In an era infatuated with ranks and grades, a teacher’s purpose usually becomes conflicted. Sometimes, it is too extreme that a parent will be scolding a child for being in position 35 in a class of 35 students, when the child has actually accumulated an A- or B+. To such a parent, numbers run the world. Are we supposed to ‘select’ or ‘develop’ talent?
Honouring outstanding academic achievement, hard work, and perseverance in academic tasks is motivating. In fact, how will you know how you are doing in comparison to others? But then why should we compare ourselves to others? What good are you in position one with an E grade? Are the ranks really a measure of skills or ability to memorise? Do we want students to be risk takers who persist in the face of occasional failure, or to avoid taking chances and be reluctant to explore new areas for fear that they might not succeed as well as their colleagues?
If your purpose is to ‘select’ and rank talent, you must work to maximise the differences among students, and, on any measure of student learning, you must try to achieve the greatest possible variation in student scores. In order to select the most talented students, you must teach and assess learning in ways that allow you to distinguish those students with greater talent from those with less. Unfortunately, for students, the best way to maximise differences in their learning is poor teaching. A few students will be able to direct their own learning and achieve at a high level, regardless of what the teacher does, but the vast majority of students need guidance and direction in their learning.
On the other hand, if you decide your purpose as an educator is to ‘develop’ talent, you will go about your work very differently. The first thing you’ll do is specify what you want students to learn and do. After clarifying those learning standards or goals, you then do everything possible to ensure that all students learn those things well. If you succeed, there should be little or no variation in measures of student achievement, and all students should attain similar high scores on assessments of their learning. When your purpose is to develop talent, this is precisely what you strive to accomplish.
The answer to the original question on whether our purpose is to select talent or to develop it then becomes clear: rank-ordering the students in every class has nothing to do with developing student talent. Rather, it is unquestionably about selecting talent. That being said, class ranking does not help students achieve more or reach higher levels of proficiency. With the possible exception of the top-ranked student, class rank also does nothing to enhance students’ sense of self-worth, their confidence as learners, or their motivation for learning. When student grades depend on their relative standing among classmates, it naturally results in aggressive and sometimes bitter competition among high-achieving students.
Conclusively, recognising excellence in academic performance is a vital aspect of any learning community. However, such recognition should not be grounded on norm-based criteria that lead to deleterious competition. Instead, it should be based on clear models of excellence developed from standards that represent our highest aspirations and goals for students. Educators more concerned with developing talent than with selecting talent should take pride in helping the largest number of students possible meet this rigorous criteria and high standards of excellence.