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Students vs. the System
Education has always been a great factor in determining human survival and success. Whether it is learning to live in a harsh environment or learning to manage a company, education is and always will be incredibly significant. Education is so important in modern society that a system of grades has been developed to evaluate students of all ages and levels. In Paul Goodman’s essay “A Proposal to Abolish Grading” he argues that the grading system that is commonly used in our society is ineffective and should be done away with. This idea is wrong since there are many positive outcomes that result from the current grading system.
Goodman opens up his piece by making his claim that grades have take precedence over everything in classrooms. He also mentions that some authorities in the educational field agree with and support this statement. “I think that a majority of professors agree that grading hinders teaching and creates a bad spirit, going as far as cheating and plagiarizing” (Goodman 206). Here, he talks about how grading has lost its power, and has been reduced to a meaningless letter on paper that tempts students to cheat in order to receive a passing grade on their assignments. He also goes on to declare that, “…grading is inevitable; for how else will the graduate schools, the foundations, and corporations know whom to accept…” (Goodman 206). By expressing these ideas in such close proximity, it can be inferred that Goodman believes grades are unreliable sources of data due to cheating. Although cheating is a prevalent problem in all places of work, it should not be a reason to disregard looking at grades when considering an applicant for hire. Letter grades from all schools simply represent the work ethic of that particular student. The threat that a person who received high grades could be a cheater is always present, but the characteristics of a cheater can easily be recognized by other workers and by the employer. So the belief that grades are unreliable due to cheating is erroneous, due to the fact that not all students are cheaters. The grading system simply provides a standard that all students should fall under, which implies that all applicants be educated. This is just a small sample of what Goodman includes in this essay.
Two other topics that Goodman covers in good detail are the purpose of a test and the self-awar...
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...defend and help people, but when used in the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon for evil. This grading system, much like a gun, is a tool just as capable of being used for evil in the sense that teachers abuse their power to grade by forcing lazy students to work. By abusing the system and threatening students with grades is what prompts them to cheat, steal, and copy, not the grading system itself.
The current grading system implemented in schools today is a great thing, where students are able to monitor their own progress, and be rewarded for their hard work with high grades. Goodman makes some good points in his proposal by mentioning the somewhat unreliability of grades, and by acknowledging the strength of a self-aware student, but they are outweighed by his weak, one-sided arguments accusing the modern grading system of being useless and bad. Education is a powerful tool in the present day and age, and although what people are being taught has changed significantly, one can never learn too much to prepare for future success.
Works Cited
Goodman, Paul. “A Proposal to Abolish Grading.” Elements of Argument. Ed. Ellen Rottenburg. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 206-209
In her article, “The Case Against GRADES”, Alfie Kohn discusses the grading system and its faults. She opens her argument with information from an older psychological study that proves the negative impact of the current grading system, and she reinforces this with the proof that “no” research has contradicted this statement. Also, she gives many key reasons including: “Motivation”, “Achievement”, “Quantification”, and “Curriculum”. Kohn supports these topics with other reasearch for why the system is failing the students. She asserts that, “… the absence of grading is a necessary condition for promoting deep thinking and a desire to engage in it.” As support, she offers other solutions and then debunks them by proving that they would not solve
In the article, “A Better Way to Prevent Cheating: Appeal to Fairness,” author David Callahan compared the idea of professors who grade mid-term exams to the role of them playing cops or detectives. The article was about the struggle that a lot of universities are facing with the epidemic of cheating amongst its students. A lot of these colleges and universities have put in play honor codes but they are not being enforced effectively. It talked about how that the students feel that it’s the only way for some of them to succeed, get into the college of their choice or even get the job that they want. One student even argued that everyone cut corners to get ahead in life it’s the norm in all industries. Even when trying to appeal to the student’s
“Making the Grade” by Kurt Wiesenfeld Newsweek magazine, June 27 1996 brings to light an issue that has been glazed over by society for some time, grade inflation. It’s highly disturbing that “we lament that schoolchildren get “kicked upstairs” until they graduate from high school despite being illiterate and mathematically inept, but we seem unconcerned with college graduates whose less blatant deficiencies are far more harmful, if their accreditation exceeds their qualifications”. The issue of grade inflation is not simply an issue of students feeling entitled to higher grades than they have earned, it is a problem that directly impacts our society in a multitude of negative ways. Perhaps the “gold star” mentality started out with the good intentions of creating children with positive self-esteem, however, a direct result is lazy adults with a sense of entitlement for no reason, who lack qualifications to adequately and safely perform their jobs.
