Friday 22 November 2013

Why not grades? Part I - The early years


In my previous posts, I have been pretty down on the whole grading system. Maybe if I explain how I came about this opinion it will help a bit.

It boils down to motivation. A lot of educators view grades as both the carrot and the stick. The claim is that good grades motivate "good students" to do well and bad grades punish the "bad students" for not doing well. The rational is that if a student gets a bad grade it will make them want to try harder to get a good grade, if a student gets a good grade it will feel good and make them want to work hard to continue to do well.

I don't agree with this sentiment. First of all, it doesn't mesh with my high school experience. I know that when I didn't do well in the early grades I would feel bad, ashamed, discouraged. I had tried my hardest but it still was not good enough. I did fairly well without trying, so the discouragement did not happen often (thankfully for me). More often than not, I would not have to try very hard and I would do well. I'm not saying I am smarter than everybody else or anything, I think this was the case for most people. Early years are not terribly hard, so many students do not have to work that hard for the marks.

Unfortunately there comes a time in most student's lives where they do have to try in order to do well. In my case that was my first year of university. I would say it took me 3 years of university before I finally figured it out and understood how to study and prepare and actually learn.

What were your early years like? Did you breeze through only to struggle later, did you do poorly and get discouraged, or did you struggle and learn to work well?



I think students are a bit like butterflies. You see, a key area of development for the butterfly is breaking out of the chrysalis. If you cut it out, the wings will never be strong enough for the butterfly to actually fly. If you never challenge students, they never develop the ability to try. But if you punish them for trying and failing, they will eventually lose the drive to try.

Students need a safe space to try, fail, and learn from their mistakes

Grades are final to students. That 50% on a test is immutable, so why do anything about it? That 50% has helped the teacher to understand what the student doesn't get, but in all likelihood, the student still has no idea what they know, and what they don't know.

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