he
had no idea what they were. Even more numerous were the number of formulas my
friend had no idea why. This happened to be literally every formula except the
surface area of a cone. Why they were as they were. Coming from a different
math class, we had to derive almost everything we learned by a teacher guided
method. This got me thinking about what was to gain from this quiz. The only
thing to gain was a one hundred percent. Those formulas would be lost and
forgotten. This demonstrates the core of what makes school so boring and for
the most part easy. Teachers tell you everything, you just have to remember it.
However, teachers should tell you how to get to a certain point, acting as a
valuable resource on the quest of knowledge. In the real world, you get told to
do something, with little advice on how to do it, no rubric, nothing. The point
of school is to prepare us for our lives afterwards, and this needs to convey a
message of students leading their own learning, not mindlessly memorizing
formulas that are quickly forgotten.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh as I had never heard the phrase "zero to one hundred" before. But it also made me sad because I remembered an Earth Science class with 100 rocks to identify and (according to my memory) I was the only one that passed because I said the same rock for all. I scored 95% and learned to expect silly tricks for assessments in that course. I so agree "not mindlessly memorizing formulas that are quickly forgotten" should not be the goal! Thanks for a post that inspired my thinking!