Comments on: What grades are good for

By: Lenz on Learning: “What grades are good for” | Did you learn anything?

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 08:22:58 +0000

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By: Evan Lenz

Evan Lenz — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:50:27 +0000

Grades are useful to a very limited extent. When implemented from an early age, their liabilities far outweigh their usefulness. The balance starts to shift under certain circumstances: the student is old enough to choose a structured context (class) in which to learn the subject based on their interest, and they have requested help from someone else in evaluating how they are doing. The key thing is that the responsibility for one’s education—for doing the learning and evaluating the learning–should never be shifted off the person’s own shoulders, which is what is effectively done in the context of compulsory schooling. People that have matured while being in charge of their own lives and their own learning are less likely to be devastated by someone else’s evaluation. They’ve had plenty of chances to learn from failure—self-evaluated. They’re more likely to effectively utilize negative feedback from others, rather than internalize it.

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:11:28 +0000

Grades are in fact extremely powerful, they have the ability to do a number of things such as you touched on. But they are a necessary evil in any merit-based system. It would be difficult to build a solid organization on any other foundation if you want people to really reach their full potential. So why is it such a good idea to limit evaluations until later in life when criticism that you are not accustomed to can be that much more devastating?