IN THE PREVIOUS THREE PARTS, which you can find here, here, and here, we've been working our way through a propaganda email about socialism—a little contrived parable disguised as a true story.
"The best students in any class are exactly the ones who are least motivated by grades."
The next bit gets to the heart of the matter:
But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little...
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Now we see the payoff for the propagandist's approach. Having presented this as a real life example, and having gotten the reader to collude with the deception, the author hands us anecdotal evidence in order to back up a rather large assumption about human nature.
We are supposed to believe that the students who studied little had no sense that they were letting the group down. Not one of them decided to study harder, precisely because they knew the group grade depended on it?
Not one of them thought, "Hey, I'm getting a better grade than I earned. I should probably do my best to deserve it"?
This goes against my experience as a teacher, and as a human being. I can believe that a few students may have behaved that way (especially in an economics class ) but all of them?
In fact, something very much like this "experiment" happens in classrooms all the time. It's called a group project. Several students work together to complete an assignment, usually some sort of presentation to the class, and all get whatever grade the group earns. (Oddly enough, one of my recent examples comes from a class in economics in an MBA program!)
The result is not the one described in this little parable. On the contrary, the usual result is that most of the group contributes according to their ability.
The occasional slacker meets the group's disdain, and, if the project takes a long enough time to complete, that person usually shapes up and contributes. But even when they don't, the rest of the group continues to work hard and do their best on the assignment. -
As for the good students, it's even harder to swallow. The best students in any class are exactly the ones who are least motivated by grades.
They're the students who are in the class because they want to understand economics. When a group project comes around, they're the ones who continue to put in their best work no matter what the occasional slacker is doing.
They might well be ticked because they're not getting the grade they deserve, but they are the least likely to let that influence their level of work.
And if this was a graduate level class, most of the group would have been there because they wanted to learn. -
No. What's being slipped in here, by way of a completely manufactured example, is a distorted view of human nature.
The hardest, and most productive workers in any company are exactly the ones who are not doing it just for the money.
The least productive are the workers who are. Those are the workers who should be working somewhere else, somewhere where they really care about the project. -
And, by the way, those workers who are unproductive are usually not very happy there, either. "Free rides" are not something that humans, on average, are very content with (remember my students who refused a higher grade?). We like to contribute. We want our work to be valued.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
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No. It wasn't—not unless the professor didn't understand grades. In a graduate level class it would have been a B. In an undergraduate class it would have been a C. If it was anything else, it wasn't because of the students behavior, but because the teacher was manipulating the grading system.
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As for the third test, the only way it could have been an F average was if the professor lied, and simply manipulated the grades to prove a point. Remember his promise about the new policy? No 'A's, no 'F's.
Next time, some conclusions, and a look at the end of the parable, beginning with:
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To be concluded...