I have always valued school and enlarging my intelligence; I receive a sense of pride from earning a decent grade on a paper or on a particular assignment. Alfie Kohn wrote an essay titled “From Degrading to De-grading”; in it he suggests a different view on the current education system. Even though students expect marks and even seem dependent on them, grading should spur on a love of studying not deter it. Grades tend to reduce a student’s inclination for stimulating tasks, and lessen students’ interest in erudition.
In other words, two teachers may give the same assignment two completely different grades based on their own grading style. This puts an incredible amount of stress on a student because they need to complete assignments that will satisfy their current teacher, whose expectations and grading style could be very similar or very different from the student’s previous teacher. Alfie Kohn believes that the influence grades have on a student’s life doesn’t help this situation, and may even make it worse by providing students with a false sense of security about their knowledge. In her article “From Degrading to De-grading”, she states that scores on tests can be largely based on how the test was written and what skills were tested (Kohn 240). Therefore, it is up to teachers to identify what topics students must master in order to be proficient and score well on standardized tests. But when the class is not structured with a consideration for the material used on such tests, students enter the test blind to the skills that they will be expected to know and use. Anyone can memorize a list of facts off a study guide and score well on a multiple choice test the next day, but skills such as analyzing literature and interpreting a handful of graphs containing data from a scientific experiment are skills that require time and hours of instruction to master.
In “What is a Grade” by Pat Belanoff, she explains the pros and cons of the grading system. In Pats ' essay she states “Perhaps the solution would to abandon grading altogether in writing class. I confess that this a solution that appeals to me greatly.” (151). Grades should not be present in the way we test students’ learning ability.
Young, K. (n.d.). Pros: Standardized Testing. Michigan State University. Est. 1855. East Lansing, Michigan USA. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from https://www.msu.edu/~youngka7/pros.html
This idea is absurd! Our educational grading system is a scale of A, B, C, D, F with mastery being an A, average being an C, and complete failing being an F. What we would be saying to our students under his point is no matter how hard you work and how much effort you give something, if you can’t be perfect you are no better than a failure. How many students would there then be that feel like why even try? This would lead to more drop outs which is another alarming issue.
Evans, Donia. "The Case Against Standardized Tests." The Meridian Star. 24 Nov. 2013. The Meridian Star. 01 Dec. 2013 .
Ferriter, Bill. Standardized Tests Alone Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Students. Opposing Viewpoints School Reform. Ed. Noah Berlatsky. Detroit: Christine Nasso, 2011 94-99. Print.
Kohn, Alfie. The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann 2000.
Teachers have always used grades to measure the amount a student has learned. This practice is becoming ineffective. Many students have a wide range of grades, which show that grades may not show what a student really knows. Therefore, the standard grading system should be replaced. Some reasons why grades should be replaced are bad grades can hinder a child’s performance, grades define who a student is in the classroom, and grades are not an effective way to see if students have learned the material. The current grading system should be upgraded and every school should incorporate the plus/minus system in their method of grading.
Traditional grading system will be my focus of this essay. Grading as numbers or letters, a conventional way of assessing students’ achievement, is one part of education and has been lately in controversy in USA. The argument is that the conventional grading practice is not in support of the ultimate objectives of education. In fact, it is in conflict with the values of education. Thus in this essay, I will argue that traditional grading does not play the role it is supposed to play and it is time to have a new and better alternative to this.
Although standardized testing is commonly used in most schools and educational intuitions nowadays, it does not measure a student’s intelligence. As such, standardized testing should be revoked because, not only is it an unreliable way of measuring a student’s performance, it also pressures educators and creates a grade conscious mindset. Schools should focus more on the development of students, rather than ranking them based on the grades they receive on a test. Not only are standardized tests an undependable way of grading, but also, it does not promote life skills the student will need when growing
By nature, most students are brought up in an academic environment motivated to get A’s and B’s on their report cards. Those grades sometimes don’t thoroughly report how much a student has learned or gained knowledge in each topic. Some instructors throw in factors totally unrelated to learning, when the main objective of academic institutions is to learn. In order to clearly demonstrate how much a student has learned in the classroom, schools should change their current grading system and teach students how to learn.