Abolish the Grading System?

<p>I’m a senior in college and this topic is asked in the form of a question because I’m not trying to SPAM the messageboard with my opinion rather than open an actual discussion.</p>

<p>It’s occured to me throughout my college career how completely asinine not only the grading system is, but how stupid the SATs, HEPAs, GEPAs AP exams, and all the other stupid tests and systems, GPAs, class ranks, and other completely ridiculous ******** is that pollutes our education system and is part of the reason why our system is so god awful. I remember thinking in high school how completely unimportant it was that I was ranked 74th in a class of 300, part of the reason being that I took unweighted courses or something. What does this **** have to do with learning? </p>

<p>And what’s worse, it makes certain kids feel stupid or useless. I remember thinking “So now number 7 is way smarter than me, but at least I’m better tham 124???” What kind of judgemental ******** is this?</p>

<p>Unfortunately, this carries over to college. People still care about “Easy As” instead of “challenging yourself to think”. Seniors still care about their GPAs for some twisted reason. Teachers want to give lots of busy work and want you to spit things out at them, though I do have to agree with one of their problems: the kids aren’t even paying attention, and they actually have to test and trick them TO pay attention. Even worse- professors who want to deviate from anything normal are either harassed or fired. I only know a few teachers who realized how stupid the system was. </p>

<p>I remember talking to this one teacher- young guy, who I learned more from than most of my other teachers- I remember telling him how this one requirement he had for his class (a bunch of listening exercises, which I actually did) could EASILY be faked and the other students could just lie to him about it. He simply said “Yeah, and? So let them. You guys aren’t doing these things for me- I’m still getting paid. You’re supposed to be doing them for yourselves.” So true. When have we lost sight of this?</p>

<p>I say, abolish grades. I stopped caring about grades as long as it doesn’t lead to me failing (which it won’t, since I actually try) or losing money or whatever. I got a C in a math class and- I DIDN’T EXPLODE! I tried my best, not great at math, learned a few things. I don’t regret that C and I’m sort of proud to have it. I’M HUMAN, AHHHHH!</p>

<p>There should be a Pass/Fail for everything, based on “you didn’t actually give a ****” or “wow, you really engaged things and formed your own thoughts and conclusions”. Yes, this includes Math. For the anal, we can have a little personal score sheet.</p>

<p>Now, full disclosure- yes, I’ve thought about things like being a Doctor or knowing the Law for lawyers. I’m not against some exams with a sort of PASS, FAIL, or OK. But the point is, there are ways to tell if you know what you’re talking about or if you’re just some robot with the answers. There’s no C- in surgery. There’s bad surgery, good surgery, and dead people on a table. Filling in bubbles doesn’t equate to thinking like a REAL person. That’s why med students have to intern at hospitals and do pro bono work. </p>

<p>We’re spitting out robots, still, and it’s nuts. There are free thinkers, artists, doctors, scholars, critics, mathematicians, scientists who change the world and break silly barrier after silly barrier. I don’t believe any of this has to do with a ****ing 1600 on the SATs.</p>

<p>I don’t really care for grades either, but I’m not sure how you would then be able to judge a person’s abilities for going to school. Comparing numbers is a lot easier than comparing pages upon pages of evaluations of a student. In my large lectures there are multiple choice tests (which I hate) but in most of my smaller classes its a lot of listening, discussing, analyzing and more papers than tests, which I agree is a ton better and I think more learning is done. But its really not feasible to do in a class of 300+ students.</p>

<p>But when people hire you or you go onto grad school students who took the easy way out won’t be as well off as someone who challenged themselves. I think med schools can tell the person who took the easy classes vs. the person who might of got a D or C in an engineering class, but obviously decided to challenge themselves.</p>

<p>I also think there are numerous ways to shine outside of class. Having jobs, doing volunteer work, and participating in clubs (especially if any of those relate to a career you would like to have) say something to potential employers and I think most certainly look better than the kid with a 3.5 but who never spent a minute doing something even remotely related to his/her career of interest.</p>

<p>I also think that competition is healthy for human beings. Perhaps not as early on as some students today experience, but I know I achieve more because I want to do better than average in a class. Humans have always had competition and I think a lot of the “Its okay Billy, you came in last, but here’s a trophy anyway” stuff is kind of nonsense. Why would anyway whos getting awards for doing poorly strive to do any better? If a kid sees an F on their paper maybe they’ll work harder. So I do think competition is healthy to an extent, but think its something that shouldn’t go overboard. Grades shouldn’t be a child’s entire life.I too find many flaws in them but I think that they do work given the large population of students.</p>

<p>Here’s the kicker: I don’t think we SHOULD judge students. Especially young students. And by who’s standards, exactly? Everything is based on the whim of the teachers, more or less. And their whim is based on some other people. It’s like the law. A cop CAN give you a ticket for speeding, but by law, he’s allowed to use his discrepancy whether or not to give you one. And who says the law is always right?</p>

