In his passionate and informed article The Trouble with Rubrics, Alfie Kohn deconstructs the myth that these tools of assessment are an effective way to evaluate the progress and abilities of our students as it relates to their overall knowledge on a specific topic within any given subject. Kohn brings up a series of points, which it would behoove all educators, regardless of content area to take into consideration. He relates a quote from an article championing the use of rubrics, "... [they] make assessing student work quick and efficient, and they help teachers to justify to parents and others the grades that they assign to students," which brought out red flags the moment that he read it. This is a particularly important point, because as teachers our objective should most certainly not be to rush through a student's work, in an attempt to just dole out a grade that doesn't even correlate to the content, ingenuity, effort, creativity and/or mastery that may or may not be present in the item at hand. When one decides to become a teacher, there are distinct responsibilities that go along with this profession. One of the most time consuming is the daily process of grading, be it by hand or electronically. By this point, anyone reading my blog should gather that the music classroom is a learning environment all its own. Be that as it may, any grading that I take on will be done thoughtfully and with equal attention given to each student. A teacher needs to be willing to take the opportunity to reflect on a student's output in meaningful ways that ultimately benefit the learner and motivate him or her to reach even greater heights in the next assignment, performance, lesson, quiz, test or presentation. The current generation of "helicopter parents" who have to know every last tiny detail about their child's existence have definitely added to the pressures that teachers are feeling to create this simple, short and sweet justification for their grading practices. The second half of the quote included above portrays rubrics as a means to explain away a number or letter grade when parents or administrators come calling. Mrs. Jones would like to know why Michael received a B- on his midterm oral presentation. All that Michael's teacher has to do is point to the rubric, which was handed out prior to work commencing on the aforementioned assignment, ensuring that students would know exactly what was expected of them and how to earn that A+! As Alfie Kohn goes on to say in his essay, "Look at all these 3's, Mrs. Grommet! How could I have given Zach anything but a B?" That type of discourse is not only meaningless, but quite troubling for the future of education as a whole. In the article, Kohn cites a woman named Maja Wilson, a Professor at the University of Maine and a former Michigan public school teacher who wrote a book entitled Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment. Wilson discusses how backwards the idea of using a rubric to judge someone's writing truly is, because of the fact that it breeds uniformity and shuns the creative voice. She is interviewed in the video clip featured below, discussing her book and the ideas behind it. Everything that she outlines is built upon within The Trouble with Rubrics.
If each teacher is being told to praise the exact same characteristics, traits and qualities then not only will every educator have an eerily identical and watered down vision and philosophy, but students across the board will put forth the same end results year after year. In my opinion, this creates a homogenized and dumbed down society where mediocrity is the acceptable norm. Students and people in general should not be put into a box. This mentality will continue to curtail the endless possibilities of the individual and leave the United States as we know it with nothing but mindless robots, serving as cogs in the massive wheel of the machine that is the establishment. Alfie Kohn quotes a sixth grader, who when talking about the misguided marriage between writing and rubrics said, "The whole time I’m writing, I’m not thinking about what I’m saying or how I’m saying it. I’m worried about what grade the teacher will give me, even if she’s handed out a rubric. I’m more focused on being correct than on being honest in my writing.” This is heartbreaking for someone such as myself, who is planning to teach a subject where creativity, individuality and the original perspective of the self is everything. I agree completely with the feelings expressed in The Trouble with Rubrics and can recall my own mother, in the last several years of her own teaching career, commenting on how troubling it was that students in this day and age have become so dependent upon rubrics for every conceivable assignment. The proliferation of these so-called "assessment tools" is a recent occurrence, because when I graduated from high school in 2004, I can say with absolute assurance that we were not provided with a rubric for much of anything thrown our way. I believe that is the way that it should be, particularly when taking into account the element of perspective. As a musician I know that my interpretation of a selection will not be identical to that of my colleague sitting next to me in the saxophone section of a big band. The beauty of this quandary is that we are able to put our voices together to come up with something completely unique and authentic, which draws upon facets from each of us. Rubrics are the complete antithesis of this notion and serve to put another label on top of students, many of whom already have three and four others that have unceremoniously been bestowed upon them.
When it comes to the incorporation of a rubric into the music classroom, I think that the only purpose it serves is as an incredibly small portion of a student's overall grade. There is so much more that goes into assigning a letter/number marking to a musician in a band, orchestra, jazz or choral setting. In my own experiences, these components include preparation, performance, comportment, attendance and effort. One of the many compelling aspects of music education is that a student may not take to the art form immediately and yet one day, the light bulb will turn on and suddenly the darkness lifts and everything begins to make sense and just "click". How can you compare Ethan, the top trumpeter in your wind ensemble, who has been taking private lessons since the fourth grade, to Rosemarie, a freshman who decided this past summer that she wanted to take up the flute? The "learning curve" in music and any artistic discipline for that matter should not be quantified. If a student must be judged on his or her ability to perform an eight bar section of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, because the district mandates this, consider that this is such a microscopic viewing of what each student is musically capable of. Regular informal assessment, through both singing and playing, allow the teacher to evaluate a child's participation, attitude, understanding and connection to the music being studied at any given time. This can be done in sectionals, small group settings, individually or however a director sees fit to structure the performance environment. Referencing Peter Loel Boonshaft once more, I concur that the majority of one's work in a musical environment takes place during rehearsals. A director hopes that the concert is a culmination of the hard work that students have put in over the course of any given time frame, and yet he or she knows that this is frequently not a true marker of what has been learned and the current standing of each member of the ensemble in question. It is with this statement that I look at rubrics with much skepticism. I know that I will be expected to make use of them along the way, but I don't plan to place a great deal of weight or value behind them. Can they serve a purpose? If kept within their rightful place as an extremely vague measure of one's ability to complete a menial task, then the answer is yes. Unfortunately, the current educational climate seems to have wrongfully placed them on a pedestal as the cure all to our continual struggle to justify our individual grading methods. Sir Ken Robinson gives us some interesting food for thought in the clip provided below. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated!
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