This is basically why I believe that effortless As in grade school are a failure state for kids. People tell me that mu standards are too high for my kid, but I cannot express to them that now is the time for my kid to build up the ability to struggle and persevere. It’s not that I have high standards. I just think that a perfect score is a sign that the task wasn’t hard enough.
I saw way too many kids burn out in college because they’d never seem a grade below an A before, let alone the C they just scored. Since I was used to being pushed to my limit in grade school (not by my mother, but by teachers), I was fully prepared to work hard to barely make a B sometimes.
You can go too far in the other direction and burn out an intelligent child for the rest of their life.
There is some balance between allowing them to build confidence with some A’s among their peers, and then also being challenged to get that C they didn’t think was possible.
Nobody can always function at 100% anyway and both experiences build different skills. It’s like how you can’t lift heavy weights all day every day. You need down time and stretching as well as aerobic exercise if you want to be able to make full use of the strength.
I think learning to be happy with a B is an important skill. I don’t believe that As should be effortless. If an A is effortless, then that means the kid wasn’t in a challenging enough class. In real life the only reward for hard work is more work. Leaning when they want to push for the A and when they want to be content with a B is an important think for them to decide. Perfection should never be the goal. That’s how kids burn out at the college level.
Hmm, mixed emotions here. On the one hand, I agree that grade school kids are capable of much more than we typically teach them. I remember a 5th grade teacher who taught us math up through fractions, and then not getting anything new in math until like 8th or 9th grade.
On the other hand, I don’t think making it a struggle, with a scale that tells most of them that they didn’t quite measure up, is the way to successfully teach young kids. That 5th grade teacher I mentioned made the class fun, and we weren’t aware that we were leaning stuff at a faster rate than the other classes. It was all very positive.
If my kid thinks that being less than perfect is a personal failing then I have failed as a parent. That’s the point of challenge my kid. To teach her that she doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s a B is okay. Doing your best is okay. Hell, doing what you feel like is okay as long as you hit that minimum standard which is a C.
I don’t intend to make my kid struggle for a B, but As should not be effortless. If my kid isn’t putting in the work then I don’t think they should get an A. I think it’s okay not to have an A. I was always a solid B student even in college and I was and still am okay with that. It made me a chiller kid in college and it gave me space to learn how to expand my capacity because I was so shocked by how “poorly” I did.
I was the kind of kid to get good grades without really trying, and I think I would have been better off if I had been challenged. Instead I just coasted, and when I got to calc2 I failed. I still don’t have great learning habits.
This is basically why I believe that effortless As in grade school are a failure state for kids. People tell me that mu standards are too high for my kid, but I cannot express to them that now is the time for my kid to build up the ability to struggle and persevere. It’s not that I have high standards. I just think that a perfect score is a sign that the task wasn’t hard enough.
I saw way too many kids burn out in college because they’d never seem a grade below an A before, let alone the C they just scored. Since I was used to being pushed to my limit in grade school (not by my mother, but by teachers), I was fully prepared to work hard to barely make a B sometimes.
You can go too far in the other direction and burn out an intelligent child for the rest of their life.
There is some balance between allowing them to build confidence with some A’s among their peers, and then also being challenged to get that C they didn’t think was possible.
Nobody can always function at 100% anyway and both experiences build different skills. It’s like how you can’t lift heavy weights all day every day. You need down time and stretching as well as aerobic exercise if you want to be able to make full use of the strength.
I think learning to be happy with a B is an important skill. I don’t believe that As should be effortless. If an A is effortless, then that means the kid wasn’t in a challenging enough class. In real life the only reward for hard work is more work. Leaning when they want to push for the A and when they want to be content with a B is an important think for them to decide. Perfection should never be the goal. That’s how kids burn out at the college level.
Hmm, mixed emotions here. On the one hand, I agree that grade school kids are capable of much more than we typically teach them. I remember a 5th grade teacher who taught us math up through fractions, and then not getting anything new in math until like 8th or 9th grade.
On the other hand, I don’t think making it a struggle, with a scale that tells most of them that they didn’t quite measure up, is the way to successfully teach young kids. That 5th grade teacher I mentioned made the class fun, and we weren’t aware that we were leaning stuff at a faster rate than the other classes. It was all very positive.
If my kid thinks that being less than perfect is a personal failing then I have failed as a parent. That’s the point of challenge my kid. To teach her that she doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s a B is okay. Doing your best is okay. Hell, doing what you feel like is okay as long as you hit that minimum standard which is a C.
I don’t intend to make my kid struggle for a B, but As should not be effortless. If my kid isn’t putting in the work then I don’t think they should get an A. I think it’s okay not to have an A. I was always a solid B student even in college and I was and still am okay with that. It made me a chiller kid in college and it gave me space to learn how to expand my capacity because I was so shocked by how “poorly” I did.
I was the kind of kid to get good grades without really trying, and I think I would have been better off if I had been challenged. Instead I just coasted, and when I got to calc2 I failed. I still don’t have great learning habits.