Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Grades, Grades, Grades
We were discussing something in class today that particularly struck a chord with me. We were talking about grades and how important they are at a competitive school like New Trier. Which got me thinking, why do people worry about grades so much? Isn't the point of school to learn as much as possible, so why don't kids focus on that? I try my best to make school not about the letters and percentages, but with constant pressure to perform well in school from parents, and the desire to get into a good school, it can be easy to forget what is important. I also thought, how would school be different if there were no grades given out, if it was truly about what you got out of the experience in knowledge and life-skills. Would that make kids work harder? What do you think?
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I actually blogged about this too, I think it's a really interesting topic. Especially today, when the end of the quarter makes many students anxious about their grades. Before going to New Trier, I never thought a B was a bad grade. Now, I'm not so sure. I mean, it's better than a C, but there are still so many connotations out there-- "oh, you have a B. I see... well I have an A so good luck getting into college!" Of course that's not exactly how it's expressed, but it certainly feels like that at times. If I didn't have to work to push my grade up as high as I can, I don't think I would complete a single homework assignment.
ReplyDeleteAs you may remember from 7th and 8th grade, I did my math homework maybe once. I got a D- in math 8th grade, simply because I didn't care enough to try. Now, I have a B+ in math because I realized that if I don't take the initiative to do my homework, I'll never understand it, and if I don't understand it, I won't do well on tests and get a good grade. But am I doing it just for the grade? Maybe... but then again, if that's making me learn, is that bad?