Home > Education > Colleges & Universities > Colleges & Universities (Other)
Should grading be abolished in college and university courses
Results so far:
| Yes | 33% | 445 votes | Total: 1363 votes | |
| No | 67% | 918 votes |
Yes
by Rebecca Ashby
Created on: December 04, 2007
I feel that in my years of interrelating with my students I have made a profound difference in their lives. I make this proclamation because I have always believed in the power of critical thinking. Too many educators approach teaching with only a standard curriculum and never ask their students to "color outside the lines." By the time the kids get to college, they are robots who sit in a classroom and expect their instructors to feed them information which they will memorize, short term, and forget right after the exam. I assist them to become creative again after they have been told to be receptive only for their entire school experience. I challenge them to interact with each other and express their viewpoints. I teach oral communication so it's the perfect realm for their self actualization.
The public school system as it exists today is a stifling creation of an outdated system. In order for students to succeed in school, you have to challenge their minds and the present system does not. My recommendation would be to scrap it completely. Do away with grades as a way to measure progress; do away with chronological age restrictions; do away with the present logistical structure. Create a system that measures a child's ability to question, to grow, to interact with his peers. The system that presently exists is perfect for the average kid but how many are really average? Our system rewards mediocrity. If a child can sit in a classroom, not create a discipline problem and feeds back with rote memory the information that has been handed to him, then we consider him a success but does this make great leaders or outstanding artists? No, it doesn't. And why do we require every child to be proficient in every subject? After all, as adults, most of us figure out what we're best at and go for it. Why don't we let the kids do what they are drawn to rather than expecting them to be a" jack of all trades and a master of none."
For every failure that the young mind processes, it is one more step toward stifling the natural creativity that children possess before they are confronted by all of society's rules and regulations. What would be wrong with a school system where every child received nothing but positive reinforcement? I once knew a college professor who took kids with low placement scores, low self esteem and a general lack of interest in school and tossed them a candy bar every time that did something well. He had them write about themselves by giving them an astute unfinished sentence to complete. He made learning fun and the students turned into people who couldn't wait to get to his class and achieve. He was teaching in conjunction with writing novels. His own creative flow was apparent and he let it flow into his classes. Too often, this is not the case. As I have walked past the doors of some classrooms, I have seen students sleeping through a professor's lecture. No one sleeps in my classroom. From the beginning, I let them know that they are in charge of making the class a success by their participation. It is our class, not my class. We, as a conjunctive whole, create the heights or depths in that space during that timeframe. You'd be surprised how adept young people are when given the opportunity to aspire to inventiveness. At first, of course, they protest because they have lost the ability to conjure up their basic creative instincts but eventually they rise to the occasion and some surpass my wildest expectations.
Learn more about this author, Rebecca Ashby.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
No
by Jayden Harlow
Created on: April 13, 2008
Grading is a vital part of student evaluation and should not be abolished in college and university courses. There are two main arguments commonly presented in opposition to standard grading: that grading is so arbitrary and biased as to be meaningless and that anxiety over grades forces students into a form of tunnel vision and actually inhibits their ability to develop as intellectuals. I will address each of these arguments in turn.
First, it is certainly true that biased or otherwise unfair grading exists in academia and that students are harmed by this kind of behavior. Every university should have an equitable system in place to identify and rectify unfair grading practices, and, whenever possible, course evaluation procedures should be established across sections of a particular class so that all students are graded based on the same criteria. Grading procedures should also be made as transparent as possible, so that a student can see how a particular score was arrived at. That said, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and abolishing grades is a simplistic and ineffective solution to a complex problem.
Consider, for example, two students in a course. One student is highly intelligent, studies the course material diligently, and submits exemplary assignments that show an unusually astute grasp of the subject matter. The second student is of standard intelligence, and his/her assignments demonstrate only a cursory understanding of the general principles of the course. S/He is doing passable, but not superior, work. Flash forward several years when both students are applying for spots in the same graduate program. Based on their transcripts for the course, both students passed; beyond that, they are indistinguishable on paper. Certainly the superior student could submit a letter of recommendation in support of his/her work, but, after four years of ungraded work, which professor's letter should s/he choose?
Grading, if implemented well, provides a system for objectively evaluating a student's performance and capabilities in relation to his/her peers, and offers a means for determining the most suitable candidates for advanced degrees and certain kinds of employment. Without grades, schools and employers would be left with the unmanageable task of contacting an unruly number of professors in order to gage their personal opinions of the students in their courses. Alternatively, students might be left with the need to preserve all of their university work indefinitely, so that they would be able to provide, perhaps a decade later, evidence of their academic achievement when applying to master and doctoral programs. It's an unworkable system.
Next, opponents argue that performance anxiety over fixed tests and graded assignments inhibits high level thinking. There are two flaws in this line of thinking. First, the argument supposes that an ability to meet established standards at regular intervals is not an important aspect of intellectual development. How valuable, for example, might a scientist be if s/he is too fragile to face criticism or work within fixed deadlines? Regular deliverables and established grading systems help students develop certain real world skills beyond the subject matter at hand, including the ability to respond effectively to external evaluation and to work within a deadline.
The second flaw in this argument is the supposition that students emerge from high school with the maturity, discipline and self awareness needed to perform optimally in an atmosphere devoid of external watermarks for success. As a Ph.D. student at a university in the United Kingdom, I am currently living the "grade free" dream. I have few required courses, and the ones I do take are pass/fail. In lieu of graded assignments and tests, I meet regularly with an adviser to discuss my progress and once a year with an external evaluator. The only fixed "test" I will face comes at the end of three years when I'll submit my thesis (dissertation) and defend it before a panel of professors. Far from being freeing, this process is incredibly demanding, and it's not something I wouldn't have been capable of as an 18-year-old college freshman.
Students who progress through academia will find themselves eased into a process of freer thinking and increasingly personal evaluation of their work. Master's programs generally incorporate fewer tests and more written projects than undergraduate courses, and doctoral program enhance opportunities for personalized study and evaluation even further. At each step in the process, students use skills they developed in their previous studies to advance their thinking. The desire by students (and some academics) to make an end run around this process by incorporating the academic environment experienced by Ph.D. candidates and post-doc researchers into undergraduate studies is misguided. Far from encouraging creative thought, it is likely to paralyze otherwise promising students by forcing them into an environment they are not prepared for.
Learn more about this author, Jayden Harlow.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Write and get published
Share with other writers
Polish your freelancing skills
Quality articles from proven freelancers
Exclusive rights, fast turnaround
Brand engagement, business blogging -- our writers do it all
INFORMATION
Copyright © 2002-2012 Helium, Inc. All rights reserved.
Helium.com: A Service of RR Donnelley