Yom Kippur and Pedagogy

I’m a college professor, and we talk a lot about strategies for teaching and helping our students. In this context, we use two types of assessment: formative assessment and summative assessment. Summative assessment is when you look everything over and give the student a grade. Formative assessment, on the other hand, is when you look at the student’s work, well before the end of the term and say “you didn’t get this answer right”, “your writing here isn’t in the right format”, or “you need more citations to support this assertion.”

This type of assessment is how we learn. If you’re self-motivated, you can learn just fine without summative assessment. You don’t need grades to learn. You do need formative assessment. Someone (which could be yourself!) needs to look at your work so far and say “This part looks good. This part needs work. And over here, it seems like you’re not really getting the concept we’re working on.” Without formative assessment, you don’t know what you still need to learn.

Some of the language in Yom Kippur liturgy reads like summative assessment: who is written in the book of life. But that’s not what I believe, and I don’t think that’s what most people I know believe. I don’t think most of us really think G-d is up there with a giant grade book and a red pen thinking “Hmm. This person gets a B-.” and then determining what your next year looks like.

On the other hand, Yom Kippur can be great as formative assessment. It’s a chance to look back at your past year and think “Where did I miss the mark? Where do I have more work to do? And where did I just fail to turn in my assignment at all?” And the best part is that we get to look at those things, atone for them and then go into a clean new year. We know that we’ll keep making some of the same mistakes. But maybe, just maybe, we can look at this year’s formative assessment as a learning opportunity. Learn some new things, try to do a little better, and maybe show up for a few more classes. Because this chance to assess ourselves lets us know where we have the most work to do and maybe that’s the most valuable thing we can learn.