Standards of Excellence

Today I would like to talk about standards and evaluation in Acton (there is a post about badges in Acton that is also related to evaluation). Here, too, Acton’s approach is innovative in my opinion, and I also think that it can be adopted at home or in educational systems which are not Acton.

Let us imagine a situation: The Eagles are in the middle of a detective quest, and they have to submit a final report of their findings. Alternatively, one of the young Eagles works on his handwriting booklet and he finished the first booklet and wants to continue to the second booklet. The final example: The Eagles work on building an Acton model as part of the architecture quest and they have finished working on their final model. For all of these examples, in a regular education system, this is the stage at which the child will approach the responsible adult in the classroom, inform him that he has completed the project, and the adult will give an opinion about it: The opinion will sometimes be verbal and sometimes numerical, but almost always it will be one, in which the adult will compare the child to a certain standard and evaluate him with a score or words accordingly.

In Acton, for each of these examples, the first question to ask the Eagle would be “Is this your best work?” The goal is to help the Eagle develop the ability to examine his own work with criticism, and also the aspiration for excellence in him. You’re probably thinking that all the Eagles answer yes to this question but that’s not the case. Most Eagles will know very well whether this is their best work or not and why. If she says that this is not her best work, she returns to work on it, and when she finishes it again, we will ask her, “How is this work compared to the previous one?” Again, the goal is for the Eagle to evaluate her own work rather than us. As soon as the Eagle answered yes to this question, we will ask her “How is your work compare to a world model?” The goal here is to make the Eagle check the requirements of the project and make sure that she meets them. Finally, when this question is also answered with a yes, we will ask the Eagle “Do you think this work is ready to be submitted to the competition/presented at the exhibition?” The purpose of this question is to make the Eagle ask herself whether there is anything else she wants to do in order to improve the final product before she finishes working on it.

Another important point, in my opinion, is who asks these questions. In Acton, the goal is to transfer as much authority as possible to the Eagles. Therefore, the Eagles will usually be divided into work teams and each team will have a team leader (chosen by the Eagles). The team leader is the one to whom the Eagles will come to show the products, and he will ask these questions. In our studio, for example, this is not fully implemented yet, and there are certain products that are submitted to the team leaders and certain products that are submitted to us. The aspiration over time is to transfer all this authority to the Eagles.

I would like to share a lovely example we have had in the studio during the last few weeks. One of the young Eagles was about to finish the first island, and all that stood between him and the completion of the task was the handwriting booklet. For him, the handwriting was a very challenging task, yet he finished the booklet and came to show it to Alden. Alden checked the booklet with him and on every page, he asked him, “Is this your best work?” And although this is his most difficult task, and although this is his last task, which stood between him and the ceremony of moving up to the second island, this brave Eagle chose to say that some of the pages were not his best work and started working on them from the beginning. In my opinion, this is a wonderful example of the tremendous power of this tool. The Eagles know very well whether this is their best work, whether they have anything to improve and where they stand according to the requirements. If we pass the evaluation scepter on to them, they develop the important ability of self-criticism and slowly form the aspiration for excellence within themselves, and they gain super significant skills for their adult lives.