THE CADRE, TUES., NOV. 27, 1973 Page 12

KICKING THE HABIT con't

which a student can go out there and say how much com- petence he has, in the best judgement of those qualifi— ed to determine that type<f competence. Grades only se— rve to communicate on his behalf — even if they do not do this too well.

So I grant that grades are not precise or perfect ref—

lectors of one's competence.

Nor can one say that 80% means twice as much compet— ence as 40% or that 70% me— ans 10% more than 60%. But we all know that. They are only an approximate guide to the profile of a studen- t's abilities.(and even he— re there are exceptions). It is difficult to deny th— at such self-knowledge is an extremely important step in the learning process. Furthermore, to knock down the assumption that grades reflect learning (not uniq- uely Cregierian) is to kno— ck down a straw man. Grades do not reflect learning — they cannot. They reflect performance and there are performance changes over both short and long periods of time. Memory, comprehen- sion and intellegence are reflected in performance on exams. But given all these

necessary ingredients, per—'

formance is to a great ext— ent influenced by motivati- onal factors. Grades refle- ct how well an individual performs (or exercises his competence) 29; how much learning is inside him. Is it any wonder then that pr— ospective employers (espec— ially in business organiza- tions) do pay some attenti— on to grades? They are and have every right to be, in— terested in how one perfor- ms, i.e. how well, and also how motivated he is to put his learning to some use.

Again it is a truism to say that grades are not re— lated to intellectual abil- ity - or creativity (and neither are these two very close relatives). Grades in history only reflect abili- ty in history not overall intellectual ability. Again we are dealing more with attitudes towards grades which can and should be oh- anged.

Memory and facts — food for thought. Others have known it before, but exper- imental psychologists have known it more definitely since 1885 that forgetting is a decreasing (and negat- ively accelerated) function of time, which simply means you forget a negative amou- nt more quickly and then you forget less and less of the remainder. It has also been known for a fairly lo— ng time that facts fade aw- ay faster than ideas or co- ncepts. So here the eviden- ce is fine and strong - and would you believe it, for

the first and the last time—

the author has done it!

However, let us face the— se facts. Thinking does not take place in a vacuum. So without facts to think about, one would not pOSs— ibly develop any kind of thinking - leave alone crr itical thinking. Facts are like ladders on which one climbs to higher planes except that in this case one may dispose of these” ladders because since in the pursuit of learning there is only one way and that's up. But one keeps running into new and diff- erent facts no matter how "up" one is, while the fa- cts one has left behind (if they are still in one's vision which is also expa— nding) assume a different perspective.

Also important to keep in mind is the difference be- tween storage and retriev- al. It is the latter which suffers with the passage of time. Once facts have been rehearsed (as they are for exams which stress fa- cts) for any length of ti- me — even extending beyond

.O}a few minutes, believe me-

they enter what psycholog- ists call the long-term

memory system. Even though they may not be retrieved so easily - ease of relea- rning shows that they had

been in_'cold storage' all the time.

The learning of facts is not as useless or hopeless (because one forgets them anyway) as it is sometimes made out to be. Facts once learned do change the per- son, mostly for the better, even if only indirectly by way of permitting thinking to feed upon them. But pr- obably the most important function served by factual learning is the respect it promotes for factual evid- ence as against empty opi- nions. Facts will not down so easily.

So to say that because so much of factual learning is forgotten in any case soon after the exams, and hence useleSs, is an argu- ment that will not hold too much water. The very exercise that went into retaining the facts until exams and presenting them in some organized form is worth every bit of effort and minor sacrifice of ti- me that has gone into it. For even if it has done nothing for his critical \ thinking, it would have*' provided the student with self-knowledge, i.e. the degree of confidence he could place on future occ- asions (and there will be many) when‘he is called upon to make an organized presentation of facts und- er the constraints of time In other words, the stude— nt‘learns that - to forget

is human — but to remember (and have a good memory w for facts) can be devinell Watch out for those low correlations - they are sometimes far below or abé ,ove the belt. The author is now at the end of his tether. This last portion of,the brass tacks is too

slippery. He does not rea— lize this.and henc3 needs a warning. There is over- whelming data, he claims, which shows that grades are poor predictors of ad-

ult accomplishment and are”

“not correlated to income.‘ Here one has to watch out simply because such spuri— ously low correlations co— uld result from restricti— ng the range of values of the variables. This restr— iction of range (known as truncated range) is fairly common in behavioural res- earch conducted in Univer— sities and colleges where the subjects have been L pre-selected for intellec- tual abilities and other variables. Consequently, attempts to demonstrate the relationship between grades and other variables like income or accomplish- ment, in such homogenous groups, could result in low correlations because of this restricted range of values of the variables. Let me elaborate. Even if there were a high positive correlation between grades and income (or accompliSh- ment) when you.take the whole range of values that 'grades can take from 0-100 this would still go down to a near zero (or very low) correlation if you considered values, say on- ly in the upper range bet— ween 70_and 90. Certainly all those medical students' must have been in the fai— rly high range to begin .with. Like the case of the cup and the lip, there's many a slip between a 70 & a 90!!

Ayel,there's the rub_; old chap! According to the Goodman-Cregier view, stu— dents who conceive of lea4 rning_as meaningful and legitimate need no compet- ition to motivate them., This is where the rub lies, for such a conception is not inborn but the very product of higher.learnigg. It takes at least a few ’ years of University educa- tion to reach such an en- lightened state of the mi— nd. Seeing learning as me- aningful in itself is, th- erefore: an end-product not a pre-requisite of Un- iversity education.

Moreover, the issue is further confused by Goodm- an and Cregier. The purpo-

se of competition (artifi— cial or natural) is not to motivate a student to see

learning as meaningful and

cart». 14,;