Grades Don’t Have To Be Grade-A Bullshit

So this article I’m blogging is about the shortcomings of the grading system. While the tone comes off more like someone who just recently failed his latest exam, I sympathize. Grades are a terrible way not only to evaluate someone, but to teach them about life. Now I’m only 23 but in reading about great leaders and successful men and women, I’ve learned that they share a common trait of perseverance.

Grades teach the opposite. Grades are about maximum preparation for one shot and if you miss that shot for any reason, then it’s “go home, thanks for playing, and fuck you.” I’ve thought about if I were a teacher, how would I grade. Grades, like it or not, are a necessity. It’s a way to turn a qualitative value (unless it’s an absolute objective subject like math or science) into a quantitative value. There’s no universal truth that says my essay on capitalism in the southern colonies is a B- and while that grade can be defended by the grader, whom ever that may be, another grader may not find my mistakes as egregious or another grader my find my errors to merit an even lesser grade. So how do we make grading fair? We allow for perseverance. So in my classroom, you may get a C but if you want an A, then you talk to me, you look at my notes, and you figure out how to make a stronger paper. You’re still catering to my inclinations as a grader (which is why you can only be taught a base level of grammar and style and you’ll have to adjust to every professor’s whims, like it or not), but at least you’re learning how to improve because while I sincerely doubt that you’ll need to know about the 18th century American economy to have a good life, you’ll need to know that preparation is important, but perservance is even more important.