Pepijn Stoop | Is this for a grade?
Haven’t we become too addicted to deadlines in our education system, columnist Pepijn Stoop wonders, especially now he’s an intern at a secondary school. “The most frequently asked question at my internship remains, ‘Is this for a grade?’ and although grades make assessments more objective, I see 6 vwo weighed down by the pressure.”
The other day I was talking to a sophomore I had given work-study to last year. He had failed the course, and “with today’s knowledge” deeply regretted it. Before I could ask what that knowledge was, he began to vent his frustration that this year, because of “all sorts of useless extra assignments,” the workload for the course had increased. I listened with growing discomfort. I had devised those assignments precisely in the hope that they would give students a grip on the material. Had I made a mistake? Had I gone too far with all those deadlines?
Many UvA students will recognize the stress of these second-year students. UvA’s deadline pressure is relatively high. A survey of UvA students indicated an average of two deadlines or tests per week. The UvA “8-8-4” schedule with courses of eight or four weeks plays a large part in this. After all, even if you only take two courses at a time, it is challenging for major courses to cram all the material into eight or four weeks and test it fairly early. The UvA solves this with interim deadlines to monitor progress. By comparison, Leiden and Utrecht universities do not use an “8-8-4” schedule and more often give deadlines only at the end of the term.
Since I work as an intern at a high school for the UvA teacher training program, I see another driver of the deadline for grades. First-year students who are accused of not wanting to work without deadlines learn this behavior as early as high school. The most frequently asked question at my internship remains, “Is this for a grade?” and although grades make assessments more objective, I see that class 6 VWO (pre-university education) students are weighed down by the pressure.
Enough trust
Soon that level 6 VWO deadline addiction will go to the UvA. Teachers will give them those deadlines, too, because without them students won’t do the work, right? I developed those assignments for this year for the same reason: Because students already had a lot of deadlines for their other subjects, they neglected the reading list for my class. So boom, more deadlines for my course to rectify this. And more stress, apparently, which I didn’t adequately consider.
At my internship, I see that my students in projects without tight deadlines but with free choice also come up with excellent end results. For such projects, they need more time and space than for tests. Therein lies the crux: Are we at the UvA not addicted to deadlines ourselves because of a tight schedule, leading us to cram too much material into it? Are we still giving students enough trust? After all, universities without an “8-8-4” schedule don’t perform much worse than we do.
In any case, I have gained the insight that I need to start improving my “useless assignments” considerably. I put more thought into why exactly I set a deadline. Because if the most important question in science becomes “Is this for a grade?” then what are we all doing?
