The Art of Constructive Criticism

“Don't trust a mirror that only tells you how wonderful you look.” -- Matshona Dhliwayo

Constructive Criticism must be criticism and it must be constructive. It is criticism when it focuses on standards; it is constructive when it articulates those standards so that the shortcomings in a piece of writing (or item of construction) can be dealt with.

"Pats on the head," effusions of delight and the like are not criticism. They dodge the issue of criticism, except in the case where the text being critiqued is so excellent, so far removed from improvement that there is nothing left to do but to express wonderment and pleasure. (This is a rare situation.)

Criticism minimally expresses to an author,"There are standards which are relevant here that your paper does not meet." To be constructive, the critic must go beyond, indeed, avoid simple formulations like,

"This is poorly written," or "This makes no sense." 

It is more useful - not to mention, non-threatening - to avoid using such statements entirely. One might say, "The problems with this paper are that ...." This foregoes unnecessary emotional engagement and does the work that a critique should do: specify what it is that makes the paper fall below expectable standards!

We may - and sometimes do - encounter the following situation: a disagreement as to what standards are applicable in judging a paper. For example, what is acceptable as a report in a business might be criticized in an academic context as a hodgepodge pasting together of plagiarized material. Understanding the context of presentation and the audience that will receive your text is, consequently, important here.

The best procedure as as constructive critic is to adapt the attitude of a team-member trying to improve the workmanship of a colleague. Don't hold back from expressing concern if you think there is a problem; but don't try to intimidate or "one-up" the person whose paper you are criticizing by delivering judgment, but withholding the reasons for it.
(Note that this essay itself is a kind of critique. Do you think it, itself, meets the standards it articulates for constructive criticism?)

For specialized applications of constructive criticism, see:

What is a Synopsis? Controversy Analysis Worksheet (Interrogatory)
Worksheet with Examples 
Solving School Problems: a conflict resolution approach

Cordially, EGR

Charades of Evaluation: mis-connecting cause and effect

updated 4/23/19

"…passing a failing student is the #1 worst thing a teacher can do. … Changing grades is the most undermining contribution to a student’s failure, but above all else – it invalidates your data. Putting aside creating and submitting inaccurate school data for the moment, entering a 'false grade' will make it virtually impossible to reliably measure any improvement of your skills as a teacher. Your improvement will now be based on unsound and worthless data." -- M. Cubbin (8/2/15) The Business of School

"… Is the Customer Always Right?" -- Farrington, Frank (1915) in Merck Report, Volume 24 pg 134-135

Pseudo-Evaluation. Data are not fundamental. On their face, data cannot be distinguished from outputs of a random number generator. Data are like shell chips on a beach mixed in with sand; or, like foam on the tide. (For an article relating “data” and “objectivity,” see Can Criminal or Immoral Behavior Be Dealt With Objectively?)

Far more important to know is what the processes are by which the putative data are collected. And even more critical is knowing which theories connect the data and collection process to what supposedly they indicate.

Much “data-collection” is like trying to identify proportions of bird-species during a fall migration. If the process were merely to tally varieties of southward flying objects, we might well end up confounding red-winged blackbirds with jet planes and monarch butterflies. (See Is It Really a Test? Or Just Another Task?)

In the above epigraph, Cubbin presumes a connection, presumably ideally possible, between school grades, student failure, and teacher skill. Using teachers as graders cuts costs, but is begging for inconsistency: not, because teachers may not “know their stuff.” But, because many institutional processes can overrule even the best of teachers’ judgments, e.g. administors’ prerogative, special education policies, or political involvement in the grading process. There is little consensus, when interest-group push comes to shove, on either goals or concepts appropriate to education. (See What Does a Consensus Mean, Anyway?" )

Requiring teachers to grade then grading the teachers is like judging baseball coaches using their players' batting averages. There will likely be only a tenuous, if any, connection between the data and any causal relationship to coaching (teaching) efforts. (See Power Failure: Losing the Series; Blaming the Bat Boys )

The Diploma-Holder Markets: is the customer always right? An important assumption Cubbin seems to make is that markets for test-passers are comprised of persons looking for those who possess certain proven skills. This is only a minor proportion of the markets for certificate- or diploma-holders.

Consider these other markets for whom actual skill levels are a distant, if even, a second consideration to applicant grade-point average:

a. Colleges, public, private or commercial, who have external, e.g. federal, or foundational, funds available for applicants with a certain grade-point average -- especially if the recipient institutions have tight budgets;

b. Institutions legally required to have certified staff but faced with employee scarcities, e.g. hospitals, clinics, civil-service;

c. School districts needing both adults certified as teachers, and students with birth and health certificates, in order to be run at even somewhat remove from peak efficiency;

d. Government administrations pursuing certain public policy initiatives that depend on items a, b and c, preceding; e.g. special education, affirmative action, STEM (Science, Technology & Mathematics); and last but not least,

e. the children applicants, legacies, to colleges which favor (paying) parents who are past graduates.

