I wanna meet “THEM”.
· William L Hartwick
A blog by William L. Hartwick
That’s what “THEY” said. Whoever “THEY” are.
I believe nothing I read and half of what I hear. We have to stop believing everything on the internet. We live our lives based on what “THEY” said and what it says. But you’ve never met “THEM”. And there is no reference to who “THEY” are.
What percentage of the information on the internet is true? One study checked 1,300 websites that Google returned on one topic, infant sleep safety. Only 43.5 percent gave accurate information. 28.1 percent gave information that was not true. The rest did not answer the question at all. How many people write, post, and contribute information without the background, knowledge, or education to do it?
I want to know where the information comes from. Not just what “THEY” said.
What is a textbook?
We know there are references in textbooks. But do we know who the humans are that wrote those books? Because no textbooks have ever been written by AI yet. It’s humans to humans. That is the human factor.
What’s in it? Who wrote it? Where did it come from? What are the sources? And why do we believe everything the textbook says?
Classroom teachers are a great resource. Where do “THEY” get their information? Is it lived experience? Is it “because I think so”? Is it a belief “THEY” have grown to accept, or is it factual? And who determines that?
What is a grade?
Before we were 18 years old, we had one letter that’s meaningful. The other four are considered failure. An A is what we strive for and if we don’t achieve it we’re failures. What is an A? What is a B? And what constitutes the value?
One of the most amazing things I experienced as an educator was building a rubric for grading. We were all going to use the same rubric. Then nobody went into the classroom to check it. No administrator checked it. We turned the grades in. We compiled the data. Here was the outcome. Here were the percentages.
But nobody checked it. Nobody observed it. There were no checks and balances. It was just a rubric. We spent thousands of dollars’ worth of time because we knew better than the rest. Now we had a grade, and we were supposedly all doing the same thing.
Have you ever been in a classroom? As a student, you are in several. Was one ever the same as the other? Was a grade ever the same?
I beg the question: grading or performance-based education? Let’s get to the facts. Let’s get to the point where we can show what we can do—not regurgitate what somebody else has already done when we don’t know why or how “THEY” did it.
I found the fault in the system.
In 1982 and 1983, when I was a senior in high school, we used Scantrons. You bubbled in the answers. The sheets ran through a machine, and everybody got a grade based on that Scantron.
At the top was a little bubble that said “key.” If you filled in that bubble, every test scored behind yours was based on that key.
I couldn’t read or write very well. I failed every test. So I filled in the key bubble, and I filled in all the answers with C. I never got caught.
I admitted it the other day to a colleague with a PhD who couldn’t figure out why she got a D in civics in high school. So I told her why.
I was smarter than the test, smarter than the book, smarter than the information. I was smart enough to prove the system wrong. The system was a scoring mechanism, and I found the fault immediately.
What I couldn’t do was read enough to fill in the answer I knew. And that is the real story.
Show understanding. Not just a bubble.
So, “THEY” and “THEM”—I wanna meet “THEM”. I want “THEM” to understand that “THEY” need to go away. We need to start the process of learning and showing understanding, not filling in a bubble, getting an SAT score, and showing my intelligence on a Scantron.
I showed mine. I was smarter than the scoring mechanism.
As we walked out of the classroom after the test, everybody asked, “How was that?” I said, “I aced it. It was easy. The easiest test I ever had.” It didn’t matter what class it was.
But “THEY” didn’t know I couldn’t read or write very well. And “THEY” didn’t know I marked “key” at the top of my Scantron and filled in all the C bubbles. I walked out of the room and passed high school. Isn’t that ironic?
The amazing thing about “THEY” and “THEM” is that none of “THEM” knew I couldn’t read or write. I had never exposed it. But I was a brilliant human being, and I found my way by being smarter—not by the book, but by reality.
Intelligence has nothing to do with A, B, C, D, F. It has to do with reality.
If you’re “THEY”, and if you’re “THEM”, pay attention.