The Percentage Idol by C. C. Lewis

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 6, 1906

The Percentage Idol

By C. C. Lewis

“If one hundred per cent were chosen idol, and teachers and pupils were devout idolaters, the worship of this percentage god would not be more zealous, or, we may add, more harmful, than it is in many schools.”—Emerson E. White, A. M., LL. D., in “School Management,” page 154.

“It is safe to class per-cent marking as a hurtful device. As the rod was the panacea of the old schoolmaster, so marking is the panacea of the modern stationary teacher. He sits with pencil in hand and marks each answer, marks each violation of the rules. Progressive educators substitute vital teaching for marking and all other hurtful devices. Col. F. W. Parker regards per-cent marking as criminal as stealing. Superintendent Arnold Tompkins considers the percentage device as an outrage on the learning process.”—Joseph Baldwin, M. N., LL. D., in “School Management,” page 180, edited and indorsed by Hon. W. T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education.

Why do these eminent educational authorities speak so earnestly against the most common method of recording scholarship? The following are some of their reasons:—

1. Per-cent marking is a low incentive.

2. It magnifies success at the expense of fidelity.

3. It fosters a brood of school vipers, such as honors, prizes, and hurtful emulations.

4. Too often it proves an antidote to high thinking and moral teaching.

5. It proposes as a reward for mechanical success a high mark and as a punishment for mechanical failure a low mark.

6. At best it is an artificial and hurtful incentive. It does not create a thirst for truth.

7. It is not only useless, but vicious; for it emphasizes a comparison of the relative merits of students.

8. It squanders time and energy, and with its train of evils,—prizes, honors, will exact examinations, per-cent records, per-cent reports,—wastes, in many schools, full half the energies of teachers and pupils.

9. It is the monster educational robber. It hurts and does not help. The school keeper marks, but the true teacher teaches.

10. None but an infinite mind can tell why one student is marked 91 and another 91⅞%. All that can be said is that it figures out that way.

11. The system which causes one student to be regarded as one or two per cent better in his studies than another is absurd upon the face of it. No one dare assert that one student is one per cent better than another.

12. Even if it were true, and the teacher could know it to be true, it would not be best to tell the pupils.

We can think of no system that would make family training a greater burden or farce than the marking of children from day to day on a scale of one to one hundred.

The foregoing reasons are offered for discarding the per-cent system of marking. Will some of our readers give reasons for retaining it?

C. C. LEWIS.