Low Marks for Good Grades
By Tammy Takahashi

Photo (c) Hemera Technologies/Photos.com

When I was in high school, I finally figured out how to earn good grades. It’s all about pleasing the teacher. I knew this instinctually until about eighth grade. Around that time, when I really began to understand what I was doing to get good grades, I couldn’t help myself but to struggle against the idea. I wanted to earn my grades for my work, but year after year, class after class, (with a few glorious exceptions) my grade was based on how well I lived up to my teacher’s expectations.

I’d been the “teacher’s pet” student for all my life until suddenly in middle school, I started to ask questions: Why do we do things this way? Oh, if only I could have been able to curb that part of my personality, I would have been a much “better” student. I slowly moved from being the “straight A” student to the “marginalized know-it-all who couldn’t stop talking and trying to do things her own way.” By high school, I was no longer the “good student.” But I wasn’t a bad student either. I generally did my best to learn as much as I could, holding my tongue (usually) about the boredom I was feeling. I struggled with my desire to conform (wouldn’t that be a lot easier?) and my instinct to stand up and say, “What the hell is going on here?”

In ninth grade, my suspicions were confirmed. My trigonometry teacher openly disliked me. To this day I’m not sure why, although I have my suspicions. I had loved math, but I didn’t like doing repetitive math homework. I was willing to work hard but I also asked a lot of questions and tended to “chit chat” about my epiphanies (some things never change.) But in this class, such things were frowned upon.

This was not a place to enjoy the subject, not a place to be excited and certainly not a place to question the usefulness of doing 50 nearly-exact problems I obviously understood already. Nor was it a place to ask for her to slow down if I needed clarification. All I would get was more worksheets of the problems I didn’t understand. I’m a talker, a writer, an analyzer. She wasn’t. We did not get along. At. All. I wasn’t who she wanted me to be. There was nothing I could do.

In one semester, I went from a “Wow, this kid really knows math instinctually and aces her tests” kind of student to barely earning a D. I don’t remember much of what happened in that class, but I do remember that by the end of the semester, I was angry . . .

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Tammy Takahashi lives and learns with her family in Southern California. She is the former editor of the California HomeSchooler and the author of two unschooling books, including "Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling and Zenschooling: Living a fabulous and fulfilling life without school." She also writes at her blog Just Enough, and Nothing More.

The term life learning refers to a form of homeschooling that trusts children and avoids the trappings of school. It is sometimes called unschooling, radical unschooling, or natural learning. Life learning children live and learn naturally, with the support of their families, based on their own interests and their own timetables, and without curriculum, tests, or grades. Go here, here and here for a more comprehensive explanation.

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