If skills really counted, there would be something like board standard examinations to be passed; normally, to be retaken at standard intervals. Teacher grades would not be accepted in place of board exam results. (See The Dangers of Diplomas)

But where the sheepskin alone is most important, rarely will the sheep’s diet be.


For examples and to pursue the issues raised in this essay, see

1. “Data-Driven”: a slogan to distract from organizational disagreement?;

2. Classification Error in Evaluation Practice:
the impact of the "false positive" on educational practice and policy

Cordially
--- EGR

Wishful Thinking: National Standards for 15,000 Independent School Boards!

The more things change, the more they remain the same -- proverb

Our history shows that it is not difficult to seduce Americans into a crusade, even a difficult and bitter one, so long as the majority can hope to live to see the conquest of the Promised Land. But to be merely a bit player in a struggle that may last for generations? That is surely asking too much. We cannot see where we, as a nation, will be next year.

Take a paper and pencil, and, if you have been a teacher for ten years, you will be able to list a number of initiatives, reforms, and innovations that have gone the way of all flesh. I started teaching when the New Math was about to save America from Sputnik and other devilish Communist contrivances. Ancient that I am, I saw teaching machines rise and fall, language labs degenerate into expensive toys.

SRA reading materials brought their own micro-millennium. Whole Language hangs on, but OBE has lost its vigor. 4-MAT has become 4-gotten. Special Education has become inclusion, which is practically what it was before it became Special Education.

Do you remember Needs Assessment? Has Site-Based Management or Quality Circles transformed the world? Who wanted these innovations? Apparently, not the public who supports the public schools.

Who bothered to convince people other than educators that the millennium was at hand? No one. Who made off with the vast sums of money spent on such programs? That is an interesting story, also.

To examine these issues further, see Establishing Nationally Recognized Educational Standards


Cordially,
-- EGR

Pathologies of Enthusiasm: cheerleading is not engineering

Throughout their history, American schools have been expected to take on responsibilities for which they were often unsuited. Public schools have been enthusiastically, though not too wisely, promoted as a cure for most of society's ills. When they have failed, it was usually because their leaders and their public alike had forgotten their real limitations as well as their real strengths.

There is an enthusiasm for “raising expectations” which has captured a generation of would-be school reformers. For example, Paul Krouse, publisher of Who's Who Among American High School Students, finds those students "undermotivated." His assessment? "I think everyone needs to raise his expectations and standards for these students to perform better."

Unlike teachers, doctors are not advised that raising their expectations will decrease morbidity rates among their patients. Nor is raising their expectations a technique by which lawyers plan to win more trials; or soldiers, more battles. Yet schoolteachers are importuned, with a straight face, to “raise their expectations” so as to cause greater learning in their students.

To continue this train of thought see “Fat-Free” Foods and Schooling Options

Cordially,

-- EGR

High School Diploma or Doomed to Poverty? Is that the only choice?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. -- Robert Frost

In 2008 Lansing, Michigan school officials instituted new, tougher graduation standards and predicted that would increase the number of kids dropping out of school.

Rebecca Rocho, an assistant superintendent with the Calhoun County Intermediate School District, no doubt hired for her clairvoyance into the even more distant future opined, “By having them leave high school without a diploma you doom them to a life of poverty, and doom their children to a life of poverty."

In education, nonsense begets even more nonsense. On the one hand, clearly, you don’t make students who are failing less likely to fail by raising graduation requirements. On the other hand, dropping out of high school is not like dropping off a high cliff.

Fact: many top rate colleges do not require a high school diploma. If the student "shows promise" ($$$?), they may be accepted.

Fact: There is no consistent way used to determine the number of dropouts in any given year. Students drop out, come back, switch schools, get GED's etc.

Fact: There are many opportunities for people to pursue further education when and if they want it; for example, through community colleges or on the job training.

For more on this see Identifying the "At Risk" Student: What is the Concern? -- EGR

What’s Culture? Bias and Discrimination.

“Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized” -- Benjamin Haydon (1786-1846)

Educators, businessmen and politicians worry about cultural conflict -- it fouls up their agendas: it interferes with schooling, commerce and government. The primary cause of cultural conflict they have fallen into the bad habit of characterizing as “bias and discrimination.” They have taken two good words and transformed them into muddled slogans.

