Thread by @Mr_Rablin

Today I surveyed a group of students (couldn't be my own because they already know how much I hate grades) and asked them three questions.

A thread...

1/

The first question was simple.

Do grades help you learn? Why or why not?

Here are some of the responses:

2/

The most concerning ones started with a yes. For example:

"Yes because I feel pressured to do better."
"Yes because if i have bad grades it makes me do work to keep them up."
"To me yes because I feel that I'm doing good in all my classes when I get good grades."

3/

Almost every single one that started with a yes included nothing about learning. They confused learning with doing, with complying. There were a few that talked about being on track, but I'm not convinced "on track" is a measure of learning in a high schooler's mind.

4/

Other responses:

"Not really, it just shows if I do work or not."
"No, grades are just there to show all the work you've been doing."
"no they just make you stress more about them."
"Kind of not really because you are basically trying to get your grade up."

5/

Most of the responses looked like the ones above. Kids see through the sham of grading. They know it's just a measure that teachers use to force them to do things. They're hoops for kids. You want to know why your grade penalties aren't working? Kids don't care about hoops.

6/

Here's the second question I asked.

How do grades make you feel?

The responses to this question were predictable, but horrifying when you think about them.

7/

Responses:

"pressured"
"stressed"
"Bad, they stress me out to the point where idk what to do. My parents always up on me."
"Happy if theyre A´s, sad if theyre F´ś"
"like I just need to pass to show I am learning"
"dumb"

8/

Read all of those responses again, and then recognize what we are doing to kids. A lot of those responses are from kids who have pretty solid grades. We have conditioned students to base their sense of self worth and intelligence on a worthless letter and it's hurting kids.

9/

Final question.

"Why do teachers use grades?"

There was some hope here, but it shows a serious disconnect between the understood intention of grades and their impact in practice.

10/

Responses:

"to keep students learning and how good there work is and how much they know"
"To be honest idk"
"To show how much assignments you have finished"
"Teachers use grades as a way to represent how much the student does"
"To see where we are in learning."

11/

Responses (cont.)

"Teachers use grades as a way to represent how much the student does"
"To see how well we finish stuff? i am not sure."
"show what they think is a lesson"

And my favorite: "I think they use grades to push you to get good grades."

12/

Grades are so often misused that even on a theoretical level of what grading is supposed to be, most students don't understand that anymore. They think it's simply like a checkmark, a way of showing that you completed your work.

They're "best complier" stickers.

13/

I'm not here to tell you exactly what the solution is. There are plenty of resources out there that do that. I'm here to tell you that kids, for the most part, see grades as meaningless. They see them as only the stick, but the cart's not moving towards learning.

14/

And here's the final note from the responses. The last question said, "Anything else you want teachers to know about grades?"

One student wrote, "It stresses us. It doesn't help teenage mental health. High school is hard enough without them."

15/

There won't be a quick solution, but the first step is to recognize that we are active in a system that, even when just viewed from the student's experience, is doing more harm than good.

We have to start recognizing that. We've turned a blind eye for too long.

16/

If this thread prompts anything, may it be these two things:

1. Help students see their worth as often as you can. Because as long as we have grades, students will be remind of their shortcomings more often than not.

2. Ask hard questions about grades. Always.

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