Challenge Accepted: A Primer on Discovering Working Values
Anyone familiar with the work of the Reverend Howard A. Soehl knows that he asks a challenging question now and then. For those of you unfamiliar, suffice to say that my father has, among other admirable characteristics, a sharp, analytical mind, a practical skepticism, and a strong sense of justice. From my father, a "challenging" question can refer to the question itself, difficult to answer, but it can also refer to the purpose of the question, a challenge. My previous post on grading had quite a few reads (for me anyway). Something I wrote resonated with parents and educators. So, naturally, I was feeling pretty good about myself. My imagined intellectual strut became an internalized narrative that I had utterly, if briefly, deconstructed the educational elephant in the room. I was like Shiva, dancing out the destruction of archaic and impotent ideas about grading. I hadn't provided the perfect solution, but I had provided the starting point for a better system: ju...