Hissah Alshiha
Instructor. Rabe
Journal 6
Nov, 3, 13
Against grading
Failing a course has never been easy for anyone! When a student fails a course in college,
it lower his/her GPA (grade point average) and, depending on whether or not the course is a
required course for students major, they may have to make it up. Much depends on the
college’s own policies, but there are generally similar choices for students to make. Most
college students get nervous before a midterm exam or final exam because they know that they
have to get a good grades and if not they might fail the course and this will not only effect their
GPA but also this will delay their graduation date. Alfie Kohn explains in his essay “From
degrading to de-grading” that grades don’t improve students learning. “In my experience, the
most impressive teachers are those who despise the whole process of giving grades” (page 286)
thus, Kohn is against grading because he believes that grading is not only irrelevant but
actually unethical to learning. Teachers must say no to grades! Students need more practicing
and less grading. Those letters like A or B doesn’t do any good for students and it affects them
in negative way.
Why grades are not important in learning? Having lower grades is very disappointing.
Sometimes students study enough mathematics so that they understand and appreciate the
complexity, and beauty of the discipline. However, not all students have mathematics skills
and in the test they feel anxiety because they know that they are in a situation where
performance really counts or when the pressure's on to do well. 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, math is about solving problems and
practicing. Conversely, 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.
Kohln’s ideas about the grading system are correct. Therefore the point of writing this
essay, grading can affect the student in negative way because students might focus on grades,
cheat, and loss creativity. Besides, teachers might still the teach curriculum is a very old and
traditional way because they spend time on grading. 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 schools system and they can’t do anything about it. Nevertheless,
educational institutions are responsible to stop using the grading system and stop threatening
students by the grades and to discover the best teaching techniques to graduate smart, and
intelligent students in the future that can make deference in the society.