#39: US Political Insanity, Competitive Grading and How SCI Helps
System Change Investing (SCI) uses the Global System Change (GSC) framework to drive essential systemic changes in all major areas of society. Uniting and empowering citizens to act on their common best interests is a main metric category in whole system SCI models. Education reform is a key element of this. And eliminating competitive grading is a critical aspect of improving education.
This post discusses the harmful nature of competitive grading, how it potentially contributes to political turmoil, and how SCI addresses it. The post is based on the Competitive Grading section of the GSC book Transforming Education: A Whole System Approach to Empowering Young People and Achieving Sustainable Society. A link to the full section is provided at the end of this post.
The Drivers of Political Division
In the US, millions of citizens are supporting political candidates who roll back environmental and social protections built up over the past 50 years, make factually incorrect statements, and attack immigrants and minorities. Why are citizens often supporting racist, objectively harmful ideas? There are as many reasons as there are people voting.
However, competitive grading in school potentially is one contributing factor. It demeans children during their formative years. Many people spend the rest of their lives trying to prove that they are not as stupid as they were made to feel in school. Supporting candidates who have little regard for facts and honesty could be a rebellion against the fact-focused teachers and education system that demeaned them.
Competitive grading is one of many factors driving support for anti-factual candidates in the US. As discussed in an earlier post, other critical factors include concentration of wealth, deceptive media, and education reform that suppressed liberal arts and the critical thinking it fosters.
The Harmful Nature of Competitive Grading
Everyone is different. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Judging young people on a set of subjects that society says are important does great harm. People do well in subjects and activities that they find interesting. Someone who finds math boring, for example, will have more difficulty excelling in this area than someone who finds it interesting.
Receiving average or below average grades sends a clear and powerful signal that children are not as valuable or talented as those with higher grades. Constantly receiving average or especially below average grades during 13 of the most formative years of one's life degrades self-esteem and conditions young people to expect less from life.
The most important purpose of education is to empower young people to live successful and satisfying lives and strongly contribute to a truly prosperous society. The most important qualities needed to achieve this are strong self-esteem, social and emotional skills, and critical thinking ability. Competitive grading severely degrades these essential qualities to achieve a less important goal – ranking young people on academic performance.
It shifts the focus of education from learning to judgement. Boring, judgmental education conditions young people to endure boring jobs and obey authorities for the rest of their lives. Competitive grading often causes psychological damage. But this frequently is not obvious because nearly all of us grew up in this demeaning education environment. As a result, it can seem normal.
Linking Competitive Grading and Voting
As discussed in Transforming Education, several studies have shown that US citizens increasingly vote Democrat as education levels rise. People with lower grades are less likely to seek higher education. This type of education teaches people to critically analyze subjects and make their own decisions. This makes them less likely to vote for candidates who make factually incorrect statements (e.g. climate change is not real, the 2020 election was stolen).
The purpose here is not to link grades to intelligence. Many brilliant people vote Republican. Brilliant people often get low grades in school due to lack of interest in the subject matter, problems at home, and many other factors. This post only suggests that demeaning young people with competitive grading might contribute to political insanity, such as supporting candidates who make racist, factually incorrect statements.
SCI and Education Reform
People often feel powerless to address the major challenges facing humanity. For example, resolving the rapidly growing division, vitriol and irrationality of the US political system can seem extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, probably all major problems can be solved, given strong commitment, adequate resources, and effective strategies.
Whole system approaches that drive essential systemic changes throughout society are necessary for resolving major challenges. The GSC framework provides such an approach. It enables accurate corporate system change performance rating by clarifying system change overall. This facilitates assessment of corporate efforts to drive systemic change in all areas of society.
A divided, unhappy, misled general public severely threatens business and society. Effective democracy requires empowered, critically thinking citizens. Implementing empowering education is essential for achieving this state. As discussed in Transforming Education, replacing harmful competitive grading with more effective assessment methods is a foundation of society-enhancing education reform.
SCI rates companies on their efforts to promote education reform and other essential systemic changes. As investors shift investments to system change leaders, companies are incentivized to implement effective system change strategies.
The corporate and financial sectors have the power and resources needed to drive timely collaborative system change. They largely are controlled by investing. SCI gives citizens a powerful lever for effectively addressing complex major challenges, including political insanity in the US.
For more information about SCI, visit our website SystemChangeInvesting.com or contact us at info@SystemChangeInvesting.com
The full Competitive Grading section from Transforming Education is available at: globalsystemchange.com/competitive-grading-from-transforming-education/
