Hissah Alshiha
Instructor. Rabe
Essay 2
Nov, 21, 13
Saudi Arabia Educational System
Why is a good education system important? Education has a huge effect on people
because it can make them have a better understanding of human predicaments. Also, education
can teach children to recognize the many obstacles that they must overcome. According to John
Taylor Gatto essay “Again schooling “ he says that students need school however, he is against
the school system because students can’t be critical thinkers. Also, in Alfie Kohn essay “From
Degrading to De-grading” he says that students don’t need grades because they are not effective
and don’t improve students learning. In Saudi Arabia the education system depends on lecturing
only. Moreover, the teachers have to only explain the lessons and go over the book. Students
can’t get involved in group work or present presentations in front of the class because they only
have to study to get grades and pass the course. The education system in Saudi Arabia is wrong
for not having students work together or think critically. Grades like A or B doesn’t do any
good for students and it affects them in negative way. In other words, the education system must
depend on creativity so students can put more effort in the classroom.
One problem with the Saudi Arabia teaching system is that students only sit in the class
room and listen to the lecture. Students are required to memorize the book to pass the exam and
when students fail a course in school they think it’s because they didn’t memorize the material
very well. For instance, in courses like math student need to study enough mathematics so that
they understand and appreciate the complexity, and beauty of the discipline. However, students
end up listing all the formulas that they memorized. As a result, most students fail because they
think of every course as something to memorize. Moreover, they feel that they fail because they
didn’t more memorization they don’t think not understanding the martials is a huge problem.
We can’t blame the students for not thinking to understand they were tough to memorize. The
more the memorizing that they do the more grades that they will have and they more teachers
will consider them as excellent students. Kohn said, “The real problem is that almost all kids
will come to focus on grades and, as a result their learning will be hurt” (page292) thus,
students lose motivation to continue because they simply feel that if a student can’t have credit
for being a creative why should he or she be creative?
The education system must be effective and efficient. Yet, what happen when the day
comes and students need to do presentation and need to be creative? Well students will
definitely find difficulties with presenting and talking in front of large audience because they
are simply not used to it. As a consequence, this will not only affect their educational life but
also their work and career life that they will have in the future. Hence, Students need to know
how to do presentation so they can be good speakers and know how to focus on
effective performance. This educational system is wrong focusing on grading and testing is not
doing any good for students. They need to learn how to be good speakers so they can be great
leaders in the future. Furthermore, great leaders must now how to present themselves in a very
professional way to the world because this will make people willing to listen to them. Kohn
said, “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone
taught them; to be sure, but they were not product of school system”(page 302) thus, the victims
of wrong system education in Saudi Arabia is the students. Grades can’t stop people from
success because they can’t judge people’s skills.
Why grades are not important in learning? Having lower grades is very disappointing.
Kohn said, “The score in a math is test is largely a reflection of how the test was written: what
skills the teacher decided to assess, what kind of question happened to be left out” (page 288)
graders are not effective. Because teachers have different ways of grading in the math test
some give points for the steps to find out the solution and other doesn’t care about the steps
they only want the correct solution regardless of how they got the answer. Therefore, two
teachers can give two different grades for one test or grading assignment. In addition, grading
often put students out of the comfort zone and as a result, students will become more
interested in grades than learning they just want to finish from this nightmare and pass this
class without learning anything of it.
Grading can affect both students and teachers. Teachers spend hundred of hours grading
assignments, tests and papers. As Kohn illustrated in his essay, teachers waste a lot of time on
grading instead of learning how to learn. For instance, in public schools teachers are concerned
about the student’s problems like students who are not coming to school, students who show up
late, and students who have learning difficulties or family’s problems. Moreover, after all this
hard work with student’s families teachers have to spend time on grading. As consequence the
curriculum will be boring teachers don’t have time to learn new techniques to make the class
interesting and fun so students will not think as creatively as they supposed to be. Furthermore,
every Math, science, and history courses are repetitive students might end up cheating they must
get good grades and they don’t want to learn as Kohn said, “We either continue to blame and
punish all the students who cheat- or we can look for the structural reasons”(page 288).
Everyone knows that cheating is wrong. However, teachers must know why students cheat and
the reason is they either feel that they need to be perfect to get an A or the course is too difficult
or boring and the teachers need to use new ways to get the students’ attention. Thus, grading
effect teachers and students.
The educational system is different from one place to another. Therefore, sometimes
students in some countries do better than others. Grading and testing is a main issue in Saudi
Arabia’s education system. Yes sometimes we need grades but not that much. So, the point of
writing this essay, this educational system is wrong and must be changed. There is no enough
creativity teachers should stop judging students skills by a test. Grading is unethical way to
make students learn, but teachers can not stop grading because it’s not on their hands they are
supposed to grade it’s part of the educational system in Saudi Arabia and they can’t do anything
about it. Nevertheless, Educational institutions are responsible for inefficient teaching system
they must stop using the grading system to threat students.