There was a local controversy here in Edmonton last spring when a teacher at Ross Shepherd High School, Lynden Dorval, was suspended for going against the Edmonton School Board's No Zero policy. He gave a zero to a student for not handing in assignments. As you can imagine, he garnered near-unanimous support in the community, where everyone was quick to point out that in the real world there isn't a no-zero policy. Last week he was fired. He landed on his feet by getting another job at a private school. But still. Public sentiment squarely in his favor.

My wife is a teacher, so we listened to the news on the radio about his termination with interest.   I made the inevitable easy comments about how silly a no-zero policy is. Her response was a little more nuanced, as someone with university training in pedagogical methods- something of which I know nothing. She said that a zero for incomplete assignments doesn't really address what's been learned or not learned but is rather an inappropriate punishment for a behavioral issue, not an academic one. I know I'm very likely misquoting both her exact words and even her intent, but that's the gist as I understood it. A mark should only be a reflection of learning, and have nothing to do with behavior. So another way to put it might be that marks are meant to measure knowledge but have no usefulness or function for judging behavior.

I didn't really have a good response at the time, though I did feel that there was an argument that could be made there somewhere. And since all I do all day is bomb up and down a haulroad in my Kress truck, I was able to come up with what I think is a reasonable pedagogical model, bearing in mind that as a Kress Truck driver in a coal mine, my expertise in this area is nil.

What if, for any course or class, we set a baseline mark of zero. We come in as fresh faced newbies innocent of any specialized knowledge, and hence we have 0%. Yeah we might know a few facts ahead of time, but let's all start on an even keel.

The teacher's job then is to impart the knowledge of the subject at hand, the curriculum, in order to bring all the students to an end mark of 100%. The ideal goal would be for everyone to learn all the necessary data and knowledge.

Assignments and tests and all that demonstrate how much of the curriculum beyond 0% a student has gained. Hey, if I'm 47% smarter (or rather, more knowledgeable) about calculus at the end of a semester than I was at the beginning, that doesn't sound so bad. If only my RRSPs grew so fast! And if I'm 80%, 90% or 100% more knowledgeable, well that's fantastic.

Not handing in work is simply a waiving of the right to demonstrate a gain of knowledge, and therefore receiving a mark of 0% is simply remaining at the baseline where one started. One could say the teacher didn't even give (or award) a zero, since they already had the zero to begin with.

Hey? Am I right? I never took any courses in logic or rhetoric back in university, so I'm still at the baseline 0% in those disciplines, but sounds alright to this coal miner!