<p>We aren’t teaching students to think for themselves, we’re teaching them to work hard for other people. Competition, believe it or not, is an awful thing. Who the hell am I supposed to be competing against and for what? To work for some company? Why? So I can be unhappy with some desk job in 30 years? Cool if someone else wants that, but I sure don’t. And I would have appreciated a choice in school.</p>

<p>I’m not against hard work, but part of the reason is this worry about “what employers will think” and “salary” and “pension” and “career”. If going to a university is about getting some job than we should abolish all colleges and only have specialized trade schools.</p>

<p>But education isn’t about that. and before you start about success or whatever, remember we live in a world where Larry the Cable guy makes tons of money, people eat at McDonald’s and for some reason success in America is measured by how much money you have, how many kids you have and how green and tidy your lawn is. I still don’t get what the guy who speeds past me up the hill by my house gains other than being one car ahead, because there’s a car in front of him. All he did was nearly cause an accident.</p>

<p>education wasn’t formed for the intention of enriching youth.
it was formed solely for them to enter the workforce being semi-prepared for what’s in store next. in order for people to obey this system, you can’t actually "educate’ them. you just dumb them down.</p>

<p>I still think competition is healthy. If not for competing with my peers I may have never had the desire to study anything and discover my interests. Instead I would have been happy watching television and munching on cheeseburgers all day long. As I got older I would have been happy to play video games all day long and accomplish nothing. Much of human accomplishments have come because of competition. Discovering how the body works, how to prevent disease, and etc probably happened a lot quicker because people were competing to become the first to discover it and receive the rewards for doing such whether it be fame or fortune. Our species today has come from competition. We’d be frail and weak human beings if the strongest and healthiest of our earliest ancestors didn’t out compete with the frail ones.</p>

<p>As for judging, I do believe we put too much pressure on young students and can get into a whole deal about how it has some negative outcomes but I won’t. Not everyone can work for themselves and in fact most students will work for other people. Not all people have the ability to be leaders, and in fact most people are followers. I’m competing against other students to receive better grades, better recommendations so I can get better internships and eventually a better job starting out. By better I mean something I will like more, not something that will pay me more. Though my eventual goal is to own a restaurant, I have no problem working for someone else. I see nothing wrong with it, why you do is beyond me. If you don’t want to, thats fine and dandy, but many can hardly run a vacuum cleaner let alone a company. I also think that although school is used initially to judge a student, if said student goes to work as a real estate agent and is seen to be really good at it, I’m sure people will take notice, his Ds in math throughout all of high school won’t matter and he’ll move on up to some bigger and better things.</p>

<p>School grades aren’t life determining. After I have 5 or 10 years experience in health care and have perhaps helped run support groups and implemented a new system for doing X better, I don’t think many employers will look too much into my college grades.</p>

<p>You’re still worried about employers anyway. Employers are just a TINY part of your life.</p>

<p>The whole “our ancestors did this” argument never makes sense, because we aren’t cavemen anymore. It’s time to evolve to the next thing. I admit I’ve been lazy in the past too, but competition never sparked me into learning, a realization that life lies outside of competeition is what did.</p>

<p>The fact that you sat around eating food and playing videogames complacently says more about the usual forms of control that media puts on us than anything else. The problem is we’re so used to people telling us what to do, think, where to go, and what life’s about that we all just stay on guideposts. The whole leader/follower thing makes no sense because I’m talking about leading yourself. You can work in a group, follow a leader, but it shoudln’t be blindly. There are more important things than a career. MUCH MORE. a university- an educational institution- is at the one time, and one place in your life where you’re priveleged to be free from the demands of the so called “real world”. This is supposed to be a time to meditate, learn, and realize- hey, maybe a lot of these people are WRONG. But instead, these places are just factories for the most part.</p>

<p>It stems from my situation- I’m taking a class now that I was very interested in taking. So far, it’s a lot harder than I thought and I might get a not so great grade in it because it’s a struggle for me. But I’m not taking it for the grade, my GPA, to look good on a resume, or to get a better job. I’m just taking it because it interests me and challenges me to think in a different way. I might get a C- in it, but that’s fine because I’m in it for the experience, not the consequences. But it took me a long time to get rid of this FEAR- a younger me would have dropped the class by now, probably, because so many people have wagged their finger at me- “Employers wont” “Bosses want you to” “Schools look for” “you have to make sure you”. It’s all BS.</p>

<p>Imagine if the bulk of school, from K-12 through college was similar to this thinking? Sure, it wouldn’t work out for everyone. But imagine if people went to college because they wanted to learn, and divise a viewpoint based on their own conclusions. Instead of “Bosses want to know your GPA, put it on your resume”. But that’d be dangerous because kids would no longer be molded into controllable robots. They’d see ******** and know it, and reject it.</p>

