Word: grades
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...which would be anticompetitive." English teacher Denise Bacote agrees, "Some kids say, 'Give me an A.' Stephen asks what he can do to earn an A." Bacote recalls when Stephen insisted on revising an article he wrote for a journalism class, even though it was already graded. "He did another version just to see how to do it better. I think that's the key to student success--working not just for a grade but to improve skills...
Alfie Kohn, an educator in Cambridge, Mass., who writes and speaks on behavioral issues, is perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades, test scores and class rankings. All this, argues the author of the influential 1993 book Punished by Rewards and a new book, What to Look for in a Classroom, kills off the love of learning and replaces it with superficial, grade-grubbing behavior. Kohn is appalled by parents who try to motivate their kids by paying for good grades: "You can almost watch the interest in learning evaporate before your eyes...
...vroom. Cars in particular. But as he grew older, his fascination didn't fade; it just shifted into higher gear. At age 9, he had a transcendent experience: the Chicago Auto Show, 10 hours of "heaven on earth." From that day on, recalled Mike, now 13, in a seventh-grade paper, "the auto show has been named a 'religious holiday' in the Terry family...
...valedictorians she studied. Principals and parents confirm it. "If you talk with kids, they will tell you about someone who has captured their imagination--gotten hold of them emotionally and intellectually," says Fred Ginocchio, principal of Madison Middle School in Appleton, Wis. He remembers his own third-grade teacher making this kind of breakthrough for him, by reading the autobiography of Black Hawk to the class. "I can picture her still," he recalls. "I was totally taken in. I was a kid who was on the playground all the time. After she read it, I checked...
There's a kid in Alex Gonzales' seventh-grade class--we won't mention any names--who still plays with X-Men plastic action figures. "He's kind of weird," says Alex, 11, of Fontana, Calif. "None of us play with X-Men anymore. We like PlayStation better." Toy-industry experts call this "age compression"--boys shunning G.I. Joe and girls dissing Barbie at ever younger ages in favor of computer games and sporting goods. And it is just one of the obstacles confronting Toys "R" Us as the nation's No. 1 retailer of playthings tries to get itself...