This is the Problem with the US Grading System
Is your child really learning?
How do you know?
Do you think grades help your child learn better?
If you answer is yes, you should know that most research contradicts your answer.
A few reasons why grades and the US grading system are bad are:
They may promote dishonesty (cheating).
They may harm self-esteem.
Grades don’t tell the student how to improve.
They may decrease the student’s desire to learn for the sheer joy of learning.
One method that I use to decrease the negative effects of grades is to allow students to redo their work until they master it. This creates a lot of work for me, but much better learning outcomes for students.
In the opinion of many educators, the US grading system is still used because it requires low effort on the part of the teacher and because that’s the way we’ve always done it.
Use It or Lose It:
Why don’t you parents go to your next PTA meeting, and demand alternatives to traditional grading that will help the students learn better.
What Do You Think About the US Grading System?
If you don’t have kids in school or grandkids in school, how else can you use this concept in your life?
If you do have kids in school, how has this video post changed your thinking about grades?
What other aspects of your life cause the same problems as grades?
Until next time…keep learning, behave and as always…Prime Your Pump!
–Howie
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You sir, are on fire this week. Learning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of grades – what a novel concept. Students not being pushed into memorizing useless facts just so they can regurgitate them on multiple choice or true-false tests, and then immediately empty their mental trash can. Would you like to apply for a cabinet position as Secretary of Education?
Having survived various grading systems up through and including post-graduate courses, I would like to throw out an observation. The conventional grading system ABCDF, is an easy way out for the instructor fill in the square. Take the test scores, throw in that mythical fudge factor called “class participation”, and assign a letter grade. What has the student learned? He/she has learned enough to pass the course, but what knowledge has been retained? If the teacher is lucky, 10% will be retained somewhere in the student’s brain, at least temporarily until its flushed out by another class. Thank goodness for short term memory. I’m writing here from personal experience.
The concept of a “required courses leading to a well-rounded education” to me is a complete cop-out on the part of the college or university. In my undergraduate days, all students had to suffer through something called English 101. I squeaked through with a C. If you were an engineering major (as I was), you were exempt from any further English classes. Everyone else, including chemistry and physics majors, had to endure an English literature course. This made absolutely no sense, and there existed a heavy “trade” in class notes and term papers among those non-English majors who had to sit through this torture. Their goal was C and forget it.
Now, two ways on how to improve the educational process.
1) I’m a great believer in independent study, guided by a mentor who is not teaching per se, but rather guiding and suggesting. This especially in a student’s major. The student might even branch out in another direction, because that path seems ‘interesting’.
2) Small group projects (no more than 4 people), which bring out synergy. Not only will the students learn from each other, but will exceed their own expectations. The students must be given a reasonable end date for the project to be completed.
Now let me tell another of my true stories, this from my post-graduate days, living in a group home. One of the other residents, named Dan, a graduate student in psychology (a subject I knew nothing about), had a short paper due on some aspect of psychology. He just wasn’t in the mood (and may have been a bit high), and requested my help. I asked him “where in the text book is this mentioned” and he showed me the pages. I read them, and said “I can work with this, please get me a beer”, rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and started pounding the keys. About 45 minutes and a couple of beers later, we had 2 pages of pure baloney. Today it would be called “psycho-babble”. Reword the text, toss in some buzzwords, and include a few high level rhetorical questions with made up answers. It was a masterpiece that said absolutely nothing. Dan turned the paper in the next day, and when he got it back, received a B grade and was ecstatic. I think it was then and there that I realized I possessed the ability for creative writing.