Abolish Grading System Essay

Students are exposed to the grading system from the very moment they begin school. Parents receive progress reports in order to monitor how their children are performing in class. Report cards become bragging rights for students or make students find an inventive way to hide them from their parents. From a young age children are expected to bring home excellent grades and try their absolute hardest in their classes. Grades are the basis for how students are accepted into college, and even higher level programs. In his article, “A Proposal to Abolish Grading,” Goodman ineptly proposes the idea for school to rid of this grading system. In his article, Goodman tears apart the American grading system. He discusses the issues surrounding grading, as in the cheating and plagiarizing that some kids feel is the only ways for them to perform well, and also the “weeding” out of otherwise motivated students. Teachers wish to teach students, but students are too hell bent on receiving a good grade that they are not actually keeping hold of this knowledge learned. Goodman informs the reader on how the original grading system developed in the Medieval times and how this system has morphed into a crooked way of how

One argument in favor of ridding of or at least lessening the grading system that has gained attention is not assigning homework to younger children so that them and their parents are not required to spend their time out of school and work doing extra schoolwork. Another argument to getting rid of grading that Goodman hits on is that it encourages laziness and ends up in students failing and losing the ability to learn. On the other hand, one of the largest arguments toward keeping grading is the opposite of what Goodman states, that grading increases the competitiveness to do well in school and would promote laziness if there was no incentive to performing well in