Grades, they Suck

Since first grade, I, like many others, have been graded on almost everything I've ever done in school. Grades determine my mood, happiness, anxiety, and a lot more. When I tried my hardest on something and get a notification on my phone of a 72 put in for it, my day is ruined. I start to dislike the class, teacher, and sometimes myself.

Getting a bad grade on something I know I gave my all discourages me from trying hard on something else in that class or just classes in general. Teachers, administrators, coaches, college admission committees, and sometimes, even our parents see us as a test score. We aren't people to them but numbers, numbers that determine our worth and success in life.

The person beside me could be a genius but fail a class because they were going through problems at home, depressed, or were just simply not interested in the topic. That one failed class could ruin their chances of getting into their dream college which could possibly affect the rest of their life.

We are told to reach out to someone and talk about our problems, but what if our problems are something that won't change? Teenagers already deal with self-esteem problems, depression, anxiety, bullying, etc... Adding being graded on everything we do doesn't help, and it hurts us in more ways than we think.

Alfie Kohn explains the problems, effects, and how to improve grading in her essay. As the author themself said, "Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking." Instead of students being involved in what we are learning and actually desire to learn to material, grades teach us to just want to learn what's on the test, not what we are curious or fascinated by.

School is supposed to magnify divergent thinking and help our future but Kohn makes a terrific point when she says, "Grades don’t prepare students for the “real world”—unless one has in mind a

world where interest in learning and quality of thinking are unimportant." In school, we are used to memorizing information, taking a test, and then forgetting the information memorized forever. Instead of being graded on memorization, we need to abandon grades and start having conversations.

Kohn makes a good point by saying, "They can stop putting letter or number grades on individual assignments and instead offer only qualitative feedback." Talking with your teacher truthfully about your understanding of material measures the knowledge about a topic a great deal more than a standardized test from the state. I don't see the state teaching students, no, I see teachers.

When we don't feel the pressure of testing our understanding of material would be outstandingly better because we would start taking in the information without being afraid of it not being on the test and end up being a waste of energy to learn it.

In fact, teachers have been "degrading" their classrooms already. Jeff Robbinson talks to his student about their assignments and conferences with them at the end of the semester. With this system, his student stopped being scared of taking the intellectual risks they would have not taken if they knew it would be graded.

In summary, the 0-100 grading system sucks. A change needs to be made for the health of students. Conversations between students and teachers need to start. Once we throw out this concept of number grading, students will start to want to learn for themselves and not for a test.