Remember demerits? If you are of a certain generation (or older), I know you do. For you young’uns (or those of us whose memories aren’t as gelatinous as they used to be), allow me to explain the concept. During my day, high schools granted every student a certain number of merits at the beginning of each school year. Now, keep in mind the number of merits wasn’t the important thing here. The actually cache we started with was never publicly revealed, and since nothing useful could be extracted from said cache of merits, it didn’t really matter. These were less useful than cryptocurrency in an a pre-internet era.
The important thing to know is that each student’s cache of merits could and would be detracted from on the basis of behavior…specifically bad behavior. I don’t remember ever there being a case of earning merits for good behavior. Nope. Merits couldn’t be earned. Merits only flowed in one direction to the extent they were widely known simply as “demerits.” Ahh, demerits: little glittering, demotivating, virtual punishment tokens meant to indicate your backside was inching closer and closer to a paddling. Those were the days.
Show up late to class? Demerit. Cuss out a teacher? Demerit. Embarrass a teacher by revealing their ill preparedness? Demerit. Wear a smiley-face-T-shirt that’s been hung on your fence and blasted by your favorite twenty-gauge shotgun? Oh you better believe that’s a demerit. Stab a classmate in the back of the head with a pencil while they are minding their own business? For some reason, when this happened to me, the crazy girl responsible didn’t get a demerit. (Man, that girl was crazy.)
Anywho, these days we’ve smartened up, right? Instead of starting everyone off with one-hundred percent of their potential and then subtracting from that potential on the basis of failure (a punitive system), we’ve generated a credit system based off of the theory of gamification. Nowadays, everyone starts off with zero percent before being rewarded for positive behavior in order to “level up.” The sky is the limit! (Or at least until you defeat the game and get bored.)
Show up to class on time? That’s a credit. Finish your assigned tasks? Credit. Survive physical education? Credit. Resist the temptation to get out of your seat and run to the window when two stray dogs are humping in the parking lot? You better believe that’s a credit. (When you’ve grown up on a ranch or a farm this doesn’t even qualify as mildly interesting.)
The sceptics among us might see the drawbacks to both of these systems. Beating people down for every mistake isn’t exactly life affirming. At the same time, rewarding people for avoiding dumbassery is a fast path to a full-blown mediocracy.
But how do we teach young people (and old people) that most aspects of life can’t (or at least shouldn’t) be gauged by individual scores? Whether we are subtracting from a pre-established merit total or adding to our previous high score, the quality of (and dedication to) our labor should not be affected by some running tally. Our respect and care for our neighbors shouldn’t be based on some invisible talley of heaven credits or a karma score. WWJD (or WWtheBD for the Buddha or WWSMD for Superman or whoever you esteem to embody) isn’t some sort of sliding scale upon which we are meant to compare each other.
I guess I’m left wondering, if all we learn from learning is that the final grade is supreme, then what sort of “why” are we left with? What’s the point? Why do we do any of the things we do? And don’t say “self-improvement.” In my book, that’s simply code for, “At least I’m better than that mother-scratcher.”
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