Their real concerns are with “unjust bias” or “unjust discrimination.” By trying to dodge a discussion on what constitutes such injustices, they undermine real solutions to the problems they face. Or perhaps the real issue is that they want to ram their particular, self-serving “solutions” down our throats.

In general, a bias involves a deviation from an expectation, a standard or a point of reference. It need not be an injustice or even undesirable. For example, a dress designer may want a certain cloth cut “on the bias.” Or, the aim of Special Education is to get us to accept certain biases in favor of persons with disabilities.

Discrimination involves, most generally, making a distinction. Again, it need not be an injustice or even undesirable. Driving safely requires us to discriminate between red and green lights.

Different cultures exist because the histories of various peoples are different: they are brought up with different expectations, standards and reference points. These may, in practice, lead to conflicts. They needn’t always do so, if approached with a serious mind.

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Limits and Possibilities of Multiculturalism



Cordially
--- EGR

Poor Teaching: What Is It Exactly?

Both Arne Duncan and Bill Gates seem to agree: an important cause of student failure is poor teaching.

Some advocate higher education for teacher candidates. Does this make sense considering that Ph.D.’s don’t seem to make university professors better teachers?

Bill Gates, as well as Arne Duncan, doesn’t think teachers should get bonuses just for getting higher degrees. Such bonuses, comments Gates, “don’t help kids.” But will kids be helped if the incentive of such a bonus, when removed, dissuades people from going into education in the first place? The dropout rate of teachers, even given the bonus, is high enough to vacate the profession in six years.

What is a poor teacher? Was it my 10 Grade English teacher who failed us mercilessly for minor, academically unrelated infractions? Or was it my 10th-12th Grade Spanish teacher who never tested us and gave us A’s for chatting amiably with her?

Many an elite private school has poor teachers; boring, daydreaming, off-topic chatterboxes. But there is little complaint so long as the kids get acceptable grades.

But there are many cases in public schools where teachers tried to enforce standards and were penalized by administrators as “poor teachers” when parents complained. (See postings on this blog on Plagiarism or Cheating, for example.)

As a private-school headmaster, I refused to renew the contracts of persons I considered to be poor teachers. (Members of my governing board were irate: after all, these teachers were such "nice people" and gave free tutoring to the board members' own kids!)

As a public school teacher I have seen zombies, ignorant, inarticulate, scared stiff, unresponsive, standing in front of classrooms – zombies certified by major universities to be worthy of teaching credentials.

But sometimes “poor quality teaching” is really (Dare we name the elephant in the room?!) a matter of “poor quality students.”

To examine these issues further, see Highly Educated Teachers: is this what we need?


Cordially
--- EGR

“Tickets to Success” and Other False Guarantees

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Gerald L. Zahorchak in a news release of March 4, 2009 described the promotion of “stronger” high school graduation requirements in the following way:

Whether or high school graduates go on to college or enter the highly competitive global workforce, they deserve the assurance that a diploma is a ticket to success.”

What is success? Is a high school diploma a ticket to it? Is such a diploma even necessary for success, much less a guarantee of it?

Certainly no one outside of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Education imagines that a bachelor’s diploma is a ticket to success; so how can a high school diploma be one?

By what kind of hocus-pocus does raising standards bring about success in the world?

To examine these issues further, see Illogic and Dissimulation in School Reform

Cordially
-- EGR

Teacher Education: if something isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well.

Take a moment to think of all the things you and I are knocking ourselves out to do well that aren’t really worth doing at all. A colleague in Early Childhood Education recently remarked: “History is social studies done badly.” Somewhat irritably, I shot back, “Yeah, and social studies is the fluff of history.”

As they are both generally taught, of course, we were both right. But it’s not just a methods problem or a personnel problem; it’s also a curriculum problem. If a teacher is supposed to teach 120 to 150 students the history of the human species coherently, a process delineated in most state curricula for 180 hours (minus intercom time, so let’s say 150 hours), the teacher will use lecture more than even the most traditional scholar would like and rely on the textbook more than even the authors would like.

And yes, under those circumstances, Joe the Jock really is as adequate a teacher as the finest history scholar or the most inventive social studies talent. Then we wonder why only one in four Americans can name more than one First Amendment freedom, but more than half could name at least two members of the Homer Simpson family, and 12 percent of us think that Joan of Arc was married to Noah!

As it is, if I were asked to list all the things in this world that I don’t care a rat’s bottom about, my best single reference source would be my state’s curriculum guidelines.

To examine these issues further, see Accountability: some misgivings


Cordially

-- WAC