“Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” ~Albert Einstein
Just as Albert Einstein said, along with many others in agreement, the grading system should be eliminated and in its place should be a system based on a more personalized level. I think that highschool should help students prepare for the life after high school, whether college is in the future or not. Students should be able to design their curriculum based on interest and talent, not by required courses. High school should be a lot like college. In ninth and tenth grade, General Education courses should be required to obtain a well rounded grasp on all senses of the core classes such as English, Science, Math, History, and a foreign language. After that, students should start looking for their strong suits and start persuing a career or at least expanding on their own raw talents and developing something that they will love. It is unfortunate that grade point averages are dropped signifigantly if you do not do well in a math class because you are not mathematically minded. Students should be rewarded for what they are good at, not told how bad they are at something. Being limited during the college application process because you didnt understand a foreign language or a math or science class are common worries among high school seniors which is why students should elect how their curriculum is run. What are students graded against anyway? Who are we compared to to decide that I get the B and you get the A. People are not the same and we shouldn't be graded or tested based on a standard. In turn, students at the end of high school will have a better grasp on what field of study they want to go into and colleges will be easier to pick from because students already know how to decide where to go based upon what programs the college offers. More points and opinions coming, also more organization:)
This is so true. I have absolutely no idea what I am supposed to pursue after high school and maybe I would have an idea if someone gave me an oppotunity to pursue something I am interested in now instead of me trying out something in college and then totally hating it and wasting thousands of dollars. Stress how this could save money, time, and a lot of stress. Love your idea!
ReplyDeleteOlivia,
ReplyDeleteLOVE the Einstein quotation, and look forward to a light, but serious examination of just what it is we are trying to achieve when we assess students, and perhaps even a strident indictment of current grading practices. I look forward to hearing your presentation!
I think that you might be going after the result of a problem rather than the cause. A GPA doesn't really mean that much to a high school. the real impact that it has is on college admissions. Therefore, the reason that high schools use these systems is so that they can give them to colleges. What matters to your high school graduation is not what your GPA is, but rather if you have taken the right courses. In addition to this, what other information could a college use that could replace grades? Sure, there is definitely value in things like recommendations, but one has to realize that these are idealized representations of the student who is applying. A recommendation neatly will leave out any flaws that a transcript could reveal, and, even though seeing what someone is good at is important, it is ridiculous to expect an admissions office to ignore any flaws. That is just the way the world works. Also, is it actually realistic for a public school to not have a grading system, course requirements, and standardized tests? Sure, in an ideal world, we could eliminate these things, and everybody would understand everyone else's strengths, but we don't live in an ideal world; we live in a real one. As great as what your system seems in theory, I don't see how it could work in reality. It will be hard to find a realistic solution that gets rid of all these problems.
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