100: What is that?!?

Royal was working on a Mental Math page today by himself. Afterwards, I looked over his work. 
Finding it without error, I wrote on the top of the page: 100

just for kicks, you know?

When I showed him what I wrote (and I never write a grade on his work ... why, really?), he asks: 

What? What is that?

It is unnecessary to stimulate these young scholars by marks, prizes, etc.

-CM, Vol 6: A Philosophy of Education, p 28

And it hit me.

It made me think again on the atmosphere of education.
If we habitually use marks, or grades, to illustrate to the child his progress, or skills, soon (and faster than we know it) he will begin to form a dependency on a number and altogether lose sight of the purpose of education.


In an educational environment, we do ... harm when we offer ... high marks for work well done, rather than let a child have the satisfaction of knowing that he has learned something new, has gone a little further in a meaty book, has solved a difficult problem correctly, 
and has grown a little in the process.
-Karen Glass, Consider This, p 66

But a school may be working hard, not for love of knowledge, but for love of marks, our old enemy; and then young faces are not serene and joyous 
but eager, restless, apt to look anxious and worried.
-CM, Vol 6: A Philosophy of Education, p 98