I recently wrote about a school where everything up on the bulletin boards have errors. Nothing, including the teacher’s comments, were correctly written–yet the work was show cased. I know that one of the “thoughts” in current educational practice is to emphasize the process rather than the product. To be honest, I give plenty of assignments that emphasize process. I think it is important for young children to have the opportunity to explore.
However, yesterday I was talking to a parent who was ‘disgusted’ with her child’s teacher. A lively conversation ensued about the rigors of private elementary school in the city and how hard is too hard to push. She claims that the teachers have unrealistic expectations. . .and maybe they do. But it seems to me at some point, a teacher must demand perfection over the process.
Process AND Product
Perhaps our system has it wrong. Perhaps it’s not that the process should be emphasized over the product, but that both have their place in education. I’ll give you an example. As many of you know, I am a former teacher turned homeschooling mom. My daughter has three writing ‘assignments’ per week. One is a journal that we keep together. I correct her errors by modeling the correct way to write, but I don’t make her go back over it and fix them because it’s a journal. It’s not meant for public viewing. The second assignment is a story from a story prompt. I correct her errors but the point of the assignment is to encourage her to write and be creative. . .so I don’t make her re-write it–UNLESS she chooses to submit it for publication. Her final assignment generally has to do with her curriculum and may be anything from writing a book report, to writing a narrative essay on a historical event. But when she’s completely finished–it has to be perfect. She isn’t allowed to have any mistakes in it and that necessitates several hours of writing and rewriting.
When I taught, I did similar things. I never would allow a student to publish something that had an error in it. NO EXCEPTIONS! Perhaps that makes me a mean teacher. Mean or not, most of my students, who by the way had learned English as their second language, had their work published in a children’s magazine before the end of the year. Emphasizing the product gets results.
True, children need time to explore. Children need time to write or explore art, and even science, free of criticism and strict rules. But I think there’s a place for gentle critique as well and I wonder if we’ve lost sight of that. While many would say that too much criticism will hamper a student’s spirit (and it certainly will if given too harshly), I say that not enough criticism will deprive the student of the pride that comes from doing a job well.
The Real World
If the point of education is to prepare kids for the real world, then it seems to me that we would have to emphasize the product much more heavily. I have two jobs from home, one of which is writing for families.com, and the other is in educational publishing. It is clear that we are expected to write quality pieces for families.com, free of spelling and grammatical errors. At my other job, I’m not allowed one error in a project–not one. Consequently, I have to go over my work for several hours before turning it in. However, I can guarantee you that neither of my bosses are interested in my ‘process’ if my product is not quality.
Likewise, as I was thinking about it, I can’t think of a profession where I’m okay with a few mistakes. I don’t want my doctor to make a few mistakes. I don’t want the crossing guard to make a few mistakes either. I don’t want my pilot to make any mistakes either. Frankly, I don’t want the garbage man to make a few mistakes. My husband, who teaches preschool sports, is also not allowed mistakes. If he’s not paying attention, someone can get hurt. My father-in-law is an engineer, and he has spent countless hours as a manager, fixing other people’s mistakes. Mistakes in the final product, just aren’t acceptable in the real world.
I wonder if we are doing a disservice to students by emphasizing process at the expense of the product? Would it really lower our students’ self-esteem to insist that before their work gets highlighted on the bulletin board, it’s a quality product? Or will it hurt their self esteem more to produce a mediocre product when they’re capable of producing a stellar product?
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