Ends Through A Means

Trying to reach an ends through a means such as a ‘mark’ has become one of the biggest fallacies in our education system and has taken up way to much priority in regulating the education system. What exactly do we define or distinguish marks? And is there every really an ends in education? Can we trust our definitions of marks to define an anticipated ends? Since education is a continual process of growth, development, and evolution, how do we really make a finishing line, and how do the marks indicate this? The very questions elude me and allow me to evaluate and reconsider many methods of my upbringing.

The very term ‘mark’ is multidimensional in many ways and has many definitions, and refers to the same elusiveness involved when giving definition and absolute to the word education. The same elusiveness of defining educators, educations, and the finish line as an end product to be reached. If educators are continuously reaching throughout their lives, then wouldn’t education be an endless process. If education is suppose to stay connected to us throughout our lives then shouldn’t we throughout our lives, especially adulthood, shouldn’t education or knowledge to continual process of change and re-growth? . When the authors say, “it is all too tempting to use marks as vehicles to reach, or try to reach, other ends?”, many thoughts and convictions comes to mind, and I almost find the question rhetorical and thought provoking beyond words in itself. Nevertheless, I am reminded of the ever frustrating measures of my childhood and adolescence, where marks defined my position as a student and as a peer. Realizing, that marks have impacted us for sometime I become more and more skeptical of the very meaning of the terms, the very terms in which my education forces me to define.

I always remember the handful of teachers that impacted me in such positive ways, and the genuine ones that really handed me the tools of educations, and the keys to search for, when searching for knowledge. They lended tiny precious treasures for me, to evaluate, observe, and to keep within my minds eye through the course of my adulthood. In the textbook, one passage particularly grabs my attention, “But when a single mark represents a hodgepodge of factors (e.g., achievement, attitude, attendance, punctuality , or conduct) or systems (e.g., comparison with other students, comparison with standards, comparisons with standards of effort, or improvement), interpretations or comparison of such marks becomes a hopeless tasks,”(p.247). The passage brings me back to my roots and brings me back to my skepticisms, the elements of me that were apart from the education system, the parts of me that I always was and always will be. Then I realize, that without those teachers and the educations that I had received, and without those tools handed to me, that I might not have become the person that I have become, and that I may not have done things that otherwise I would have thought impossible, and I realize the elements of education in there own essences, have their own strengths, and come to value them as part of my personality, as I endeavor adulthood and find my way as a woman, and as a citizen of a country.

Perhaps without the intimidation of the marking system, intellectually as a individual, I would have grown more and have become stronger, but what difference does it really make, they have to gauge things on some sort of measurement. Otherwise, there are elements all around me that are different in experience than they may otherwise have been, before education existed, the implant education made on me, has become part of my precious and sacred essences as a person, and exist with me on a daily experience on many levels. They key, I learn now in my mid thirties, the key is to not be too hard on myself and to not takes those marks to seriously, and just to be myself and enjoy the ride. If only I would have known then what I know now. But then what if there is more mental evolution to come? What will I know then, later in thirty years, that I might have needed to know now? It is all part of this endless cycle, that in hind sight, education was a good element to have along for the ride of life.