The Aristotelian Classroom
A 32-page case study of SPARK Summer Camp 2026, which removed grades and attendance enforcement but kept the hard content.
- The finding: what changed students was verdict removal, not difficulty removal.
- Python, ML, web development and open discussion tracks for about 35 students.
The experiment
SPARK Summer Camp 2026 ran for students aged roughly 14 to 22, across Python, machine learning, web development and an open discussion track. We made one deliberate change from a normal classroom: we removed grades and stopped enforcing attendance. We did not make the content any easier.
The finding
The usual assumption is that students disengage because the material is hard, so the fix is to make it easier. That is not what we saw. Students stayed with difficult material once nobody was handing down a verdict on them.
I call this verdict removal, as opposed to difficulty removal. The camp kept the difficulty and took away the judgement, and that is what changed how students worked.
The write-up
The Aristotelian Classroom is a 32-page case study of the camp. A follow-up research paper is in progress, built on a longitudinal re-survey of the same participants to see which of the effects actually lasted.