If you look around you will find students flipping to the last page of their academic paper to see what grade they have received instead of the comments. It is sad to see even parents talking about the grades and not what their child has been learning in the class.
Education has become business and everyone wants to get good grades so that they have the chance to get better jobs.
Government initiatives also focus on test scores only.
If you take a look around the world and think about the obsession over grade what comes to your mind first? Who is responsible for this rat race? Is it the educators?
Or the fact that people with higher grades get better chances in colleges, universities, and even in getting employed?
Learn a little about the history grades
If you go through the research work of Jeffrey, Schinske and Kimberly tanner, you will understand that the grading system is a recent phenomenon that began around the 1940s.
Before the grading system, you find that Harvard and other universities used to give medals and class ranks in the 18th and 19th centuries as a way of acknowledging students who gained more knowledge and presented it in a written or practical way in school.
With new colleges opening and the existing ones expanding, institutions and professors required a way to communicate with students- readiness and accomplishments.
Currently, the scale that institutions are using is a-f but back then 100- point scale was used to analyse students.
However, studies shows that a scale having so many gradations was not a reliable or efficient way to evaluate students. Researchers then decided that it is time for institutions to switch to 5-point scale that can help normalise scores.
If you check the research work of Schinske and tanner explains clearly that the grading system was neither developed or revised to benefit the learning students. The grade system mainly existed for intuitions.
Here are 5 reasons why students prefer to focus on grades rather than learning:
Students value grades more than learning
The question that comes to mind is why do students care so much about grades? The answer to this simple question is often complicated and people use a number of excuses like teenage hormones, social media, or other excuses.
However, students respond to the structure of the education system. Often students have to rely on Dissertation Help services so that they do not miss out on valuable grades that can affect their GPA.
Managing multiple papers is stressful and without proper time management one can miss out on important papers.
The stakes are high
With the current grading system, every grade counts toward the student’s overall gpa. Moreover, it depends on the gpas whether you will land on internships or not.
Further gpas affect college admissions and job applications. If you notice that employers do not even consider applicants who have lower gpas. Like it or not if you have a 2.5 gpa you are likely to get into yale or any other well-known university.
But if you get a 4.0 GPA you will definitely get into your choice of college and university.
How mom and dad factor in
If you take a look at the school grades you will notice that parents care a lot about the grades more than what their child learns in school.
This excessive care for grades ends up putting pressure on students and they often fail to fulfill their expectation. Sometimes parents directly contact teachers to try and increase their child’s grades.
In 2014 a survey showed that nearly 80% of children thought their parents care more about grades. And achievement than their happiness.
This shows that parents are running after grades and not after knowledge. And they use grades as barometers to judge the intelligence of their children.
All this pressure and competitiveness make students nervous but students can opt for homework help, assignment help on the web. Because these options can assist them to make better use of their time.
This develops into a problem: “when the goal is to be smart, the formula is reduced to maximizing grades while minimizing effort,”. Whereas “when the goal is to learn, the formula is about maximizing learning while optimizing effort.”
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Sense of Self Worth
Students tend to believe that their academic achievement is associated with their self worth and primarily it is in the form of grades. A study shows that more than 80% of students think that their self work is based on their academic performance.
Parents needs to be concerned after reading this study. Because it also shows that basing their self worth on external sources can cause more stress. And anger, academic problems,along conflicts in relationships. Moreover drug and alcohol use and you will find symptoms related to eating disorders.
When this information comes into light, you can understand why students act like getting a poor score on an essay is a personal attack—to them, because it is.
But this problem of low self esteem or self worth does not end with students focusing on grades. This fixation on grades is a part of a larger problem and source for academic motivation.
Not all feedback is created equal
Students do not get any help from evaluating feedback. It does not benefit them to perform better in the future. Moreover, it distracts students from absorbing constructive criticisms and receiving descriptive feedback in the present time.
Students who are low achiever suffers the most as they experience dramatic declines in academic interest because of receiving low scores. However, if you notice there is a negative result of receiving descriptive feedback alone.
There are several theories that show why grades present such a negative consequence on students.
The above mentioned points shows the reasons why students emphasizes more on grades than learning and absorbing pexel.
Author bio- Ethan Taylor is full time writer at myassignmenthelp.com. He has been working on Essay Typer tool and on helping students understand different aspects of academic papers.
