This is a linkpost for https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2026/Aug/charles-goodhart-elementary-school/
That poor kid had clearly attached too much importance to the checkmark, as if their behavior had been shaped so as to get as many checkmarks as possible. Marking everything as correct seems to not have helped, either. It would be nice if the kid could find for themselves the value of what they were doing, and weren’t pressed into a pre-determined mould — even if it’s just “do stuff to get checkmarks”.
I want to note that I see something similar in many university freshmen, who attach way too much meaning to points and grades. When I switched to a similar approach as shown in the story (mark almost everything as good enough, as long as an answer was present), some got it. For others, it seemed to be too late.
I heard a story (second- or third-hand, which surely lost or gained some details on the telephone path from reality to this telling if it even happened at all) about a boy, age 7 or so, who goes to a very highly-acclaimed school. A piece of recurring homework they give the kids is to read for twenty minutes from a chapter book, and then write a "reflection sentence" about what they read, to be checked off by the teacher.
One day, new stepmom is looking over the kid's work, and notices something off: the kid's reflection sentences don't seem to be a plausible reflection on what was read. Suspiciously many of them just describe a character's isolated action with no context, or refer to story events in the first person, or start with "Once upon a time."
Turns out, the kid was just copying the first sentence verbatim out of a book chapter, and turning that in as his reflection sentence. Stepmom tries to explain that this is clearly not the intent of the exercise.
The kid isn't having it. The teacher always gave him a checkmark, therefore his way of doing reflection sentences was correct.
Stepmom is concerned, asks the kid to read to her, and it's very clear that the kid is just not prepared to read at the level of the books he's attempting. Stepmom suggests some easier books that might be more his speed. The kid refuses; the teacher said they were supposed to read a chapter book.
Another thing they do at this, again, very highly-acclaimed school, is they give the kids arithmetic exercises at the afterschool program. At this point, stepmom is pretty skeptical of the competence of the grown-ups at this school, so she looks over the kid's papers from that. She sees an error in one problem that was marked correct, and points it out to the kid.
Kid has a complete meltdown. "No, no!" he screams. The afterschool grader had marked the problem correct, so it had to be correct. Why was stepmom lying to him about how numbers work? Stepmom tries to explain that the grader must have made a mistake. It happens, sometimes.
The kid isn't having it. Kid and stepmom take the problem to the father. Dad agrees with stepmom. The kid is still crying. "No!"
Stepmom shows the kid how to punch in the problem to the calculator app on the kid's tablet—to the calculator app on her laptop—to the LCD desk calculator that was sitting in the drawer. Same answer every time, different from the answer the grader had marked correct.
At this point, the kid has run out of energy to scream any more, or even to cry. He's just sitting there, shaking a bit, mouthing the word "No" without voice, staring glassy-eyed off into the distance, as if at some cosmic horror only he can see.
There's probably a moral here. But they're not paying me to tell you what it is exactly.