by Jeff Franklin

Created on: August 19, 2007

There should be NO grades in any course in any level of education. Going along with a productive and constructive philosophy about education, students do not need the added burden of destructive GRADE PRESSURE to excel in their educational pursuits. They will be more motivated and energetic to learn and acquire skills and knowledge in a friendly, grade-pressure-free, learning environment than in a negative, pressure cooker grade-worry atmosphere. The needed learning and acquisition of knowledge should be in a hands on, semi one-to-one, practical in-class "workshop" atmosphere of practice. It is a person's own loss if he or she doesn't at least try, refuses to participate, or fakes the learning during the class session. Accordingly, schools should be mandated to abandon all "grades or grading", such as, but not limited to, the assignment of "A, B, C, D, F" to competitively "rate" a student or pit them against each other - as if it were a dog-eat-dog or winner-take-all, destructive environment. Such ridiculous pain is not, and never was intended, to be what learning is all about. Learning should be at least somewhat fun, and not a suicidal endeavor!

In lieu of grades, where appropriate or absolutely necessary, the instructor or school could use one of the following methods to rate the student's course progress/outcome: performance evaluations; "pass" or "fail"; complete or not completed; or, satisfactory/unsatisfactory.

Studies have already shown that the above format atmosphere of learning practice allows far more students to "pass" or do well, than old, entrenched, archaic and obsolete learning formats involving grades. Additionally, the average retaining of the learned subject as well as the quality of performance per individual student is greatly enhanced.

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