Humanizing Education For The Twenty-First Century

The instructor’s ability to contribute to good class management starts with the training teachers receive at the colleges and universities.  What happens in the classroom is also a reflection of the kinds of laws the legislators make.  What happens in the classroom also demonstrates the kind of homes the students come from.  After all, the school is a product of the homes from which the children come, and an extension of the society in which the school is located.  These outside factors produce and in other cases influence the behaviors that are observed in the classroom. 

I wish to suggest another system that will still use the normal distribution curve but turn the failure system into a success system using exactly the same divisions on the normal curve. 

C, D and F grades would not be accepted as grades in the system I intend to propose.  But I use them in this discussion to demonstrate how to use the normal distribution to transform the system.

There are five grades (A, B, C, D and F) the system assigned to the divisions of the normal curve.  I wish to call these divisions zones.  Now, substitute time for A, B, C, D, and F zones.  Observe that a lesson lasts for about 50 minutes.  Assume that everything were equal.  Also assume that the goal is for every student to score 95%, i.e., an A. 

Observe that the “smart students” scored 95 in 50 minutes.  For meaningful and easy discussion, we divide the students into five groups according to their scores, one for each zone. 

How many more minutes will the students in zone B who scored 85 need to study to score 95?  The same question is asked about every group in the distribution curve.  It will be something like this.  For every 50 minutes the first group on the left of the curve, i.e., zone A worked to score A, the corresponding time for those in zone B who scored B will be six more minutes.  Give the “average students” in zone C who scored 75, 14 more minutes and they will score 95.  Those who scored 65 will require 24 more minutes of more work to score A.  Those who failed will need 37 more minutes to score A. 

If, by the end of this time, everything has been done and the student can only score 85, B will be accepted.  C, D, and F grades will not be tolerated. 

Learning is a process by which a behavior is learned, modified, or changed.  Notice the emphasis on process.  Three things happen when the process is finished.  The first result is the acquisition of a behavior that never existed before.  This is the first time the student learns the behavior.  Second, the process may lead the learner to modify a behavior that is already within the student’s repertoire.  Some behaviors are ineffective or unacceptable, e.g., in sports or pronunciation.  The behaviors the learner acquired previously are refined and made effective and acceptable. 

Teaching is an environmental arrangement, which inevitably gets the learner to interact meaningfully with the factors in the arrangement as the teacher guides the learner’s activities and reinforces his or her desired behaviors.  This is the working definition of teaching for this book.  People can learn without teaching.  Teaching must do two things:

1) Teaching must facilitate learning.  2) It must make learning easier.