Grades are the worst. They are needlessly stressful and do not effectively fulfill their role in motivating students to learn. Worst of all, it’s an entirely preventable issue through alternative schooling methods that have spread globally.
An article from the University of British Columbia distinguishes grades from learning, saying grades represent “how well you can learn a lot of material, in any way possible, often in a short amount of time. To me [the author], this represents my study habits, my ability to stay on track of my workload, my note-taking, and frankly just how well I study.”
Grades are not a signifier of how well a student understands a specific topic, but how well they can learn any number of topics. However, a student can pass a class easily without remembering any of the material. Being able to learn is a pivotal skill for moving forward in life, but grades do not encourage students to learn further and do not promote long-term retention. According to the Department of Education, the “summer slide” is a term used to describe students’ tendency to forget what they have learned over the school year. This slide, on average, causes students to lose “about 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading and 27 percent of their school-year gains in math during summer break,” according to Scholastic.
“I do not think that grades promote learning. I think that many students do the work for the grade as a short-term goal and do not do the work for the learning, which is the long-term goal. We have a society that values simply understanding things like grades, instead of complicated things like learning,” Instructor Ann Kirkendall said.
An article from Harvard Business School affirms this idea, saying “As a seasoned educator who has taught in the classroom for nearly 40 years, I see this paradigm consistently. Students have become more focused on the rewards and punishments, namely grades (an extrinsic motivator), and less on the desired behavior, learning (an intrinsic motivator)”.
Grades can even serve as a deterrent to learning for parents.
“Parents also want the effortless success that grades provide. That’s also why many parents don’t go to conferences because they are less interested in the more complex answers of how a student is doing. A grade provides an easy way for a student not to learn anymore. A grade provides a ceiling for learning, and there is no ceiling. Students are content with an A, and don’t push themselves,” Kirkendall said.
“I think grades can be a big motivating factor, for some who can meet their goals after they’ve put forth a significant effort. Further, any praise and encouragement they receive from their support system can help them stay motivated and engaged throughout the semester. For others, grades can likely feel very discouraging – especially if they are trying their best and are still falling short of their goals or any sort of external expectations on their behalf,” School Counselor Danielle Barnes said.
The pressure to get good grades acts as a double-edged sword, motivating students to meet deadlines and stressing students out to the point of anxiety, leading to a negative relationship with school.
“Grades don’t motivate me to learn, if anything they’re pressure to get good grades,” Jr Diego Solano said.
“Grades stress me out, and not in a good way. I don’t feel motivated to learn, I’m just worried about the grade,” Jr Niklas Armstead said.
While the grading system has problems it is effective as a barometer for student progress within their classes.
“I think grades, in any school, motivate certain students but definitely not all students. Many people are motivated by achieving a specific goal, and earning a certain grade can serve as a good way to measure their level of success. Some people are not wired that way or feel discouraged to even attempt to give their best effort in a certain class so the grade ends up being less important. Overall, the goal of using grades in classes is to help measure student learning,” Assistant Principal Jake Manning said.
“I do think that grades are effective in motivating students to learn. They help students focus on a goal and get to the particular level they wish to reach. With that being said, I do not think grades are enough to motivate students completely. I think we as teachers need to keep our students engaged in the material and learning process to motivate them fully. Grades can be a “starting point” to fully motivating our students,” Instructor Sean Hoey said.
Grades seek to motivate students by giving them a goal to work towards. However, that goal is to get good grades, not to learn.
The primary issue with grades is their inability to enforce long-term retention of the curriculum. Humans forget quickly without the correct motivator to keep learning. A psychological principle known as the Ebbinghaus Forgetting curve shows that people tend to forget newly learned information in a matter of days unless they actively review the material. Summer is notoriously a time of academic regression caused by an aversion to learning cultivated by the grading system. Because students are only motivated to get good grades, there is no reason to learn when school ends.
However, people have started to move away from the standard grade system on a broad scale. Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Switzerland, as well as other European countries such as the Netherlands, use an alternative school system oriented around learning without grades.
The folk school movement is a method of schooling that takes a more freeform approach to education. There are no grades or exams, and students can enroll in any number of classes that interest them, facilitating a positive learning environment students will be invested in. Now obviously, classes like math and English must be taught, and education can not be as free in public schools.
That being said, the principles of folk schools have merit. They get students invested in learning and reduce the stress associated with learning. These principles have been embraced worldwide, with a folk school being relatively close to Holland in Ann Arbor. The success of folk schools demonstrates that grades are not the end-all-be-all they are made out to be, and at the very least, alternatives are possible, plausible, and in many ways, beneficial to consider.