<p>There are schools that don’t grade. New College of Florida, Florida’s honor college, is one of them. Professors give written evaluations rather than grades, which means students do not have a GPA. This has not been a problem for graduate or professional schools; NCF has an excellent placement record at top graduate and professional schools.</p>

<p>The Wall Street Journal surveyed some top business, medical, and law schools, to see which undergraduate programs were most successful at “feeding” their students into highly ranked professional schools. The Top 50 list included only four public schools:</p>

<h1>30 University of Michigan</h1>

<h1>31 New College of Florida</h1>

<h1>33 University of Virginia</h1>

<h1>41 University of California, Berkeley</h1>

<p>Good to hear, I know of certain “experimental” public and private schools and colleges that have done this over the years but never done much research (admittedly) or had first hand experience.</p>

<p>I’m not so much interested in one exact plan for all schools, but I think our grading system is grossly outdated and the fact that k-12 and colleges use the SAME type of grading system, for the most part, is silly.</p>

<p>The response to “too many students, not enough time for personal evaluations” can be solved by having fewer students at a school. Fewer students means a need for newer schools which means (hopefully) more jobs and more points of view, and less funding spent on frivelous stuff.</p>

<p>Of course, public school budgeting is a huge issue now. But I’d also be curious if more schools did this, and what that would cause private schools to do. Would they keep their old grading system and “competitive” nature? or would more liberal public schools gain a better rep and draw kids away from the expensive private schools? Anyway, I’ll keep quiet and see if I can’t learn a thing or two from people who have more experience in this thread.</p>

<p>I COMPLETELY agree!!
If school was graded on P/F, and you could just concentrate on the meaning of the classes instead of the grades, education would be more meaningful.
And employers wouldn’t care if you had a good/bad gpa because they wouldn’t exist!! You’d have to focus on extracurriculars, which you could do more of because you wouldn’t have to worry about getting straight A’s! GAH</p>

<p>I mainly DISAGREE.</p>

<p>Most American schoolchildren could give a rats ass about their education. Imposing standards forces them to at least achieve a minimum level of competency.</p>

<p>However, for the students that give a damn (ex. all the people on this website), yes, the grading system can be a detriment to real learning. I could go on further but i hope you get the point.</p>

<p>Okay, go to Brown and take everything P/F.</p>

<p>I object to enforcing a Pass/Fail or Honors/Pass/Fail system because these grading systems are often used to hide the abysmal failure of underqualified, inept enrollees, especially now at Harvard and Yale Law Schools.</p>

<p>Only the premiere universities would be able to get away with instituting such a system, because their admittees have already proven themselves. Realistically, public schools and lesser known privates need a way of distinguishing outstanding men and women with potential from the rabble, so strict scrutiny in grading and evaluating students is necessary at those schools.</p>

<p>“I don’t believe any of this has to do with a ****ing 1600 on the SATs.”</p>

<p>The SAT isn’t “stupid.” It tests how quickly and accurately you can read and do math at the 7th grade level.</p>

<p>Have you also realized how pointless Exams/Tests are in general? Study for 2-5 hours just so you can show that you know know the information for an hour, and you practically forget it all after you take the test. And then the real midterm/final exams, don’t even get me started on those! Some teachers think that even though you got an A for their class that you still need to take the exam. It’s not like I’ll remember the stuff even better by taking an exam. I was Valedictorian and I still think it’s so pointless. For some majors, undergraduate is so pointless, it’s just a way for colleges to make money. Like if I want to be a doctor, why can’t I just spend years in a real doctor environment from the beginning, not 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of med school (which does help to some extent), residency, internship, etc.</p>

<p>Grades don’t show ability or intellectual comparison between students. All it proves is whether or not the student can follow directions and stay on task with busy work. </p>

<p>I practically got straight A’s in high school but I’m dumb as a rock.</p>

<p>…bumping an old thread. Personally, I think schools should track APTITUDE via a learning portal using psychometric tests. In the end recollection of fact based knowledge is subjective based on variables in that situation. Is it high stress or low stress? The quality of education, or even the subscription to a “graded” educational system really doesn’t establish anything. You take a group of students from the same GPA bracket and test them in a variety of situations and you’ll most assuredly get random results. The choice of where people go to school is much more of a personal decision than it is anything in regard to quantifiable evidence. The question is… “how likely is someone to succeed in (insert arena here)?” How can you make a decision based off of a GPA? It’s a crap shoot…</p>

<p>On the topic of the SAT: that is some ridiculous BS. It has absolutely no bearing on intelligence or “college aptitude”. All it is good for is telling how well you can take the SAT.</p>

<p>It tests how quickly and accurately you can read and do math at the 7th grade level.</p>

<p>I actually read what you people write.</p>