Beneath the Surface
Or: Becoming familiar with the unfamiliar
This is a discussion of your familiarity with and understanding of the basics of our course. Your orientation has already started; this essay provides further reading and support as you head into the second week of school.
First, another attempt at succinctly describing Sisyphean High:
Grades are replaced with profiles that indicate relative strength in the skills and traits required for learning. The profiles are evidence-based and cover the body of work produced in a set time period, usually a quarter.
Writing is made central in order to freeze thought and allow students to revisit and refine their learning. They reflect and are metacognitive at all times, grappling with content, concepts, and skills in equal measure.
The interstitial classroom is used to freeze collaboration and questioning in writing, to allow for the same refinement process. It also allows students to access and adapt their learning to suit their individual needs.
Now to our collective map-making, which is an attempt to make those last paragraphs as clear as, say, Laghi di Fusine in Italy.
Familiarity and Understanding
In here, we often work with this predictive bell curve:
It helps us to conceptualize certain elements of the program, like the relative difficulty of achieving a particular grade abatement profile.
The next three weeks are ones of orientation, and we can use this bell curve to think about your growing familiarity with and understanding of this course. Imagine that the y-axis is ease — how quickly and easily the average student could reach a particular level of understanding. The x-axis then represents your overall understanding of the course, and it runs from zero (absolutely no understanding) to ten (creator-level mastery).
This predictive bell curve doesn’t start it’s x-axis at zero, however. That’s because having absolutely no understanding of this course is impossible. Just by reading this post, for instance, you know that we use a predictive bell curve. No, to reach a zero on this hypothetical scale would mean to have no understanding of how school works, how it is scheduled, where it takes place, and so on. We begin the x-axis at four out of necessity.
What each value on the x-axis precisely represents is somewhat unimportant. You don’t need a checklist of what a “six” knows versus a “seven.” This is about relative understanding.
These scales operate with the same threshold-mechanic logic, however, which means that the most important division lies between a six and a seven:
These are the easiest levels to reach in any of our paradigms. As you will see, a seven indicates completion — that all basic requirements are met. A six indicates a slight failure to meet those basic requirements.
By the end of September, all of you should be certain that you are at least a six or seven in terms of your familiarity with and understanding of the course. Seven indicates that you can explain grade abatement, bishop composition, and the interstitial classroom in basic but complete terms. Six means that you are still becoming familiar with a few elements.
When we reach the end of September, you will self-assess. Familiarity and understanding will breed success; the more you know about this course, the more helpful the work becomes.
To move toward either taper — the lower and higher tiers on a predictive curve like this — you will have to work, which means that mastering something is just as difficult as failing. In here, failing takes effort. This is true of grade abatement profiling, but it is also true of an assignment like this.
Think about it: To lack a basic understanding of what this course is would require you to ignore conversation; to choose not to read any posts; to refuse to work in class; and to reject, in the end, the help of your peers and teacher. That’s commitment.
To self-assess at an eight or nine takes similar commitment. You will need to work hard and pay careful attention to everything around you, but you will see that hard work pay off immediately.
And that’s because this course is about exploration more than maybe any other concept. Without grades, the usual map for learning is lost; you will need to explore your surroundings, metaphorically and sometimes literally, in order to figure out what that means for you.
Exploration of any kind needs direction, which is why you have so much to read from me. But a direction can be simple — north — and change constantly. You need curiosity and common sense to navigate that sort of new territory. You also need resources and often a team.
If I held your hand through this process, it would make me a museum guide, and you would be passive tourists, observing interesting things briefly as you shuffle between exhibits. Instead, I will be a guide for you — an expert to help you avoid dangers and embrace transformative experiences.
And transformative is the goal. I now know that this works. It is no longer a vaguely insane plan to get rid of grades; it is a movement, and one that I want you to join.
Read the following posts in order, noting how they connect to each other. They are cobbled together from a series of posts given out in November of last year — at the end of Q1, as an attempt to deal with the sudden return of grades.
But it’s not that grades will return; it’s that report cards force us, however briefly, to use numbers to indicate success and growth. This year, I want to start the discussion there. You must see grade abatement as the accumulation of evidence — something inexorable yet comforting, in its way. This will help.
The first post below reiterates the purpose of the interstitial aspects of our course, including the purpose of the Sisyphean High subreddit. The subreddit information is also available in the most recently updated copy of your registration guide.
Sisyphean High Posts
As you read these posts, I believe that certain elements of the course will become clearer. Don’t rush through them. Take as much time as necessary — weeks, even. At the end of September, you should be able to say that you are a seven on a scale of familiary with and understanding of Sisyphean High.
The Dunning-Kruger effect looms large, of course. Its definition and application are included in the ramiform readings for grade abatement, bishop composition, and the interstitial classroom, but its importance is so great that I will repeat it here.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the inability to recognize one’s weaknesses precisely because of those weaknesses. It is what fuels the Schadenfreude of reality competitions. In here, there is no Schadenfreude, of course; there is just the inexorable crawl of reality. Only by working together to internalize the mechanisms of this course can you hope to be objective.
You will get there, though. I will help you. And there are many other ways for us to approach the idea of a learning curve. The four stages of competence is one; Dan Pink provides another in Drive; and even Aesop has something to say about going slowly and steadily.
Continue to invest your time and energy into the interstitial elements of this course. Focus on your own thinking and writing. Read constantly — follow every link and stray thought for a while, chasing it to its conclusion. In a few weeks, this will all be habit.
