Do Grades matter?
From my “student bird” perspective, I personally have found
comfort in grades and percentages I did not think much about what they actually
meant, but more of something to try to achieve. Maybe I had always done well in
standardized test and in school in general so grades were relatively attainable
and I did not feel the stress that other students felt. I tried to keep my marks
to myself and so comparison or competition did not really cross my mind. The
only time that stress began to creep in was in Grade 12, where there was
competition to enter university. I might be dating myself a little but my grade
12 year was the last year of grade 13 in the east coast so there were
significantly more students trying to enter university at a time when grades
were all that mattered for university entrance. So, I do see the validity of the
argument that grades can cause stress and competition among students. As a
teacher, I see grades as basically a tool for accountability in teaching. It is
merely an easy way to demonstrate that a teacher has done some work in order to
evaluate students. It is far from effective was a gauging a student learning
but many teacher clings to the percentages as a way of standardizing their work
and providing some level of accountability in their teaching.
There are some key side effects from using percentages and
grades in schools is that they foster a need for competition, an atmosphere of anxiety
and an imbalance of power in the classroom. I feel although unavoidable, grade
put a teacher at a position of power and this makes it difficult for students to
truly feel safe in the classroom. There will always be students who pander what
they think the teacher might like or want, but not actually pursue their own
learning. They simply seek a meaningless number of letter on a piece of paper in
order to feel successful. And this too is unavoidable. There is always pressures
to enter university, pressures from home and pressure from peers for a student success.
I feel that while the school system is established to help students learn, it
might not help students learn to the best of their ability. Students are merely
forced to learn by a system that puts too much value on a letter or a number
that might not even truly reflect a student’s learning.
I believe that it is definitely possible teach math and science
without the emphasis on grades. As “math people” we take comfort in the numbers,
the quantifiable and the structured, and it seems not very structured to teach
to a student’s learning rather than a specific percentage or grade. There just
seems to not be enough accountability. But, I argue that as the BC Curriculum
has moved to standards-based assessment, we as math teachers too can move from
the rigid box of percentages and grades to teach towards a student’s understanding,
giving them multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency in their learning
and move away from the punishment of grades and percentages.
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